The few figs the birds left on the tree won’t ripen anymore. So I thought maybe I could use unripe figs somehow because you can use unripe tomatoes or mangos so why not figs?
Here it comes: green fig jam and green means unripe!
You will need: figs, sugar and spices (I used ginger and heaps of ground cinnamon).
Boil the figs in two changes of water for ten minutes each. Each time you squeeze them out. Some recipes state you might need three changes, but I did two.
Proceed as for any other jam.
In case you don’t know: weigh out the squeezes figs and add the same amount of sugar in weight (sorry not very healthy but sugar preserves). Cut figs add sugar and spices and boil for say 15-20 minutes.
Meanwhile, sterilize super clean jars: pour hot water in the jars, you place a spoon in the jars so that they don’t crack -go slowly. Leave water in the jar.
Once the jam is boiled (stir!), I use a stick blender to mash all up but if you like lumps you can leave that step out.
Simply hot-fill the jars and seal them immediately.
The modern way is to sterilize the jars once again because of the risk of botulism, we never did that (way back – last century!).
If you want to use less sugar you probably need to keep the jam refrigerated.
This extreme cheapskate recipe actually turned out very nice!