• June 19th, 2015
• Comments Off on Behind the Jar – Apricot Preserves

We’ve noticed only our ‘winning’ preserves garner most of the limelight, but we do a whole slew of canned goods that deserve a few words written about them just as much as those with special stickers. This, then, is the second of those; a bit about it, its origins, and why it deserves its spot on our production calendar.

Apricots don’t always get the love they deserve. Apricot preserves are usually an imported product and while they may be spectacular, they are much too hard to come by. North American made apricot preserves are usually stuffed full of anti-browning preservatives, or thickeners, or not enough apricot flavor – they just could be so much better. So we made it our place to do so and give the apricot the love they deserve.

Our preservationist, Melanie, has had apricots in her life for a long time. They hold a strong significance to her childhood as well as her journey into the culinary world. It started with her family holidays – her maternal grandmother would give her an otherworldly chocolate covered version and her father’s grandmother would make an Austrian shortbread jam bar, lovingly referred to as “nut bars”. So the positive memories are quite strong with all things apricots. Once Melanie started cooking professionally, her family requested she recreate the nut bars, whose recipe was lost with her great grandmother’s passing. Melanie tried to find apricot butter in a jar, but they were always lacking – she felt then it was up to her to craft a preserve that was up to the level of the cookies in her childhood memories.

Our Apricot Preserves are particularly awesome because they are really orange, full of flavor, and don’t contain any artificial ingredients or preservatives – we let the heat, pH and sugar do the heavy lifting. It has everything to do with freshness of the fruit, getting the most recently picked, processing them quickly and in the most flavor conscious ways possible to make an apricot preserve that tastes like a fresh cut apricot. Not an easy task – but one we think is well worth it. Find out for yourself by getting a jar of our childhood memories, our Apricot Preserves.

Comments are closed.