Green Walnut Jam

Cooking method

1. Step 1:

   

   Gather green walnuts. Very young, milky-stage nuts are ideal for jam.

2. Step 2:

   

   When you cut one open it's white inside, and you can clearly see that the nut's shell hasn't formed yet.

3. Step 3:

   

   To make the jam, we need a very simple set of ingredients: nuts, sugar, and water.

4. Step 4:

   

   First, prepare the nuts themselves; this process takes quite a while. Important! Wear gloves while working with the nuts, or your nails and hands will turn dark and stay stained for a long time. So: trim the stem ends off each nut on both sides.

5. Step 5:

   

   Take an awl, a knitting needle, or a large needle and make lots of punctures in each nut. If a nut is hard to pierce, it means the shell has started to form inside and that nut isn't suitable for jam.

6. Step 6:

   

   Pierce all the nuts this way (there may be splashes of juice, which will also darken over time, so be careful).

7. Step 7:

   

   Cover the walnuts with cold water. Now you need to soak them for 8–10 days, changing the water periodically. I soaked them for 10 days, changing the water 3 times a day (morning, midday, and evening).

8. Step 8:

   

   Each time, after a few hours the water turns dark, which means the bitterness is leaching out of the nuts. Meanwhile, the nuts themselves gradually darken too — that's exactly how it should be.

9. Step 9:

   

   This is how the nuts look on the ninth and tenth day of soaking — almost black. Drain the water off the nuts.

10. Step 10:

    

    Put the nuts in a small pot, cover with clean water, and set it over high heat. Wait for it to boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover the pot, and cook the walnuts for 3 hours. After an hour or an hour and a half, look under the lid to see if there's enough water or if some has boiled off. If there isn't enough liquid, add boiling water so it covers all the nuts.

11. Step 11:

    

    When the nuts are cooked, they'll be a uniform black color; check for doneness with a toothpick. The nut should pierce easily and even slip off the toothpick. Drain the remaining water.

12. Step 12:

    

    Make the syrup. Pour 1 liter of water into a clean pot, add the sugar, and set it on the stove. Once it boils, add the nuts to the syrup, lower the heat slightly, and cook for 5 minutes. Then take the pot off the heat and leave it to cool completely. It's best to let the nuts sit for about 12 hours, so they soak up as much of the sweet syrup as possible.

13. Step 13:

    

    Then bring the contents of the pot back to a boil and cook the jam for another 5 minutes. After that, the same again: cool it, let it steep, and repeat the whole thing 3–4 more times. Each time the syrup gets thicker and the nuts get sweeter. I boiled the jam 5 times.

14. Step 14:

    

    Done! You can pour the boiling jam into sterilized jars and seal them for the winter.