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Photo by John Wagner

Photo by John Wagner

Photo by John Wagner

FAIRBANKS — All those pleasurable hours spent outdoors harvesting Alaska’s wild berries can be converted into a winter full of tasty eating — a la jellies, jams, fruit butter, marmalades, conserves and preserves — with a little help from your local Cooperative Extension Service.

Taking the mystery out of the chemistry and physics of preserving summer’s bounty, and putting it in layman’s terms is a specialty of Roxie Rodgers Dinstel, a Tanana District extension professor.

At a recent jams and jellies food preservation workshop, Dinstel single-handedly guided 21 berry-pickers through the exciting experience of mashing, straining, stirring and canning to produce jewel-tone jellies and thick, fruity jams and butters.

“There are certain things that must be in balance for things to set,” Dinstel explained in her Texas twang, listing the four basic ingredients for jams and jellies: fruit, pectin, acid and sugar.

Pectin, a natural carbohydrate, causes jelly to gel and is found in several fruits. It is available commercially for use in recipes in powdered or liquid forms as well as a no-sugar-needed fruit pectin, which can be used to reduce the amount of sugar in jam and jelly recipes or eliminate it completely.

Dinstel described pectin as similar to a net that traps little pieces of juices for a framework.

“A jam isn’t as difficult; a jelly is fussy,” Dinstel explained before class members were let loose, with recipes in hand, into the large kitchen at the Fairbanks Community Food Bank.

“If you’re making a jelly, don’t mess with the recipe,” Dinstel cautioned as students — ages 12 to 60-plus, novices to pros — eagerly set to work.

Soon, sweet fruity smells began filling the air as teams of three began putting together jams, jellies and a fruit butter from wild berries, commercial berries and juices.

Mary McCarroll watched as her 12-year-old daughter, Katie, determinedly mashed strawberries and bananas together in a large cooking pot, the first step in making a fruity jam.

Until Thursday’s class, McCarroll had never canned anything in her lifetime, and brought her daughter along to learn with her.

“I needed another set of eyes and ears,” she explained.

Judy and Ray Johnson came to learn how to preserve the blueberries and highbush cranberries they’ve picked so far this season.

Dinstel was always in the thick of things, answering questions, offering suggestions, explaining the whys and wherefores of certain procedures, demonstrating the spoon and saucer methods of testing for jellying points and sharing tips.

“Y’all have a learning curve,” she said in a comforting tone to some beginners. “Sometimes it’s pretty vertical.”

Among Dinstel’s recommendations:

• A good piece of practical advice is to cook frozen berries longer before packing them in jars and processing because during the freezing process the juice comes out of the berries and it takes a little bit longer to gel.

• “(Jar) lids should be comfortably tight,” Dinstel advised. “When they start to resist you, stop.”

• Jellies, Dinstel said, can be made from extracted berries, fruits and commercial juices. “It’s just so simple,” she added.

• A Dinstel shortcut for fruit butters is to use a Crock-Pot with the lid off to cook it down, stirring occasionally throughout the day.

• “Butters have a high level of sugar and tend to burn,” Dinstel said, pointing out that a Crock-Pot only costs 2.5 cents per hour of electrical use.

• To sterilize or not to sterilize jars: “If a recipe calls for jars to be processed less than 10 minutes, you must sterlize the jars,” Dinstel said, “or increase the processing time to 10 minutes.”

By the class’s end, everyone pitched in, washing pots and clearing the counter, leaving only their still-warm jam and jelly-filled jars to set overnight under Dinstel’s watchful eyes, to be picked up the next day at her office in the old University Park School building on University Avenue.

Final products included spiced blueberry jam, cranberry jelly, spiced mixed berry jam, high bush cranberry apple butter, strawberry jam, strawberry banana jam and apple mint jelly.

Clutching handouts, smiling students cheerily departed to practice their newfound skills.

“I’m gonna go home and do this and just strut like a chicken in a coop,” Georgette Okray said.