Fresh Red Plum Compote Jam

Fresh Red Plum Compote is a beautifully colored, delicious jam that is simple to make. It is tartly sweet and tastes amazing on rustic whole-grain toast. It is equally tasty mixed into yogurt or served with crackers and cheese.  The ingredients list is short – ripe red plums, honey, fresh lemon, vanilla, and a dash of salt.  Optionally cracked, green cardamom pods adds a unique Persian jam touch.

Plums are nutritious, hence a homemade jam made with a tall brown bag of fresh plums also has health benefits…especially using our recipe.  We keep the skins of the plums intact and simply chop them and remove the pits.  

Health benefits:

• No added sugar!  This recipe is made without any added white or refined sugar.  It tastes delightful made with just 3 spoons of honey.
• Fruit fiber/ helps with digestion.  If your system needs a nudge, eat a few plums – think prunes.  Plums are simply fresh prunes!
• Plums contain relatively low calories for a fruit.  A fresh plum has only about 30 calories while a small apple has 70 calories or so.  

Living in California we are blessed by good produce year-round.  Even here, fruits are extra sweet in the summertime.  By June red plums are juicy and super sweet.  For this recipe, we use extra ripe, red plums.  Steer away from those hard, sour plums to make this compote.  To help speed up the ripening process, leave prunes on the counter or in the sunshine.  An even faster method is to place them in a paper bag and fold the top of the bag over.  Just don’t forget about them… they ripen quickly in a bag.

Today’s recipe uses 8 to 10 fresh plums – the deeper the shade of the plum flesh, the darker purple the jam will be.  Truth be told, all varieties of plums taste fabulous in this jam.  Our recipe makes a little more than 2 cups of luscious fruit compote:

My husband Bob is a fan of snacking on sour green under-ripe plums.  He knows exactly where the plum trees are in our neighborhood and sneaks a couple to munch on passing by on our dog walks.  Although we stick to sweet, ripe red plums for this recipe, a far cry from the mouth-puckering raw, sour plums Bob loves to snack on, this jam is sweet and tart in the end result.

Plum Factoid:  Did you know that plums fall in the stone fruit category?  We had not heard that word until we got to know a family at our local farmer’s market that grows many delicious varieties of stone fruit.  You guessed it – a fruit falls in the stone fruit category if it has a big stone in the center.  The seed is inside the stone.  Examples are plums of course, nectarines, peaches, apricots, and cherries just to name a few.  Yum, I love them all.

How to incorporate plum compote into meals and snack:

• as an accouterment to a beautiful Mediterranean mezze platter
• on a hearty whole-grain toast with olive oil or butter.  It tastes like a healthy indulgence.
• stirred into Greek yogurt for a punch of flavor
• dolloped over vanilla bean ice cream, yum!

This is such a delicious jam. 

Recipe tip:  For interesting Persian flavor and flair, try cooking it down with a tablespoon of whole cardamom pods.  To release the cardamom flavor, crack them gently with the back of a big spoon like a metal tablespoon.  The result is exotic and unique!

One of orr favorite ways to enjoy this jam at home is as a part of a fancy cheese board like our Mediterranean Mezze Platter.

Delight a neighbor or a friend with a jar of this amazing, vibrant jam.  

My absolute favorite way to enjoy butter and fresh jam is tucked inside a warm slice of Persian Barbari bread!

If you like this healthy jam recipe check out another unique fruit combination, Low-Sugar Honey Dew Melon Jam HERE.