Lunshan Earth Pineapple Jam, a sweet-and-sour taste of the old days

The commitment to growing native pineapple, and finding the original taste of the fruit

In fact, in recent years many people on the market have been growing different varieties of pineapple, and as consumer preferences change, pineapple varieties have changed along with them, becoming sweeter and sweeter, such as the well-known "Honey Sweet," "Golden Diamond Pineapple," and "Milk Pineapple," among others. These pineapple varieties taste low in acidity and have large fruit, but their pineapple aroma is a little weaker.

The red soil of Lunshan in Hualien is suitable for growing pineapple. Because we missed the sweet-and-sour taste of pineapple in our memories, we chose to grow native pineapple, which has somewhat smaller fruit but a rich aroma, and we adopted natural methods, applying no chemical fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides, choosing to go with nature and tending these native pineapples grown from the soil of our hometown by hand weeding.

Hualien native pineapple jam, recovering the taste from childhood memories

There is not a lot of native pineapple, and the collaborator we had in mind was a small handmade jam workshop, one with experience making jam and that identified with the concept of organic fruit from Taiwan, and ideally one that could fully preserve the original flavor of Lunshan native pineapple without letting other things overpower its flavor. After searching online and through introductions from friends, we found Laura's Handmade Jam.

Laura is a young woman running her small life business in Miaoli. All the fruit she uses comes from personally visiting the places where it is grown, understanding the growers' philosophy, and then turning it into jar after jar of small-batch jam. The jam she makes is less sweet and not overcooked, with an original fruit flavor, like eating fruit puree.

After many trial batches, we confirmed the acidity and sweetness of the native pineapple and confirmed that Lunshan native pineapple does not need lemon added to increase acidity; the native pineapple itself alone can have a very good flavor. (But why is lemon still listed among the ingredients on the label? It is because we only confirmed this flavor at the very end, and the label had already been made, so let us just call it a mark of our trial process!)

This is how these native pineapple jams were made. We used a lot of fruit and produced only about 120 jars, but the rich flavor when opening a jar made even us feel it was so worth it, and we also really wanted to leave these native pineapple jams for everyone who, like us, works hard for the produce of this place, Taiwan. We welcome your orders!

Order link: http://taiwanway1.blogspot.tw/2012/11/2.html

Order process instructions: http://taiwanway1.blogspot.tw/2012/11/4.html