For a canning champion, this Utah State Fair might be her last

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Pam Carson, a retired Salt Lake City teacher, has been canning jams, fruits and vegetables and entering them in the Utah State Fair for nearly half a century.

Pam Cannon learned to make jam from her grandmother, and at 77 is passing her canning talent to her granddaughters.

“They really liked the jam,” Carson said. “They knew I was doing it, and they watched me do it. And so when they started getting old enough to help, they would do their own.” Jonalee Kump and Heather Bailey assist Pam Carson, 77, as she enters her jams, fruits and pickles for the State Fair, in the Zion Building at the Utah State Fair Park, on Friday, Sept. 1, 2023.

It takes between three and five hours of boiling to turn fruit into jam, Carson said — to bring out the fruit’s natural pectin, the soluble fiber that thickens jams and jellies. Many cooks add a packet of prepared pectin, which cuts the process down to about two hours, she said. Then the jam is ladled into jars, which are sealed and then boiled.

To make canned jams for competition, details are important, Carson said. “It has to have a clear color,” she said. “There’s no bubbles in it, there’s no sediment in it. If you’re using pectin, you have to get the extra pectin off right after you get through boiling.”“There were these two women who made a raspberry farm in Lehi, and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to support women,’” Carson said. “So I went and bought theirs, and I made jam and I didn’t like it. The flavor wasn’t what I wanted.

After graduating from BYU and marrying her husband, Lynn, in 1968, Carson started canning at home. She started getting competitive, she said, when she entered her jams at the Utah State Fair in 1974 and her raspberry jam won first place. She kept canning jams, fruits and vegetables.

 

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