Italian Prune Plums - an Overview, to be followed by recipes

Italian Prune Plums, despite their name, are commonly found in northern and central European and West Coast American cooking.  They are called prune plums because they are meaty and have a low water content, so they dry easily.  They are also excellent for making jams and for baking.   In German and Slovak cooking, they are often used in tarts and pastries.  In French cooking, often as sauces for meats.  (This is not to say you won't find them used either way in either region; just that these are the most famous uses to my knowledge.)  California has made a big business of drying plums similar to these and shipping them all over the U.S. as prunes.

I think the variety that one finds growing all over Oregon and Washington state, the Fellenberg, which is smaller and therefore not grown commercially in California, is the tastiest of all the prune plums.

Below is a photo of the plums in various ripenesses, picked at the same time.  The plums that are closest to the outer edge of the tree will be more ripe because they receive more sunlight. 


They have a bluer color and a whitish bloom on
outside.  The ripest plums will have an almost gritty feeling to the bloom - this is wild yeast that is attracted to the sugars in the fruit.  You don't often see this on other plums; Italian prune plums are exceptionally sweet.  Don't worry about this yeast.  It won't hurt you at all.   When you cut them open, the meat will have a nice amber color and will separate easily from the pit.  (The Brooks prune plum is more yellow inside.)

The shinier, more red fruits are unripe, have a slightly greenish yellow interior and are sour.  However, if you want to ripen them fully, you can place them in a paper bag on your counter and they will finish ripening in two or three days.

I actually like to pick plums in assorted stages of ripeness so they are more useful for recipes.  The unripes make excellent chutneys and pickles and have a much lower acidity (about 4.6) so they are useful in their own way.  Within the next day or so I will provide recipes for marmalade, chutney and jam, all using multiple ripenesses of Italian prune plums.

I pick the plums one tree at a time and halve and pit them, labeling them according to their ripeness and place them in freezer bags.  (I reuse these bags later for apples and pears).  Then I can just thaw the bags when I am ready to can.   All my plums are ripe now, but I am taking my time; I've made maybe four or five cases of jam and chutney so far - about a third of what I will make, because frozen fruit can wait.  Frozen plums also keep nicely and can be used for pastries and pies a month or two down the road.  I brought a bag to a lady I cook for every Saturday and she was delighted.  She said she froze them and took them out to eat like popsicles!  I never thought of that!   

If you like, you can remove the skins of plums by boiling them for about 2 minutes after picking them, then soaking them in ice water about 2 minutes, then rubbing their skins off one at a time.  However, I find this totally unnecessary.  I just blend all the plums before or during the cooking process.  The skin gives the jam a beautiful color and contributes fiber and a few nutrients.  (Most nutrients are lost during the long cooking process anyway, so keeping the skin helps.)