Fig Preserves 

Fig preserves make me feel fancy. What? They don’t do that for you?

I love figs, and I love fig preserves, especially on a cracker with some goat cheese (try it, you won’t regret it). You know what I don’t love? The price of fig preserves. I never buy it because I could never internally justify spending that much money on a small jar that I know I’ll be able to finish in a single serving.

Thus my hunt for a solid fig preserve recipe began…and then quickly ended because there were SO many recipes, and I was quite frankly getting frustrated at ALL of the differing opinions and the amount of work involved with making said delicious preserves. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about meal prep, especially with my snacks. I know, for me at least, if I don’t have healthy snacks available, I’ll grab the first available thing which is usually one of my daughter’s little kid snacks. Not that there’s anything wrong with CheezIts, or even pairing CheezIts with a nice red wine, I just know that I can prep a bigger variety of snacks for myself.

But in that sentiment, I also want my snack prep to be easy and relatively quick. I don’t have time to waste, so if I’m going to prep all this food and all these snacks, I need to make sure I’m being efficient af. Which basically is how I came up with this recipe. The prep definitely does take a hot second, just for washing and slicing up the figs, and fair warning, it does take awhile to cook in the slow cooker so make sure you give yourself enough time, but the pay off is completely worth it.

The added bonus is that this recipe yields a TON and it freezes really well. When it’s all done cooking, my pro tip is to divide it into smaller portions and freeze what you’re not going to use (it’ll hold in your freezer for 3 months), defrosting what you want as you go!

fig preserves

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 10 hours

12 cups of figs, diced

1 lemon, sliced

2 cups of brown sugar

2 cups of white sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 to 1 cup of water

Spray your slow cooker with non-stick spray. Put in all of the ingredients, starting with 1/2 cup of water and adding more as the water gets absorbed. Cook on high for 4 hours. Add more water if needed. Crack the lid open on your slow cooker and cook on low for 5 more hours. Uncover completely, turn off your slow cooker and allow it to sit for 1 hour. Remove the lemon slices and use your immersion blender (or spoon into your regular blender) to blend until smooth. Divide into containers and enjoy!