Here’s Why You Should Make Jam, Like, Right Now (2024)

FAQs

Here’s Why You Should Make Jam, Like, Right Now? ›

It's easier than you think

Home made jam is not made in huge batches, does not have additional preservatives, or colour enhancers, and doesn't use corn syrup. The fruit is most often hand-cut. No adjustments are made to the taste or texture to ensure it is uniform from jar to jar, year to year.

The Magic of Macerating

One of my favorite tricks for jam-making is macerating the fruit first. Macerating is the process of coating the fruit in sugar and letting it rest for a few hours or overnight, which pulls some of the juice out of the fruit and creates a syrup with the sugar.

The only downside with less refined sugar is that it is necessary to skim the jam during boiling a lot more carefully. This makes sense, because the foam that comes to the top of boiling jam is in fact the impurities from the sugar. Skimming these impurities out gives a sparkling clear finished jam.

Jam and jelly have virtually the same nutritional value, fruity taste, and spreadable texture. Thus, you can use them interchangeably. That said, some studies have analyzed the nutritional profile of jams after 9 months in storage and observed no significant losses in their antioxidant content.

Most homemade jams and jellies that use a tested recipe, and have been processed in a canner for the recommended time, should retain best quality and flavor for up to that one year recommended time. All home-canned foods should be stored in a cool, dark, dry place, between 50-70°F.

Add pectin.

Whisk a tablespoon of powdered pectin (preferably the no-sugar-needed variety) into the pot of cooking jam.

The butter prevents the jam from foaming while you're cooking it - the foam is unattractive and spoils the appearance of the jam. Adding a little butter eliminates this problem."

Do Not Stir Once Mixture Is Boiling. Once your jam/marmalade it has reached a rapid rolling boil do not stir it. Stirring it will alter the temperature of the jam/marmalade meaning it will take longer to reach the setting point.

Boil the jam, don't just slowly simmer—but be careful not to overboil (track your temps!). Going beyond the recipe's target temperature reduces the pectin's gelling strength. Spot-check the jam's temperature correctly.

Is jam is a junk food? ›

Junk food is unhealthy food that includes sweet drinks, lollies, chocolates, sweet snacks, chips and crisps, crunchy snack foods, biscuits, cakes, most fast foods, pies, sausage rolls, jam and honey.

In truth, both are full of the building blocks of sugar – fructose and glucose – and nutritionists say there is really no health difference between tablespoons of honey versus one of jam. If anything, honey contains slightly more calories at 64 per tablespoon, compared to 56 for a shop bought jam.

In addition to sweetening and helping with gel formation in regular jams, jellies and preserves, sugar plays a very important role in preventing spoilage. The large amount of sugar present reduc- es the “available” moisture for microbial growth.

Since pectin is activated by sugar, it requires using a considerable amount of sugar to activate the pectin and set (i.e. thicken) your jam. If you try to cut back on the sugar, it won't set properly.

If, on the other hand, the jam is rock solid, that means you've gone too far and cooked it too long. You can try adding a little water to thin it out, but bear in mind that after overcooking a jam, you can't really get those fresh fruit flavors back.

Less sugar may allow for greater bacterial growth. As a result, process times may be longer for these low-sugar or no-sugar jams and jellies. Some pectin products include preservatives to reduce bacterial growth, as well as to preserve color.