9 Tips for Homemade Fruit Jam Sucess

Fruit trees give their harvests all at once, and it’s usually more than you can eat and share. Ripe peaches and plums only last 3 to 5 days after picking, before they start to go bad. Knowing how to make jam helps you enjoy the fruits of your labor year round and sweetens the cold winter months. 

It helps to know a few things when it comes to making jams and preserves. My favorite free resource is the National Center for Home Food Preservation website. 

Homemade Jam Tips for Beginners

1. Set 3 hours aside. You won’t have 3 hours of busy time but boiling water, chopping, poring and wiping add up. 3 hours. It is ideal to not be rushed while making jam, which can lead to silly mistakes. 

2. Don’t double the recipe your first time. It can get overwhelming to deal with 14 cups of sugar in one pot all at once and will double your process time. I made this rookie mistake my first time.

3. Choose an easy fruit for your first try. Strawberries are practically fool-proof. Apricots burn easily and peaches need to be blanched and peeled to maintain their beautiful color and keep from browning. 

4. It’s better to use too much Pectin than too little. If you don’t have enough pectin you will end up with a syrup instead of a jam. You can forgo pectin if you are using a firm fruit like plums. Just be sure to use 1-part under ripe fruit to 3-parts ripe fruit if you aren’t adding pectin.  Berries need to have pectin added since they are naturally low in pectin. I find powdered pectins are the easiest for me to use but there’s also liquid and gel packed and it’s really up to you which type of pectin your use I don’t recommend not using pectin until you’ve at least tried making a couple jams and are a little bit more advanced it’ll take a lot more time when you don’t use pectin.

5. Use processed white sugar. White sugar works best for jams and preserves. White sugar will also result in a beautiful bright colored jams versus a darker raw sugar. 

6. Use all the sugar a recipe calls for. Sugar is a natural preservative and without the right amount of sugar, you may actually end up with unsafe jams! You can however use sugar substitutes, like Splenda at a 1-1 ratio. There are ways to make jam without processed sugar such as using grape juice concentrates, which is a French style jam. 

7. Measure the sugar recipe calls for out and set aside. Recipes will call for the sugar to be added all at once so be ready! 

8. Pay Attention the the head Space. The wrong headspace can prevent proper processing and make for unsafe  preserving of your jams or preserves. 

9. Get all your tools ready, clean and organized before hand.