Christmas Jam Recipe - Food.com (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to making jam? ›

Use fresh, dry, slightly under-ripe fruit. Strawberries and raspberries are best layered with the sugar and left for a couple of hours before cooking. Plums, currants, gooseberries, cherries etc need to be lightly poached before sugar is added. Pectin, naturally found in fruit is vital to make your jam set.

Cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and cloves come together to create a warm and cozy holiday flavour in this Spiced Christmas Jam recipe. Made with strawberries and cranberries, this jam is both sweet and tart with a warming and comforting hint of seasonal spice.

Coarse-grain white granulated sugar is best for jam-making as it ensures a good clear jam, but fine caster sugar can also be used. The coarse grains dissolve more slowly and evenly, giving a better result. Granulated sugar with added pectin is also available, but it shouldn't be necessary to use this.

Adding acid in the form of fresh lemon or lime juice is important for two reasons: First, it makes for a more well-balanced jam, returning some of the acidity lost with the addition of sugar. Second, pectin needs acid to properly activate, or firm up.

Usually that thin, white film is jelled foam. If your fruit was foamy in the sauce pan and you didn't skim the foam off, or if your mixture had a lot of air in it and you didn't do air releasing before putting the jam in the jars, the foam or tiny air bubbles rise to the top of the jar and form that white film.

Add dried spice to your jam when you're adding the sugar, which will infuse the flavor into the jam. Wait to add anything from the wet spices category until you've removed the jam from the heat; that way it doesn't boil off.

Whole spices such as cardamom pods, allspice berries, black peppercorns, whole cloves, or cinnamon sticks can be infused in a sachet while the jam cooks, or small amounts of ground spices can be added directly in. Warm spices pair especially well with fruit, and a little goes a long way, so taste as you go!

The sugar is the preservative. If you make diabetic jam with artificial sweeteners the jam will go moldy unless stored in the freezer. Salt is not a preservative with jam, and the final product does not have enough acidity to preserve anything. Just sugar.

If you simply take fruit and cook it with some sugar to sweeten it a little, it will get thick enough to turn into jam by the naturally occurring pectin in the fruit and the process of reduction. Reduction occurs when we simmer the fruit, and the liquid turns to steam and evaporates, which thickens the jam.

Does homemade jam need pectin? ›

You don't have to, but proceed carefully. "If you are really anti-pectin, you can omit it, but you'll need to cook the jam longer. Doing so will remove most of the water content in order to get it to set up properly and in turn, will result in a smaller yield," adds Wynne.

No extra pectin– You may wonder if strawberry jam is better with or without pectin. Strawberries are naturally low in pectin, so some people prefer to add additional pectin to jams and jellies. However, I actually prefer homemade jam without extra pectin. They are a bit softer in texture, making it more versatile.

The best jam is always from fresh fruit that is almost, but not quite ripe. The jam I make from frozen fruit is almost as good as from fresh, and certainly tastes better than jam left around for a year.

Place the frozen berries in a jam pan or other flaring, heavy-bottomed pot and set it over low heat. As the berries defrost, they will begin to weep, creating liquid in the bottom of the pan. Stir continuously until the juices are released from the berries. The heat can be increased as the juices pool in the pan.

5. 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.

While you can simply reduce the jam to your liking, you can also add commercial pectin or chia seeds to the reducing jam to guarantee thickening.

Here's why: Jams and jellies have high sugar and acid levels, which protect against spoilage.