Make Your Own Jam

All my life, we have made our own jam. We rarely make jelly, since it wastes good fruit, but utilizes overripe and bruised fruit. I truly can't remember a time in my life that we bought jam or jelly, unless for a very specific flavor that we didn't usually make. And in our house, if it isn't easy, it doesn't get done. So you know it must be relatively easy to make!

Because I've had home made jam all my life, I've begun making it to sell at a local farmer's market. Doing this made me do some research and reading of my cookbooks to make sure I have a consistent gel, but otherwise, it's business as usual. Everyone who has bought, just raves that it tastes so much better than store bought. Of course it does! It has fruit in it!

This post is going to discuss why you should make your own more than how to make your own. To do that, just pick up a box of pectin at the store and read the directions. Read the jam and jelly making process in any one of your dozen or so cookbooks lining a shelf in your house. Between the two, you will learn all you need to make your own.

Taste

This is probably the best reason for making your own jam. Store-bought jam/s and jellies are mostly water, corn syrup or apple juice, or a combination of all 3 with some fruit thrown in for color and a hint of flavor. Using the standard pectin recipes, your jam will have the same amount of sugar as store bought, but will have twice the fruit! Hence, the better flavor.

Nutrition

Most fruits are high in fiber and manganese, with vitamin K tagging along because it can. They're also high in other vitamins, but these tend to be damaged or destroyed during the heating process. And once you get good at making jam, you can reduce the sugar further, making it less stressful on your insulin levels, plus be more flavorful in the process.

Cost

Believe it or not, you save money making your own. A quart of chopped fruit, 4-5 cups of sugar and a pack of pectin should make 6-7 cups of jam. Your sugar will cost 80 cents, your fruit will be around $5 and the pectin will be just over $2. If you reuse jars from other foods - like store bought jam - you have no cost. Otherwise, you'll spend about $8 for a dozen 1-cup jars, lids and rings. This comes out to about $13 for 6-7 jars of jam. Not bad! Again, if you don't have to buy jars, that price drops to about $8 for the batch.

Sustainability

The food industry would like you to believe you do nothing good for the environment by preserving your own foods. They're lying. They expend at least 5 times the energy in the transport of the ingredients, production of the final product, and transport and storage of the final product until it hits your hot little hands than what you would expend in making your own

You can either grow your own fruits, or buy locally grown fruit. Transport is significantly reduced or negated completely.

Most local growers use few, if any, chemicals on their produce since it costs more to use them than to manually take care of the fruit plants. Since most chemicals are used as a preventative measure (in industrial farming), rather than as a true cure for a specific issue, you are eliminating this portion of the environmental cost completely.

The energy required to make their specific jar shapes and sizes costs them significant energy in production and transportation. If you reuse your jars, you completely negate this energy expenditure.

Summary
There are a few tricks to making jams and jellies, but a little reading in one of your cookbooks, along with the directions that are included in the pectin - or on one of their websites - will provide you with all the information you need to make incredible jam! People may think you're a magician, but it's all a matter of being able to read and follow directions! Seriously!

Give the jam as gifts, keep and savor for yourself, or do both. Just do it! Save yourself some money, make your tastebuds happy and help the earth out. How is this a bad thing?

If you'd like to read about the ones I make and enjoy eating, please click here.