Simple Food, Real Ingredients: Blueberry Jam Sweetened with Honey

When learning how to can jam, I looked to the little insert in the pectin packets for a tried-and-true recipe and would follow those recipes to the T. It was the best way I knew how to ensure success with the intimidating process of canning food. Now that I have several years and even a few experiments under my belt, I decided it was time to find a way to cut out all the white sugar from our jam recipes and possibly the reliance on the pectin packets. After all, most fruits have at least some naturally occurring pectin!

I love knowing what is in the food we eat! That is why I put so much effort into my garden, preserving food, cooking with whole foods, raising animals, and my winter greenhouse. And as I’m sure many of you are well aware, white sugar is not the healthiest thing to consume in large amounts in your diet. So, with what I feel is a pretty decent foundation in canning and preserving, combined with a desire to have whole, natural foods in our diet, I decided I would find a way to get as much white sugar out of our diet as possible. With that goal in mind, the kids and I set off to the blueberry field to pick buckets full of blueberries to start experimenting in the kitchen!

With abundant blueberries freshly picked, enter the blueberry jam recipe sweetened with honey! I found this online recipe that looked very promising. Marisa McClellan, the author of the website Food in Jars, wrote the post. McClellan also has a few canning cookbooks that look incredible, specifically Naturally Sweet Food in Jars: 100 Preserves Made with Coconut, Maple, Honey, and More. I highly recommend you check out all of her resources! I will snag up the one I shared here, as this recipe turned out so well.

There are a couple of keys to omitting the white sugar and pectin packets when making jam. The first is to use fruit with naturally occurring pectin. While blueberries wouldn’t be considered “high” in naturally occurring pectin, they seem to have enough to make do without additional pectin, as long as you keep the next part in mind. The following key is to keep the batch size small and use a pan with a lot of surface area. Taking some extra time to allow the moisture from the berries to cook down ensures you will get a jam-like consistency in your final product. I found that 10-12 minutes was needed to get the jam to the correct consistency. You are looking for the cooked jam to be thick enough that when a spoon is run through it, it takes a brief moment to come back together.

To make the jam, I enlisted the help of my youngest in the kitchen, and he started by washing the blueberries. We cleaned the blueberries by adding them to a large bowl, filling the bowl with cool water, and adding approximately one tablespoon of Thieves Fruit & Veggie Soak. We gently stir the berries for a few moments, dump the water and rinse the berries. My little one put the blueberries into a bowl to weigh them out and dumped them into a wide pot. He mashed them with a potato masher, added the honey, added some lemon juice, then gave them a good stir.

Once all the ingredients are in the pot, you can start cooking the jam on medium to high heat. Let it come to a boil, and reduce the temperature slightly, but allow it to continue to boil. Keep stirring it frequently throughout this process.

So, how small is a small batch? This recipe called for 1 1/2 lbs of blueberries, which made approximately 2 1/2 to 3 pint-sized jars of finished jam for me. A small batch is so important with this recipe to ensure the jam thickens up enough. However, I knew I needed more than two jars of jam for my family of five. I placed all my jars in the water canner and pulled out 2-3 as required. I’d leave the finished jam on the counter while doing another batch of this jam, and once I had enough jars to fill the water bath canner, I processed them all together. While this may sound tedious, I promise it goes quicker than you think. While one batch of berries is cooking on the stove, I prepare the next batch in a bowl. As soon as the previous batch has been added to the jars, I place the next batch on the stove and start it immediately. A small price to pay for what I consider a superior product for my family!

Blueberry Jam Sweetened with Honey

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Cooking Time: 10 minutes 10 minutes

Nutrition facts: 200 calories 20 grams fat

Rating: 5.0/5

( 1 voted )

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 pounds fresh blueberries
• 2/3 cup honey (we always use unpasteurized, local honey)
• 1 to 1-1/2 Tbsp lemon juice

Instructions

1. If you plan to make this jam shelf-stable, prepare your water bath canner with the desired number of jars. Bring to a slow boil to sterilize the jars. Prepare a second pot of water for the lids. Bring the water to a low simmer, but do not place the lids in until you are ready to use them.
2. Add the blueberries into a wide pot or pan. Mash them into desired consistency.
3. Add honey and lemon juice and stir thoroughly.
4. Place the pan or pot on the stove and boil over medium to high heat. Once boiling, reduce the heat slightly to keep a consistent boil. Stir regularly.
5. Cook the mixture for 10-12 minutes or until the jam stays briefly separated when a spoon is pulled through it.
6. Once the jam is finished, pull empty jars out of your water bath canner and fill them with jam. Add your lids to the simmering water in the small pot for a minute or two. While your lids are being prepared, take a damp cloth and wipe the rims of your jars.
7. Place lids on top of the jars and add bands.
8. Repeat the recipe above if you want more jam, leaving the finished jam jars on the counter. You can process them all together once the have all been prepared.
9. Once you have filled all your jam jars, place them all in the water bath canner. Cover and bring to a full rolling boil and process for 10 minutes. Remove the canner from the heat and let them sit for 5 minutes.
10. Remove the jars from the canner and place them on a towel on the counter. You will need to leave them for 24 hours, so find a spot where they can rest undisturbed.