No Sugar Jam Making

You can see by the posts I've published that I've been making jam.  The amount of refined sugar in each batch makes me wince.  I want fresh fruit spread.  I want berries and only berries in my jam.  So I set out on a quest to find different recipes.  I kept wondering what did jam-makers do before refined sugar, packaged pectin, and freezers.  I wanted to can jam that was healthy and tasty!  I kept toying with one recipe after another.  I then saw an episode of The Barefoot Contessa where Ina Garten explained that Granny Smith apples were high in pectin and could be used to make jam.  Now that's a piece of information I could use!

I searched all over the internet looking for no-sugar recipes only to find sugar substitutes.  I didn't want that either.

Last week I was laying in bed thinking about jam making and just knowing there was a way to make what I wanted.  *SNAP* Hey, I have several very old cookbooks.  I knew I had books from the 30s and 40s.  Surely they would have a recipe.  And they did.  More importantly these cookbooks explained how to make jam.  Three keys to making sugarless jam are:
1.  cook the berries until they thicken, today we call that reducing the mixture
2.  add one peeled, cored, shredded green apple per 3 cups of berries; and
3.  boil in a water bath for 60 minutes.

This differs from today's canning recipe in that
1.  we add liquid or powder pectin instead of granny smith apples;
2.  we boil the berries with 7 to 8 cups of refined sugar for about 10 minutes...the sugar reacting with the liquid pectin results in thickened jam; and
3.  we can the jam in a water bath for about 10 minutes.

You can see the old fashioned way takes a lot more time.  That's all...just time.

So here's my Raspberry Jam recipe (I double the batch):

In a large pot combine:
8 cups fresh, clean raspberries
1 large or 2 small granny smith apples--peeled, cored finely shredded)
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 cups organic honey or agave syrup
1 T. butter

Bring all ingredients to a rolling boil for at least 20 minutes.  From this point watch closely and boil until mixture reduces and thickens and coats the back of a spoon.  Should be about 230 degrees on a candy thermometer.

Once you've reached this point you can the berries in sterile jars as you would any other jam except that you boil in a water bath for 60 minutes instead of the 10 minutes most of today's recipes instruct.

Only speculating but I think those ladies from the 30s and 40s preserved the best recipes for jam making.  And I think I'll be sleeping soundly tonight knowing the jam in my pantry has no refined sugar!