I’ve made a lot of jam in my canning career. Between the years I logged as a kid helping my mom and all the many batches I’ve made as an adult, I’ve stirred and canned enough sweet preserves to fill a generously sized kiddie pool.
One thing I’ve learned in those hours over a canning kettle is that jam making is a lot like life. It’s not always going to be perfect, but you can almost always turn it into something useful and good.
When I teach jam making classes, one point I always emphasize is that you have two choices when you make a sweet preserve and it doesn’t turn out as you intended. You can either stress about it and try to redo it (and even then, you still might not be able to exactly hit your texture target), or you can change your expectations and move on.
I belong firmly to the school of changed expectations. Some days, I have a hell of a time getting my jam to set. As someone who prefers a softer set to start out with, this means that those underset jars are essentially sauce or syrup. So I call them just that. Instead of apologizing for my underset jam, I call these products sauce, or syrup or yogurt topping. I use them to glaze meat and tofu and I whisk them into vinaigrettes.
I’ve also made jams in the past that, once cool, set up into unforgiving blocks of rubbery fruit. They are so firm that they can be convinced to slide out of the jar in a single cylinder. Even in that case, it is still salvageable. You can serve little slices of that overset jam with a plate of cheese and charcuterie and call it a fruit paste (like membrillo). Or, you can cut it into cubes, roll it in granulated sugar and call it pâte de fruit.
These variations in set happen to the best of us and they can happen even with the most reliable recipes. I find that while past experience does inform every jam making session, you have to approach each batch individually.
Some years, fruit contains more water and less sugar. Other years, the opposite is true. On humid days, when a thunder storm is rolling in, the amount of moisture in the air can make it impossible to cook enough water out of the fruit to achieve a good set. The width of your pot can also impact your finished product, as can the power of your stove.
Depending on how the batch you’re making at the moment is behaving, you can adjust heat, cooking time and the quantity of additional pectin in an attempt to compensate. But from year to year, there will always be a natural variation in set, length of cooking and even yield.
My very best advice is to try to learn to adapt, be flexible and exhibit some kindness to yourself, your preserves and the recipe writers who live in the same changeable world that you do.
I am having trouble finding frozen white juice concentrate at any of my local grocery stores. Could frozen apple juice concentrate be used instead? Any adjustments for it? Thanks.
Yes, you can also use frozen apple juice concentrate! I’m sorry you’re struggling to find white grape.
Thank you for the insight. I have made jam before, but first batch of plum jam ever today. One jar in particular does not seem set, others seem a little thin. Was not looking forward to basically remaking the whole batch. So, do I understand, even if not set, it is safe to eat? I used liquid Certo and followed package instructions, but they don’t say how long to wait before checking the set. They also don’t say whether it will spoil if not set. I processed it in a boiling water bath 10 minutes in 1-cup jars. (in Florida, sea level and humid). They started actually sealing before I got them in the canning bath because it took awhile to fill the jars. After the canning jars I heard them sealing pretty much right away. P.S. – please don’t publish my email or full name.
The set of the jam plays no role in the safety of the finished product. Runny jam is just as safe as firmly set jam.
This is so helpful and lovely! I made your delicious strawberry jam for the first time last summer (my first time ever canning anything), and it turned out perfectly. So I was very smug. Haha! This week I made the same jam, and it didn’t set right. So not smug anymore. 😀 I used organic sugar and I put the pectin in before the fruit was at a full boil again, so I thought maybe those things could have affected the set. Your post here suggests other possibilities. In any case, it’s still damn tasty and will be used in all the ways you outline here. Thank you!
I would love to embrace the philosophy of altered expectations, but I’ve just used all my tart cherries to make cherry rubber and it’s killing me! In the UK I often heard that you can loosen overset jams by reheating them and gradually beating in hot water, after which they can be re-canned as usual, but everyone I’ve mentioned that to here recoils in horror. Is it really not possible? If so, I guess you also couldn’t whisk some in with stock to make a glaze for meats? I used powered pectin, if it matters. Thanks, Marisa!
You can certainly heat it up with a little water to loosen it and then recan it. I wouldn’t do the stock thing though, because it would be low in acid and could potentially make the preserve unsafe for canning.
Bless you for this great article! I was just stressing over a strawberry jam that I made today. It rained ALL day long and I think that had something to do with my Jam just being a nice Strawberry Syrup. Love your idea about changing expectations. I have done that and am feeling much better now.
Thanks a million!
Thank goodness for this article – it’s just what I needed! I’m new to canning and i got your book recently, which has turned into my Canning Bible. Seriously. This weekend I made your Cantaloupe Vanilla Jam which may just have to be an ice cream or yogurt topping instead of a jam, and then, in a total 180, I made your Pear Ginger Conserve yesterday which I continued to cook past the time you had suggested because those dang pears just wouldnt squish on the back of the spoon. Finally when the time came to put them into the jars, that darn stuff was so sticky EVERYTHING it touched was permanently glued together! So who knows what that’ll turn out like. Maybe I’ll give it to those sweet neighbors who deliver fruit cakes to my door step 😉
Anyway…THANKS for this post! It eased my mind completely. I’ve found a new obsession and I’m now totally fine with trial and error along the way!