This low sugar pear cranberry jam brings together mellow pear with sharp cranberry for a perfectly autumnal preserve. Pair it with cream cheese or chevre as part of a holiday appetizer spread.
Last week, a day or two before I left for Portland, I made three batches of jam in rapid succession. The first was a combination of pears and persimmons. The second was a gingery apple butter. And the last one was a low sugar pear cranberry jam.
I meant to share the apple butter last week, and then got lost in travel and the pleasure of being with my parents and thus getting to be slightly less responsible than normal, so it didn’t happen. Because Thanksgiving is looming and I’ve been procrastinating, I thought I’d get this one up first, so that if it appealed to you, there’d still be time to make it before the holiday.
And while we’re on the subject of Thanksgiving and cranberries, don’t forget that the archives of this site are bursting with seasonally appropriate recipes. Here are some of my favorites.
- Apple Cranberry Compote (lower in sugar, could be made with honey or maple)
- Spiced Cranberry Jam (makes a ton, great if you want to send guests home with a little something special)
- Pear and Cranberry Jam (equal parts berries and pears, this one is good if you want more pucker)
- Apple Cranberry Jam (also makes a lot, I often tuck this one into gift bags around Christmas/Hanukkah)
- Cranberry Quince Sauce (great, if you can get your hands on some quince)
- Cranberry Shrub (cocktail makers, keep this one in mind)
- Pickled Cranberries (weird but wonderful)
- And finally, my homemade cranberry sauce, molded in a can so that it looks like store bought.
Low Sugar Pear Cranberry Jam
Ingredients
- 3 pounds pears, cored and chopped
- 1 pound cranberries, rinsed well
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 lemon, zested and juiced
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
Instructions
- Prepare a boiling water bath canner and enough jars to hold three pints.
- In a large pot, combine the pears, cranberries, sugar, lemon zest and juice, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Stir well, until the sugar has started to dissolve.
- Set the pot on the stove over high heat and bring to a boil.
- Once the mixture has started bubble vigorously, reduce the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring regularly, until the pears soften and the cranberries have all popped. If the jam seems a little too tight and the cranberries haven’t all popped, add a splash of water to loosen it up.
- When the pears are tender, the cranberries have popped, and the jam seems nicely thick, it is done (budget 20-25 minutes of active cooking time).
- Remove the pot from the heat and funnel the finished jam into the prepared jars. Wipe the rims, apply the lids and rings, and process in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes.
- When the time is up, remove the jars from the canner and set them on a folded kitchen towel to cool.
- Sealed jars can be stored in the pantry. Any unsealed jars should be refrigerated and used promptly.
Low sugar jams always appeal to me! Is it a simple matter to adapt a recipe like this to freezer jam instead?
It sure is. Instead of canning it, you’d scoop it into freezer containers and pop it in the freezer once cool.
Thank you! Probably an obvious question, but I’m new to this. 🙂
I’m making your persimmon chutney this weekend, thanks to a neighbor’s tree. It’s a hit with my family every year, as are the pickled cranberries.
California’s quince crop didn’t do well this year thanks to the drought, so I haven’t been able to get my hot little hands on any this this season.
Any recipes involving pomegranates? Another neighbor has a pomegranate stand each fall, selling organic fruit from her trees for 50 cents to $1 on the honor system. Mostly I just eat the arils as they are, or toss them on salads, but I keep wondering if there is some way to involve them in canning.
So persimmons CAN be canned? I couldnt find any legit-looking recipes, and they look to be less acidic than the usual suspects … please point me to some trusted recipes!! I had a lead on a loaded Fuyu-variety tree, but only grabbed what I could eat out of hand 🙁
They only work in combination with higher acid fruits. I typically do them with apples or pears, and a heck of a lot of lemon juice.
I’ve noticed some incarnations of your persimmon chutney don’t include the pear, including this one: http://www.mrswages.com/page/Food_in_Jars__Persimmon_Chutney.aspx?nt=619.
I believe the version in your latest book omitted the pear too.
I prefer the pairing (Ha!) but my presumption was that the apple cider vinegar would provide the needed acidity.
When you use persimmon in chutney, it’s the vinegar that makes it safe!
This was awesome. Cranberry jams are the best and easiest because they always set up so well!
I just discovered this morning that I am down to my last jar of homemade jam, and since strawberries aren’t in season for me to make my go-to standby, I might have to give this a try instead. Love the color! It looks delicious.
Love it such a great idea and perfect for holiday season!!¨xoxo Katie http://www.whatskatieupto.com
Can you half this recipe? If so, can you half all of your jam recipes?
You can always cut a recipe in half. The time it’s an issue is when the recipe calls for liquid pectin, because it can be sort of challenging to divide a packet of liquid pectin in half.
Could I make this in larger batches? Say triple or quadruple?
Hi! I love pears and cranberries together. I am going to give this recipe a go, but wondered if the pears should be peeled or not? It says cored and chopped in the recipe. So, unpeeled is fine?
As long as you’re using pears that have a relatively thin skin (like Bartlett or Bosc), you do not need to peel. I only ever peel pears if they have really pebbly or tough skin.
I don’t particularly care for cranberries, but love pear jam. This may be a dumb question, can I take out the pound of cranberries and sub a pound of pears for a total of 4 lbs? Can I keep the amount of sugar the same so that it stays low sugar? Thanks, Terri.
Without the cranberries, this jam will not form a gel. I have other pear jam recipes you should try if you want to make something exclusively with pears. This is a good, basic one. https://foodinjars.com/2017/12/spiced-pear-jam/
New to this. Can I use a sugar substitute or sugar free pectin instead of sugar? I realize as preserves go, this is LOW sugar. I need NO sugar though. Would it work if I just add a sugar substitute that withstands heat and taste to see when I have it right?
If you need a sugar-free recipe, I suggest one that’s designed for it rather than trying to adapt a sugared recipe. Check out Pomona’s Pectin. There’s also some information here: https://foodinjars.com/blog/canning-101-can-you-preserve-with-artificial-sweeteners/
Made this today and it is wonderful jam!! I’m thinking it would be good to serve with turkey or pork, too.
First cool rainy day we’ve had in SC and I am using up the last of a friend’s pears with this recipe. My house smells AMAZING and this jam is addictive! I tried a little while I was cooking it in case it needed tweaking. It doesn’t! My question is can I use dried cranberries in this? Fresh cranberries are not in the stores yet and I had to pay a fortune to get one pound of frozen cranberries. I want to go buy pears and make a ton for Christmas gifts!
Unfortunately, dried cranberries perform very differently and so cannot be swapped in for fresh.
Is that 3 lbs of pears ***after*** they are cored and chopped? If ***before***, about how many cups of chopped should I have? Thank you.
If a recipe says, “3 pounds pears, cored and chopped” that means that you weight the pears and then core and chop them. If I wanted you to core and chop them before weighing, I would have written, “3 pounds cored and chopped pears.” I don’t know how many cups of pears it is after chopping, as I didn’t measure them that way. However, in my experience, a pound of chopped fruit yields a little over two cups. So you should have something like 6-7 cups of chopped fruit.
This looks wonderful! Can I use coconut palm sugar instead of white sugar? Or maybe maple sugar or maple syrup? Thanks!
Coconut sugar would be good here. Just know that the finished jam will have a darker finished color because of coconut sugar’s natural hue.
Did I miss something or do you say how many pints this recipe makes?
Sorry about that. I ported my recipes to a different app a few years ago and not all the yield information was carried over. I thought I’d fixed the problem on most recipes, but this one slipped through. It makes three pints.
This recipe looks fantastic, and I would really like to try. I was given 20 pounds of Asian pears and was going to make a jam with them until I saw they are not safe for canning due to low acid unless you add bottled lemon juice. Will the asian pears work in this recipe since your recipe has lemon in it and cranberries are high acid. Thank you for your help
Asian pears should be fine in this recipe.
Can I use frozen pears?
Yes.
Can I use limes instead of lemon? Everything I chopped and now I’m not sure if I need to go to the store
Yes.