Low Sugar Strawberry Jam and Strawberry Banana Jam Sweetened with Honey

The boys and I went berry picking twice in the last two weeks, and I’ve been freezing, drying, and otherwise enjoying the berries, but of course I had to make some strawberry jam.  I’ve been using less sugar lately, so I went hunting on the internet for a low sugar strawberry recipe that was sweetened with honey instead of sugar.  (Note to self, next time just read the very handy directions that come with the Pomona’s Pectin and watch the handy video they have on their site…sigh…I’ll explain in a bit.)

I found a recipe that used 8 cups of berries and one cup of honey, and mixed it up.  It was too tart.  Here’s what I ended up with:


Cooked Low Sugar Strawberry Jam Sweetened with Honey (and some sugar) Recipe

Ingredients

8 cups mashed strawberries (you will need about 16 cups fresh berries)
1 cup honey
1 cup white sugar or evaporated cane juice
4 teaspoons Pomona’s pectin
4 teaspoons calcium water

Yield:  8-9 cups

Directions (mostly from the Pomona’s Pectin recipe insert):

1.  Wash and rinse jars; let stand in hot water.  Bring lids and rings to boil; turn down heat; let stand in hot water.  (I try to time my jam making with running my dish washer, and just work with the jars when they are still hot from the wash, but you can heat them up in your canning water, too.  I never boil my lids, I heat them to hot, but not boiling, then keep them at a simmer.  A jar lid lifter is handy for fishing out lids from the hot water, but kitchen tongs work fine, too.)

2.  Prepare fruit by mashing with a pastry blender or potato masher, or gently chopping in a blender.  Don’t crank the Vitamimix on high, or you’ll have instantly smooth fruit.  Measure fruit into pan with lemon juice, if called for in recipe.  (Okay, this is where I would make a change in what I did.  The recipe I found originally called for 1/4 cup lemon juice, which I used.  Strawberries are acidic enough that this was not needed – which I didn’t find out until later.  Whoops!  I think the flavor would be just a little bit better without the lemon.  The Pomona instructions do not say to add lemon juice to strawberries.)

3.  Add proper amount of calcium water from jar into pan; stir well.  (Instructions for making the calcium water are in the box and in the video below.)

4.  Measure sugar or cold/room temperature honey into separate bowl.  Thoroughly mix proper amount of pectin powder into the honey or sugar.  (The online instructions omitted this step and just said to put everything into the pot – BAD IDEA!  I did that and ended up with pectin lumps in my jam, which I had to mash against the side of the pot.  Significant pain in the backside.  Always premix your sweetener and your pectin powder.  I tasted after adding one cup of honey to eight cups of berries, and I knew that would not be sweet enough for the kids, so I threw in one cup of sugar.  Still much less than standard jam.)

5.  Bring fruit to boil.  Add pectin-honey-sugar mix; stir vigorously 1-2 minutes while cooking to dissolve pectin.  Return to boil and remove from heat.  (This read a little weird to me, but I brought it back up to a boil and then turned off the heat.)

6.  Fill jars to 1/4″ of top. Wipe rims clean.  Screw on 2 -piece lids.  Put filled jars in boiling water to cover.  Boil 10 minutes (add 1 minute more for every 1,000 feet above sea level).  Remove from water.  Let jars cool.  Check seals – lids should be sucked down.  Lasts about 3 weeks once opened, at least a year in the pantry unopened.

Ta-da!  Nine  jars of low sugar strawberry jam (a half-one went in the fridge).

To make the Strawberry-Banana Low Sugar Jam, I put three mashed bananas in my eight cup Pyrex measuring cup before I started adding the strawberries.  With the addition of the bananas, because they are less acidic, I think adding 1/4 cup lemon juice is probably a good idea.  (I did add lemon to mine.)

Would you like to watch a pro make the jam?  The video below from Pomona’s Pectin walks you through the canning process step by step.