Homemade sugar free jam

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rmbrass
rmbrass Posts: 9 Member
in Recipes
For years I'd been looking for sugar free jam. Yeah there are some that do not list sugar as sugar. Instead the manufacturers list sugar as dextrose, sucrose, maltose, etc. I happen to watch a video of some homesteaders boiling blackberries or blueberries. And I thought - there's my sugar free jam. So I dump a one pint container of store bought blueberries into a sauce pan, add a few tbs of lemon juice and water. I simmer all this until the berries release their moisture and the skins begin to breakdown about 30 min. I let it cool down a bit and blend it just a short 5 or 10 seconds until it's the consistency I like. I like it a little chunky. Then stir in an amount of stevia granules until it is as sweet as I like. Added sugar in jams acts as a preservative. I use the lemon juice for that. My batches are small enough that they keep well in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

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  • HerbsandMore
    HerbsandMore Posts: 2,350 Member
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    If you do a search on freezer jams you might find more, they may say sugar but you can simply switch it for stevia and then you can have them ready in your freezer. You need small jars because as you said they won't keep much longer than a few days in the fridge.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,436 Member
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    I'm sure your recipe is delicious (and cost effective), but I'm throwing this out there for people with similar interests who prefer buying to cooking, or who - like me - find stevia to have a weird taste (I know, it doesn't taste weird to you - probably me who's weird, and that's OK with me).

    I don't know how strict your personal definition is for "sugar under another name", but one of the tastiest, most fruit-dense jam-like products I've ever had - including any sugared jams, homemade and commercial - is the Bionaturae brand of all-fruit spreads.

    They do have added sugar, in the form of apple juice concentrate. Unlike a lot of other all-fruit spread brands, the apple juice concentrate is waaay down the list of ingredients in these. The top ingredients are the featured fruits. The label lists 5g added sugar per serving, which would be the concentrate.

    Here's an example ingredient list from one of my favorite flavors:

    61pcd0GFbxS._SY741_.jpg

    Sour cherry has some apple puree as well as apple juice concentrate, but in all the flavors I'm familiar with, the label fruits are top of list, and the apple juice concentrate near the bottom, which is an indication of the relative quantity. Usually only pectin is below the concentrate, sometimes ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) and/or citric acid.

    It's not cheap, though.

    P.S. I have zero affiliation with Bionaturae or related companies. I'm just a fan of the fruit spread.

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