EASY, SMALL BATCH, LOW SUGAR AND VERY BLUEBERRY
With his first spoonful, my husband pronounced this blueberry jam to be “the blueberriest blueberry something he had ever eaten”. In this post, I’ll share my easy, low sugar blueberry jam recipe, plus answers to some blueberry tips and common jam questions.
WHICH BLUEBERRIES ARE BEST FOR BLUEBERRY JAM?
Choose blueberries that are fully ripe, but not overripe. Watch out for mold growth, especially at the stem end of blueberries in clamshell packs in the grocery store.
If you have a chance to taste the berries before buying, do it. There’s a wide range of quality and sweetness. August picked up a pack of organic blueberries at the store as a treat, and they didn’t even taste like blueberries. I’ll be glad when our blueberry patch is a little older and we have plenty for fresh eating and jam.
You can use fresh blueberries or frozen blueberries for jam making. If I get too busy at harvest time, I’ll freeze fruit to process into jam in fall or winter when it’s cooler and things slow down a bit. I like to combine frozen wild blueberries with fresh standard berries for deeper color and more blueberry flavor.
Speaking of color…
WHAT COLOR IS BLUEBERRY JAM?
The color of your jam depends on the type of blueberries you use, and how ripe they are. It ranges from deep blue to more red-blue.
The jam in the photos is a mix of roughly half wild blueberries and half “regular” blueberries (the fat little berries you usually see in the grocery store).
HOW LONG DOES BLUEBERRY JAM LAST?
Once processed in a hot water bath canner, homemade blueberry jam should last for 1-2 years if stored in a cool, dark location. Sugar acts as a preservative, and the extra lemon juice lowers the acidity. Both of these help make it more shelf stable.
If you want to stash your jam in the refrigerator instead of canning, it should last for several months. Discard jam with obvious signs of spoilage. Low sugar jams have a shorter shelf life than high sugar jams. (But ours never last very long anyway…)
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