I used to make high sugar jams, but now I do this… (Strawberry Rhubarb Jam with NO refined sugar!)

store-bought jams and jellies are absolutely filled with sugar and sometimes artificial flavorings and colorings and that's just not anything that we want in our diet but if I'm being totally honest traditional canning recipes for home canning jams and jellies are not often that much better A lot of times they have more sugar in them than they actually call for fruit and that's just way too much sugar none of us need that much in our diet so today I'm going to show you my secret method for reducing the amount of sugar in my jams and jellies and maybe even using something besides refined sugar like honey or maple syrup let's check it out [Music] our strawberries did not do very well this year it's just not been a good year for them the ones that we are getting are not making it into the house they're getting eaten on the way from the garden to the house and so when I saw some strawberries at a local Fruit Stand I knew that I really wanted to have them so we could make this recipe this is a strawberry rhubarb jam and it is sweetened instead of with regular sugar it's sweetened with honey what I love about this recipe though is that you can choose to sweeten it with whatever you want you can use regular sugar you could use maple syrup you can use honey you can use Splenda you could use whatever it is that you have on hand to use and the jam will still turn out great so it gives you a lot of flexibility today we're going to be using honey now here we are at the rhubarb patch while we didn't get a ton of strawberries we have been getting a ton of rhubarb you can see it's doing really well this year I want to end up with about two cups of mashed and cooked rhubarb so I'm gonna grab myself about eight really big stalks here and take them into the kitchen [Music] well I got a little carried away so I think I have more than I intended We'll have leftovers for something else so let's get into the kitchen and make some Jam when it comes to the actual ingredients we're going to need for this Jam they're actually really very simple very minimal you're going to want two cups of mashed strawberries in order to get two cups of mashed strawberries you're probably going to want to start with about four cups of whole strawberries we're gonna hole them we're going to mash them up and then we're going to measure out those two cups same thing with the rhubarb we're looking for about two cups of chopped cooked rhubarb so we're going to start with about four cups chopped we're going to add a little bit of water to it and we're gonna cook it down for just a few minutes just until it starts to get soft then we're going to measure out two cups of it you'll also need some honey because we're going to sweeten this one with honey or some other sweetener again you could use sugar you could use maple syrup would be absolutely delicious or you could use any other sugar that you like to use you could even use a fruit juice concentrate if you wanted like a white grape juice concentrate or an apple juice concentrate the directions for using them are a little bit different than what we're going to show here today but you could definitely do that then in addition to the sweetener you're going to need some pomonas pectin now this is my favorite pectin this is what I use in my home all the time I love it how it gives you a lot of flexibility about how much sweetener and what type of sweetener you get to use you can find it in the little blue boxes where you can get it like I do bulk by the pound Azure standard carries it it's a little expensive but it stores indefinitely and it will get you a long ways through a lot of jam inside the pomonas pectin you actually have two different packets you have your pectin packet and you have your calcium packet we're going to talk about how to use those in just a minute so once you have all of those ingredients you are ready to go [Music] thank you we love having tons of rhubarb around we've gotten to where we put it in all sorts of things and it's really good but my kids eat it raw and it's good but it's really sour I think I'll stick with my coffee I obviously have way more rhubarb here than I need but that's okay we'll just add it to our morning oatmeal tomorrow morning and it'll be great but I want to start by putting this into a pot heavy bottomed is always best for cooking all in there and just covering the bottom with a little bit of water and then bringing it to a light simmer just to cook it until it softens up I love this spoon one of my daughters made it for me she actually carved it so I'm just going to give it a stir every so often just to make sure that nothing is sticking to the bottom as this comes up to heat okay and while I'm waiting for that I'm going to prep the strawberries they've already been washed and slightly dried or let to sit for a few minutes so the water drains off and we're just going to pop off their tops and put them right on in the bowl now you could use a food processor or possibly even a blender if you're really careful but it does change the final texture of the jam you actually have to use a little bit more pectin if you're going to use a food processor because it just liquefies it a little bit too much too much surface area on that fruit and so it's best if you just go ahead with the hand mashing when you're following a recipe unless you're actually following a recipe for the food processor especially when it comes to something like berries this is one of those little gadgets that makes your life so much easier when you have it even though it's just the silliest little tool but it is actually a strawberry holder you could use the end of a spoon but I find that these things work so well just for this job I think you can get them on Layman's I think that's where I got mine but I you know it's a little two dollar tool and I've used this one for probably a decade now when you're making jams or jellies it's always best to not have over ripe produce I know we want to kind of lock that produce in at the height of its ripeness which is wonderful but you also don't want it too ripe because of the pectin it will actually change the way the pectin works so in general you're looking for something that is about three quarters of the way ripe of all the strawberries you have you want some that about a quarter of them or a little under ripe and the three quarters of them nice and all the way ripe you don't want anything that's starting to get mushy or a little past its prime that just won't give you anything good when it comes to preserves [Music] all right and we're just gonna give them a mash now the larger that your pieces of fruit are the more likely you are to have something that's called fruit float in your jar and that's where your fruit and your jam section like the liquidy section separate and you end up with the fruit maybe on the top and the gel on the bottom so you want to get it kind of nice and small but not blender small not even food processor small I wish you guys could smell this both the rhubarb cooking and the strawberries just smell amazing oh it's making my mouth water the strawberries are good we're just gonna wait for the rhubarb to cook down a little bit more and in the meantime I'm gonna go prepare five pint-sized jars and get their Lids out and ready to go so I'm gonna wash the jars in hot soapy water and get them nice and dry and then I am going to get out brand new canning lids and make sure those are clean along with the rings that are going to go on the top I have my jars and their lids and the bands all set up I also have a jar lifter a good Ladle you'll want one of those and a funnel that's important you've got to have a funnel I have my pot that I'm going to cook my jam in and I have my canner it's already filled with water and it has a rack inside of it before we take any further steps so we need to prepare what's called our calcium water this is specific to Pomona's pectin so if you're using a different type of pectin one this recipe probably won't work but two you probably won't have this calcium this calcium water is what allows us to use really low amounts of sugar or no sugar at all it lets us use all different types of sweetener so it's it's a really good thing to work with in this jar I just have half a cup of plain water and I'm going to put half a teaspoon of calcium powder in there and mix it up now this will have more than half a teaspoon of calcium powder in this little packet so you'll be able to make later batches of it and the good news is is the calcium water itself will store in the refrigerator for at least a year so once you make up a batch you're good to go for a while so there we go half a teaspoon I'm going to fold this packet right back up so I can put it right back in save it for later put the lid on and just give it a really good shake until it's really well mixed and now we have our calcium water all ready to go make sure you label this I don't see my pin right now ah there's a pin thank you all right make sure you label this with calcium water so you know exactly what it is and how to use it the rhubarb is almost there let's get our jars heated up we always want to start with warm jars and we want to start with warm water in our canner so I'm going to go ahead and take my jars and stick them on in the canner right now the canner's off but I'm just going to fill them up with this good clean water that's in there just to weight them down so they don't rattle all over the place and then I'm going to turn my canner on to just about low I don't want to bring the canner to a boil at this point I'm just looking to get it warm and to just barely steaming and hold it at that temperature until I'm ready to fill the jars get the fill jars back in and then we'll put it up to a full Bowl it will bring it up to a full boil but for now we're just trying to warm everything up [Music] that rhubarb is ready look at it it's all nice and soft and mushy it is ready to go so let's measure out our fruit I'm looking for two cups of strawberries I happen to know that this Ladle has an eight ounce bowl it's one cup a scoop a nice full scoop but you just measure it out and two cups of strawberries and two cups of rhubarb [Music] I'm going to take my extra rhubarb and I'm just going to stick it in a jar and store it in the refrigerator until I can get it right into some oatmeal or a baked good some muffins or anything like that or turn it into a dessert all of those will completely work so this will store in your refrigerator for several days just like fresh fruit there's also some really good recipes out there for a hundred percent rhubarb jam using the pomonas packed in so you can use some lower sugar or some alternate sugars and that would be amazing with this too so you could just make a different type of gym I'm just going to put the strawberries right in there and get that in the refrigerator to our mashed fruit combination here we're going to add three teaspoons of our calcium water you do want to give it a really good Shake right before you measure it out just to make sure it's all Incorporated in and measure out three teaspoons [Music] and our fruit mixture is ready to go into a pot again make sure you're using a nice heavy bottomed pot it'll keep it from scorching and we're going to turn this on to low just to bring it back up to heat we're going to prepare our honey and pectin mixture for this you're going to take your half cup of honey you're going to want to make sure that it's slightly warm maybe you've just left it in a warm spot so that it's not cold definitely not cold to be too hard to work with and we're going to incorporate three teaspoons of the pectin powder one two and three it's really important to get this thoroughly mixed if you are using a sugar you would just have the sugar in a bowl and you would mix your pectin powder right on through it if you're using a maple syrup you do kind of the same thing as we're going to do here but the important part is you want it really really well Incorporated you don't want clumps of the pectin because you'll end up with clumps of pectin in your final jam and that's not any good until yeah bring your fruit mixture up to a full boil one of the things I absolutely love about Pomona's pectin and actually the reason I started years using it for my family many many years ago is that you can reduce the recipe and you can also multiply the recipe you can't do that with most types of pectins you can't multiply the recipe and do a double batch or a quadruple batch because the pectin just won't hold up the same way and you'll end up with runny Jam but with pomonas you can do really big batches you can also can this in smaller jars if you want you can do the pints like we're doing today but you could do half pints you could even do quarter point pints and you just do it the exact same way you'll just obviously need more jars when this comes up to a full boil that cannot be stirred down which means right now when I go to stir it it stops boiling for a second that's not at a full boil so I'm going to let it come up just a little bit more once it gets to that point I'll know that I am ready to add my pectin and honey mixture if you're working with honey you will definitely want a spatula of some sort so you can get it all out of your measuring cup [Music] and this is actively boiling while I am stirring it so I know that it's ready to go ahead and add all of this honey pectin mixture just get it all in there best you can during while you go [Music] we're going to want to stir vigorously for about two minutes that's just so that really incorporates in and it doesn't Clump up I've got to say working with a liquid sweetener like honey or like maple syrup is actually a lot easier on this process when you're working with sugar it's a lot easier to get it to Clump on accident stir stir stir and you're looking to bring it back up to a boil and stir for about two minutes so a boil two minutes sometimes one happens first sometimes the other happens first but you have to get up to a boil before you're done you'll want to make sure that your jars are coming up to that temperature back here your water is coming up to temperature because this will start setting up fairly quickly so we want to be ready to roll as soon as this is done so be ready with your setup to be able to Ladle right on into your jars okay I think we're ready let's grab the jars this is steaming really nicely but I have a tip for you here and that is when you go to dump out your jars if you dump them out this way sometimes that water will run right down here and hit your hands and you don't want to burnt hands so make sure you do it this way where the water is leaving right between the little bars of your jar holder we're working with a small enough batch here and we're going to get this filled up really quickly that we can go ahead and pull out all of the jars at once and just work with them one at a time they'll stay plenty hot during that time [Music] I have my handy Ladle I've got my funnel all set up I have a very very clean cloth that is damp with water so I can wipe my rims and I also have a bubble popper tool you could use just a wooden Chopstick or wooden skewer or a plastic tool preferably not metal because that will scrape your jar so that we can get the bubbles out and just fill it right on up foreign s and jellies have a headspace of about a quarter of an inch right at the top so just get it nice and tight against the top there this is probably only going to fill about two and a half of these pints because we're talking about five cups of jam and that'll be just fine because we'll have that half pint left over for being able to taste it we'll stick that right in the refrigerator instead of canning it again if you want to make a larger batch you can definitely go ahead and double this recipe triple the recipe quadruple the recipe depends on how much fruit you have on hand okay two and a half I'm gonna just run my bubble popping tool right down along the edge just make sure there's no big bubbles in there small ones are not a problem but just those big ones and then wipe the rims make sure there's no Jam right on the rim uh oh look what I found this jar has Nicks in the rim of it this will not seal so usually I check these a little more carefully before I start but I miss these so I'm going to go ahead and just transfer this it is a little hot right on into a different jar foreign this is why I always have extra prepared jars when I'm canning you just never know what you're going to run into whether it's a Nick in your jar or it is extra preserves that you weren't expecting that can definitely happen okay get it nice and clean get your Lids on [Music] hold them right on through and put your bands on with a good finger tight you just don't want to crank it down there you don't need to call the strong guy in your household in to crank them down nothing like that you don't want that that'll cause your Lids to actually buckle and oftentimes not to seal well if you are over cranking it so get them screwed on there and then right into the canner [Music] when we're water bath canning we want our jars covered with water to about an inch over the top of them so at this point once you get those jars in there you're going to want to adjust that level [Music] put the lid back on and you can turn your heat up a little bit to medium high and bring it up to a full rolling boil now once it gets to a full rolling boil we're going to can this for 10 minutes if you live at sea level for every thousand feet you live above sea level you're going to want to add a minute so for me I would be at about 13 minutes once your timer goes off then you turn off the heat okay I have a few minutes now I can go get everything all cleaned up this guy gets to be the tester [Music] that's really good what a wonderful flavor this is going to be so good and like jam thumbprint cookies or little Tarts of course it'll also be good on biscuits or on toast it is just a great way to use those strawberries and that rhubarb this guy since we're not going to can him we're going to put them right in the refrigerator and he'll last there for about three weeks so will these once they're open and off the shelf once you open them up they'll be about three weeks in the refrigerator that you'll have to use them up the timer just went off so we're ready to go ahead and turn the heat off on the canner take the lid off and let it sit here with the lid off for five minutes this is going to let it equalize in pressure so that you don't have a bunch of siphoning now that it's been sitting for five minutes we're ready to take the jars out of the canner look at that beautiful color set them on a towel on the counter where you can let them sit for at least overnight we don't want to disturb them once they start kind of setting up there we're gonna let these cool down for at least 12 hours or until the entire jar is cool to the touch top and bottom and then we'll check them out take the next steps our jars of jam have been sitting for well overnight now so they are definitely cool so let's check them out okay first thing we want to do is check for a seal and yes they are well sealed so we know we can go ahead and take off their bands you don't really want to store your jars with the bands on next we want to go ahead and clean them up a little bit just a little bit of water stain to the top here you never want to put anything sticky or dirty away in your pantry these are just a little bit of minerals from the water in the canner that's dried so we can just wipe them off and then like always make sure that you label label label what it is and the year that you made it so it's in there these jars though will stay on your shelf and they will be amazingly great for up to two years they'll taste really good usually we try to transition them we try to use everything that we have in stock in about a year so we're replacing it every year that way it stays at its highest flavor and highest nutritional value but these will be delicious for at least a year probably up to two years okay and Pop That lid off and let's take a peek at it now if you're looking at this and you're thinking I'd like to can but I don't feel real sure about the canning process I have a great video free video set for you guys you can check it out I'll put the link down in the description look at this Jam you guys oh it looks so good and it just smells like summertime it smells so good oh absolutely amazing nice thick gel and no refined sugar in there [Applause] that is absolutely delicious it has a nice light honey flavor it's not overwhelming with the flavor of honey you guys if you are interested in Canning check out how to make the best pickles right here

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 257,349

Keywords: Homesteading, Homesteading Family, strawberry rhubarb jam, rhubarb jam, how to make jam, homemade jam, strawberry jam, water bath canning, jam recipe, how to can jam, strawberry rhubarb jam recipe, strawberry rhubarb recipe, rhubarb recipe, honey jam, strawberry jam recipe, how to make strawberry rhubarb jam, strawberry rhubarb jam recipe with pectin, strawberry rhubarb jam with pectin, strawberry rhubarb jam canning, strawberry rhubarb jam low sugar, rhubarb jam recipe

Id: aqnOsrYfwwA

Length: 25min 54sec (1554 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 17 2023