I'm making some strawberry-raspberry jam. Usually I've always used Pomona's pectin, the kind where you mix up the calcium water and add it separately from the pectin powder, and you can use any kind of sweetener (sugar, honey, agave, even artificial if you wanted...) in any quantity you want.
Basic recipe -- 4c crushed fruit, some lemon juice, 1-1.5c of sweetener, cook and jar.
Since moving 2 years ago, I haven't been able to find a place to get Pomona's here. I tried a batch with Clear-Jel the other day, and it's okay but tastes kind of powdery... And more like jello in texture than jam!
The other day I found some Bernardin no-sugar pectin and bought that. It seems to be the same idea as the Pomona's, except it's only powder. And it's a one-use package, use the whole box for one batch, whereas with Pomona's you use custom amounts and one box lasts for many batches.
I was setting out to make the jam this afternoon, and read through the directions for the Bernardin pectin, to see if there were any noteworthy differences. There are.
Basic recipe -- 4c crushed fruit, 1.5c sugar, and 1 cup unsweetened fruit juice (ie, apple).
WTH? A cup of fruit juice? What for? To add sweetness? That defeats the purpose of the sweetness being up to the person making the jam. It also defeats the purpose of making the thing up from fresh fruits from scratch, since MOST of us don't have an apple juicer handy so we'd have to use store-bought juice. I don't want to add processed juice to my natural jams, having to use processed pectin is already as far as I'm willing to go lol...
I'm trying to find out what purpose the juice serves and haven't been able to get anywhere. I've seen a couple recipes online that say "1c juice or water", which would imply it's just for the liquid. So why wouldn't the package say "juice or water" in the first place?
I've also seen some comments online of folks saying that their jams didn't gel properly when using this pectin according to the instructions.
So now I'm not sure my best course of action... use water? Go into town and go shopping for some kind of fruit juice? Use nothing at all but just the fruit and sugar and pectin? Or try to get some Pomona's before my fruit (crushed and waiting in the fridge) goes bad?
Basic recipe -- 4c crushed fruit, some lemon juice, 1-1.5c of sweetener, cook and jar.
Since moving 2 years ago, I haven't been able to find a place to get Pomona's here. I tried a batch with Clear-Jel the other day, and it's okay but tastes kind of powdery... And more like jello in texture than jam!
The other day I found some Bernardin no-sugar pectin and bought that. It seems to be the same idea as the Pomona's, except it's only powder. And it's a one-use package, use the whole box for one batch, whereas with Pomona's you use custom amounts and one box lasts for many batches.
I was setting out to make the jam this afternoon, and read through the directions for the Bernardin pectin, to see if there were any noteworthy differences. There are.
Basic recipe -- 4c crushed fruit, 1.5c sugar, and 1 cup unsweetened fruit juice (ie, apple).
WTH? A cup of fruit juice? What for? To add sweetness? That defeats the purpose of the sweetness being up to the person making the jam. It also defeats the purpose of making the thing up from fresh fruits from scratch, since MOST of us don't have an apple juicer handy so we'd have to use store-bought juice. I don't want to add processed juice to my natural jams, having to use processed pectin is already as far as I'm willing to go lol...
I'm trying to find out what purpose the juice serves and haven't been able to get anywhere. I've seen a couple recipes online that say "1c juice or water", which would imply it's just for the liquid. So why wouldn't the package say "juice or water" in the first place?
I've also seen some comments online of folks saying that their jams didn't gel properly when using this pectin according to the instructions.
So now I'm not sure my best course of action... use water? Go into town and go shopping for some kind of fruit juice? Use nothing at all but just the fruit and sugar and pectin? Or try to get some Pomona's before my fruit (crushed and waiting in the fridge) goes bad?
