Anyone sub crushed Vit C tabs for pectin in jam?

[baby-makes-3]

I am trying to find a cheap alternative to pectin and saw somewhere that you can crush 6 or so Vitamin C tablets to substitute for the pectin when making jam.

Has anyone tried this??

[KristyDi]

Never heard of that. But I don't use any pectin in several of my jams. Some have fresh homemade applesauce added that both acts like pectin (apples have a lot of pectin naturally) and stretches then more expensive berries. My favorite strawberry jam is like that. You can't tell there's apples in the finished jam. Others I just use the old fashioned fruit and sugar with a bit of lemon juice then boil till it reaches the gell stage.

The recipe is in Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.

[baby-makes-3]

Okay, thanks for the book reference. Problem is my DD can't have apples. I wonder if pears would work just as well??

[mommaklo]

Something tells me that vit c and pectin would do two different things. Pectin is for gelling and I dont believe that vit c has those properties? I did crack open a bunch of vit c capsules last year canning tomatoes, etc as I wanted a high acid content and they will do that.

[savithny]

Yeah, vitamin C is ascorbic acid -- for acidifying things to a pH safe for water bath canning. Most recipes call for lemon juice for that. And I think there are old wives tales about crushed aspirin in pickles keeping them crisp, which may have resulted in the idea of crushed vitamin tablets.

but no, it's not going to thicken anything.

You can make many jams without pectin, though you have to be willing to cook them down a lot longer. I've done both grape and plum preserves without pectin and they turn out great. The deal is that they have to be a lot more concentrated, so they take longer to cook and they tend to taste more cooked.

if you go to the National Center for Home Food Preservation website, they've got a number of jam recipes without pectin. You do have to do high or medium pectin fruits to get it to work, however.