Making jam is a low-effort endeavor, so there’s no need to be scared

By CNN Newsource

Published December 17, 2025 9:00 AM

By Francesca Giuliani Hoffman, CNN

(CNN) — With the holidays near, there is one type of gift I’m always happy to receive — a delicious jar of homemade jam. And here’s the truth: You don’t need to be Martha Stewart or Ina Garten to make phenomenal jams.

I know you have follow-up questions. Is it safe? Is it easy? Do you need special equipment?

Yes, yes and no. All you need is a little bit of fruit, sugar and a clean jar.

Store-bought jams tend to be high in sugar, which acts as a preservative and a flavoring agent. These jams may also contain gelling agents for a firmer set. Making your own jam allows you to cut back on the sugar and keep the ingredient list to a bare minimum.

Whatever produce you may have in the fridge could be enough to get you started on your jam-making journey. Another bonus: Making jam out of ripe produce that you won’t realistically consume quickly enough is an excellent way to reduce food waste in your kitchen.

And that’s no small bunch of bananas: About 31% of food that is grown and produced goes unsold or uneaten in the United States, according to Sara Burnett, executive director of ReFED, a nonprofit organization focused on reducing food waste.

The personal cost of waste is real — and more noticeable when grocery prices are rising.

“Consumers waste about $800 per year from their own wallet that they are just throwing in the trash when they waste food,” Burnett said. “For my family of four — eight times four — I’m wasting about $3,000 a year in food that just goes uneaten, that otherwise could have fed my family or fed one of my neighbors in need.”

Get started on your jam-making journey

To make jam, pick your fruit and add some sugar. The ratio of fruit to sugar in a jam depends on personal preference, and it can be as high as 1-to-1.

You could add lemon, to lower the fruit’s acidity or pH level to give the pectin a boost and help things set, but you don’t have to, according to expert jam maker Claire Dinhut, a content creator and author of “The Condiment Book: Unlocking Maximum Flavor With Minimal Effort.”

Let fruit and sugar boil until they reach the so-called gel point, at 220 degrees Fahrenheit (104 degrees Celsius), at which you should be ready to jar it up.

“A lot of people, I think, get scared when they’re making jam, because sometimes there’s a looser set, sometimes it’s more like jelly, and that’s only because the fruit has a different level of pectin,” Dinhut said. Fruits such as apricots don’t have much pectin, while apples are rich in it.

A good training jam to get started with is a strawberry jam, according to Dinhut. In her experience, a strawberry jam doesn’t always set well, but “regardless of how loose it is in the jar, it’s going to taste like childhood and be really nice.”

It’s fun to experiment with ingredients and flavors for small-batch jams to be refrigerated and consumed quickly. If you’re interested in canning your goodies for longer-term storage, it’s recommended that you use safety-tested recipes from reputable sources.

Share small batches with family and friends

Making jam can be a casual, low-effort endeavor.

“When people think about making jam, they think they have to buy a case of jars. They think they have to buy cases of fruit, and you don’t,” said Bruce Weinstein, coauthor of “Cold Canning: The Easy Way to Preserve the Seasons Without Hot Water Processing.”

Weinstein began to dabble with putting food in jars in his early days as a New Yorker in a small apartment with a very small kitchen.

“I ended up constantly buying my fruit from those ubiquitous fruit sellers on the street corners of New York, where you can buy two little containers of raspberries for $6 and you can go home and make one or two jars of jam,” he said.

The same logic applies to savory foods.

“You can use small amounts of fruit or produce that you have in your refrigerator that you know is going to go bad because you’re not going to get to eat it, to make one jar or two jars of a pickle or preserve or relish,” Weinstein said.

Every recipe in Weinstein’s book is optimized for small-batch quantities, and the food can be refrigerated safely and used up quickly, rather than processed with heat and pressure for long-term pantry storage.

What Weinstein loves about making a couple of jars of something delicious is the ability to share it with friends and family.

“It’s really nice to have just two or three of something, because you don’t get sick of it,” Weinstein said. “You can share it, and people won’t get tired of you always bringing the same thing.”

Working with small quantities will also ensure you can use up what you make quickly. While traditional water-bath and pressure canning creates shelf-stable products, it can be equipment-intensive and nerve-racking for the beginner.

Weinstein’s book also includes recipes for refrigerator-friendly, lacto-fermented products, such as classic dill pickles and half-sour pickles, salsas, and a wide range of kimchi.

The traditional way of lacto-fermenting foods involves processing them at room temperature for periods of time, which could make novices apprehensive about food safety. But that’s not required.

“What people don’t realize is that you can get lacto-fermentation to happen in the refrigerator — it just takes longer,” Weinstein said.

Fridge-fermented half-sour pickles, for example, will develop their flavor in about a week, compared with three days with the room temperature method, according to Weinstein.

How to do it? Weinstein’s rule of thumb is you need exactly 48 grams of salt for every 4 cups of water used to make a pickle brine.

“Heat the salt and water to a boil with pickling spices, then cool to room temp. Cover your cukes and refrigerate — they start to change at about 6 days,” he said via email.

Ready to try your hand at jamming and pickling? Here are two recipes to get you started.

For a savory option, the Sticky Brown Cauliflower Pickle recipe in “Cold Canning” is a version of the famous British Branston pickle. “It’s great because it uses small bits of a few different veggies, including carrots, apple zucchini, cauliflower, onion, dates,” Weinstein said.

For those with a sweet tooth, a festive holiday jam with four types of berries will take your breakfasts up a notch and is a great way to use up extra bags of frozen cranberries left over from Thanksgiving.

Sticky Brown Cauliflower Pickle

Pair this pickle with an aged, hard cheese, or go classic and layer with extra-sharp English cheddar on buttered bread slices.

Makes: About 3 cups (720 milliliters)

Ingredients

¾ pound (350 grams) cauliflower florets or small head, trimmed, cored and cut into florets
1 medium yellow or white onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 small zucchini, diced
1 large carrot, peeled and finely chopped
1 medium hard sour green apple, stemmed, cored and finely chopped
6 plump pitted Medjool dates, finely chopped
1 cup (215 grams) packed dark brown sugar
1 cup (240 milliliters) malt vinegar
½ cup (120 milliliters) water
2 tablespoons (30 milliliters) lemon juice
1 tablespoon (21 grams) molasses or black treacle
1 tablespoon (15 milliliters) Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon brown mustard seeds
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

Instructions

1. Put the cauliflower florets in a food processor, cover and pulse until they’re ground to coarse bits, about the size of raisins, not like fine, riced cauliflower. Work in batches as necessary.

2. Pour the cauliflower bits into a large saucepan. Add the remaining ingredients. Set the pan over medium-high heat and stir constantly to dissolve the brown sugar. Bring to a simmer, stirring often.

3. Reduce the heat to low and continue cooking, stirring more and more often to prevent scorching, until darkly colored and the liquid has reduced to a syrup so thick that you can run a wooden spoon across the bottom of the pan and create a line that holds its edges for a second or two before flowing back into place, about 35 minutes.

4. Turn off the heat, remove the pan from the burner and set aside for 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to three clean ½ pint (236 milliliters) jars or other containers, leaving about ½ inch (a little more than 1 centimeter) headspace in each. Cover or seal. Cool at room temperature for no more than 1 hour before refrigerating for up to 2 weeks or freezing for up to 1 year.

Four Berry Holiday Jam

Weinstein and “Cold Canning” coauthor Mark Scarbrough serve their take on Christmas jam as a special treat for a holiday breakfast and suggest making extra so guests can take home a jar or two.

Makes: About 3 cups (720 milliliters)

Ingredients

5 ounces (140 grams) fresh cranberries, or frozen cranberries, thawed (about 1 cup)
4 ½ ounces (130 grams) fresh strawberries, hulled, or thawed frozen strawberries, hulled (about 1 cup)
7 ½ ounces (215 grams) fresh raspberries, or frozen raspberries, thawed (about 1 ½ cups)
2 cups (400 grams) granulated white sugar
7 ½ ounces (215 grams) fresh blueberries, or thawed frozen blueberries (about 1 ½ cups)
1 tablespoon (15 milliliters) lemon juice
1 teaspoon (2 grams) finely grated orange zest
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

Instructions

1. Chop the cranberries and strawberries into small bits, then add them to a large saucepan. Add the raspberries and crush them against the side of the pan with a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon. Do not make a smooth puree.

2. Set the pan over medium-high heat and stir in sugar, blueberries, lemon juice, orange zest, cinnamon and cloves. Stir constantly to dissolve the sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring often.

3. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened and jamlike, about 12 minutes.

4. Turn off the heat, remove the pan from the burner and set aside for 1 to 2 minutes. Skim any foamy impurities with a tablespoon.

5. Transfer to three clean ½ pint (236 milliliters) jars or other containers, leaving about ½ inch (a little more than 1 centimeter) headspace in each. Cover or seal. Let cool at room temperature for no more than 2 hours before refrigerating up to 3 weeks or freezing up to 1 year. In the fridge, the jam will not reach its best flavor for 24 hours.

Recipes adapted from “Cold Canning: The Easy Way to Preserve the Seasons Without Hot Water Processing” by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough (Voracious Books, 2025).

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