How To Make Easy Homemade Jam Without Pectin (Video)

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Learning how to make easy homemade jam without pectin is an important homestead skill to learn.  Store bought pectin can be expensive, and at times hard to come by.  In the old fashioned days people didn’t use store bought pectin for making their jams and jellies.  So just how do you make jam without pectin?  It’s a simple process that involves slowly boiling down your fruit and sugar until it is a jam like consistency.  Some fruits are higher in pectin than others, and you can add the juice from some of those fruits to your jam to make it get to the right consistency faster if you desired.  This recipe will work for most fruit jams, and in the video linked below I show you how to use this recipe to make both raspberry and strawberry rhubarb jams.

Preserving Homestead Fruit

When we started working on our own homestead, one of the first things we did was plant an orchard with fruit trees.  We also planted blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries and grapes.  Fruit can be hard to grow here in Nebraska as we grow in a zone 4b. This means our winters can get as cold as 40 degrees below zero fahrenheit and colder.  We carefully chose varieties of fruit trees and bushes that could survive our really cold winters, and carefully watered and cared for them so that when we built our house and moved to our homestead, we would have fruit to preserve for our family.  If you’re not currently growing fruit, I would encourage you to start with raspberries, grapes, and maybe an apple tree if you have room.  These are the easiest to grow, and can easily be made into homemade jam and jelly.

If you don’t have a way to grow your own fruit, check around your area and see if there are others that might have an excess of fresh fruit on their apple trees, grape vines or raspberry bushes.  I have canned hundreds of pounds of fruit this way before I started producing my own.  You can also check our your local farmer’s markets or pick your own orchards if they are available in 

your area.  Another great way to source fruit for making jams and jellies is to pick whatever wild fruit grows in your area.  Here in Nebraska we have wild plums, choke cherries and sand cherries.

What Is Pectin?

Pectin is a naturally occurring starch found in fruits and vegetables, and when the fruit is heated with sugar, it causes the fruit to gel.  Pectin content is highest in apples and citrus peels.  You can purchase boxes of packaged fruit pectin in the grocery store that has been harvested from fruits that contain high amounts of pectin.  

Typically when folks make jam or jelly, they combine fruit or juice with sugar and pre-packaged pectin, heat it to boiling and it thickens into jam or jelly.  However, we are interested in learning to do things the old-fashioned way.  Back in the day, they didn’t run to the general store to purchase pectin.  In fact, you probably couldn’t even purchase commercial pectin.  What they did to make jam and jelly was to just slowly cook down the fruit or juice with sugar, until the natural pectin in the fruit thickened it up and it gelled.  Using the natural pectin in fruit means it takes a little longer for the jelly to gel, but you save a lot of money because you don’t have to purchase the pectin.  If you want your jam or jelly to gel more quickly, you can add some apple juice to it, as apples have a higher pectin content than other fruit.  That is how the homesteaders used to preserve some of their fruit for jam and jelly.

Cost Savings

Making your own jam and jelly is not only rewarding, but it’s also healthier and cheaper too!  In the video linked below, I made 68 jars of jam, and it cost me $.50 per pint to preserve, for a total cost of $34.00.  The same jam would have cost me about $5.00 per pint in the grocery store, for a total cost of $340.00.  So I saved $306.00 dollars by making this jam at home.  Keep in mind that making jam WITH pectin is easy, but expensive.  You can just buy a box of pectin, and follow the directions.  BUT pectin is going to cost you a lot of money for making large batches of jam.  So I like to save money by making my jam without pectin.

Why I Like This Easy Jam Recipe?

Inexpensive – pectin can be expensive, and this easy jam recipe is much cheaper than making regular pectin jam.

Made with simple ingredients

Can be made with frozen fruit during the less busy winter months.

You can make this jam with many different fruits depending on what you have available.  Fresh berries like strawberries and raspberries, or wild plums are some of my favorite.  

The satisfaction of opening a jar of homemade jam, and knowing that the fruit for that jam was picked by my hands and grown on my own homestead.  Farm to table at it’s finest!

Simple Ingredients

Fruit (for jam) or fruit juice (for jelly). In the video below I make strawberry rhubarb jam and raspberry jam with fruit picked from my own homestead.  You can also purchase frozen fruit in bulk from Azure Standard.

Sugar – this jam recipe doesn’t use a lot of sugar, but real sugar is best for setting the pectin.  You can use cane sugar if you’d like, but I wouldn’t use any other sugar replacement or artificial sweeteners.  

Butter (optional)

This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here

Tools You May Need 

2 cup plastic measuring cup

Large heavy bottom stock pot

Canning Funnel

For Jars Canning Lids

Canning jars

Tips For Making Homemade Jam Without Pectin

Cook it down for as long as you need to until you’re happy with the consistency of the jam or jelly.

Put a plate in the freezer to get cold, and you can put a little bit of jam on it to see how well it sets up when cool.

Bring your fruit to a full rolling boil before adding your sugar.

Do not use sugar replacements as they can affect how the natural pectin sets up.

If your jam or jelly is at a simmer, you can ladle the hot jam directly into the jars. Cover it with a lid and ring immediately and it should self seal.  (See video below).

You can also process the jars in a water bath canner for 10 minutes if you prefer.

You can use fresh or frozen fruit or fruit juice to make this recipe.

As I pick raspberries and strawberries throughout the summer, I just throw them into ziplock bags in the freezer. Then I can make the jam once I have all the fruit together, usually in the wintertime when I’m not so busy.  

How To Make Easy Homemade Jam Without Pectin

Place fresh or frozen fruit in a large pot with a heavy bottom.  If you are using fresh fruit, you may want to mash it in the pot lightly with a potato masher to help it start to release its juices. If your fruit is in large pieces, you may also want to cut it down to a smaller size.

Place the pot on stove over medium-high heat and bring to a slow boil.

Add sugar and stir well until sugar dissolves.

Reduce heat to medium low and simmer for several hours, stirring occasionally as the jam cooks.

Cooking time will vary depending on the amount of pectin in your fruit.

Wash jars and allow to air dry.

Put a plate in the freezer so it will be cold when you’re ready to test the thickness of the jam.

When jam has reduced over low heat and is starting to look thick, place a small bit of jam on the cold plate.  Allow it to cool for a minute or two and push it around with the back of a spoon to see if it’s as thick as you want.  If not, keep cooking it.

Canning Jam Made Without Pectin

When jam is the consistency you like, use a 2 cup plastic measuring cup to ladle it into jars fitted with a canning funnel.  

Make sure there is nothing on the rim of the jar. Immediately place a lid and a ring on each jar and tighten until finger tight.

Allow to sit undisturbed at room temperature for a few hours or overnight.  

Check to see if the jars have sealed by lightly pressing the middle of each jar lid.  If they are indented and don’t “pop”, that means they are sealed.  But if you can push the lid up and down slightly, then they did not seal.  If I have a couple of jars that didn’t seal, I usually just put them in the refrigerator and use fairly soon.  If you have a lot of jars that didn’t seal, you can open them, make sure there is no little piece of jam around the rim of the jar, and then process them in a water bath canner for 10 minutes.

When cool and sealed, remove rings and store on your pantry shelf.  The shelf life of this jam is at least one year, although I have kept it longer and it’s been just fine.  

Enjoy this delicious jam on ice cream, sourdough bread, in sourdough poptarts and more!

If you try this recipe and love it, please come back and give it 5 stars and let us know in the comment section below what kind of jam you made! Tag me on Instagram @wagonwheelhomestead21.  I can’t wait to see what all you make!