Apple Pie Jam

This apple jam recipe is a great option when you feel like you want to eat some apple pie but don’t want the crust, or don’t want to make or buy a full pie. Slices of tender Golden Delicious apples sit in a pie-spiced jelly that spreads easily, letting you have that pie flavor without all the pie-making fuss. Keep a small jar of this in the fridge for sweet and spicy snacks.

Golden Delicious apples may not seem like a very common variety to use in jam, but the texture of the apples is ideal for this purpose. They don’t break down too much, but they also don’t stay very hard and crunchy. The apples aren’t so tart that they cancel out the sugar in the jam, but they aren’t super-sweet. The result is a treat that’s satisfying yet not overwhelming.

Apple Jam Ingredients

• Golden Delicious apples: Golden Delicious apples are excellent baking and cooking apples, and they retain much of their shape and texture. By the way, they work very well in actual apple pie filling.
• Sugar: Sugar helps draw out more juice from fruit. That increases the amount of jelly around the fruit in the jam.
• Butter: Butter helps reduce the amount of foam produced during cooking.
• Liquid fruit pectin: Do not use powdered pectin in this recipe. The two types are added at different stages.
• Ground cinnamon and nutmeg: These spices make the jam taste more like pie filling.
• Ground mace: This is an optional spice that you can add if you like using it in pie.

Directions

Step 1: Cook the apples

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Place the apples and 1 cup of water in a Dutch oven. Cover the pan and cook the apples slowly until they become tender. Remove the apples and measure out 4 1/2 cups. Place those back in the pan and save the rest of the apples for another use.

Step 2: Thicken the jam

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Add the sugar and butter to the apples and turn up the heat to high. Bring everything to a full, rolling boil while stirring constantly. Add the pectin (the mixture should still be boiling), and keep everything boiling for another minute while continuing to stir.

Step 3: Fill the jars

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Remove the Dutch oven from the heat, and skim off any foam. Stir in the cinnamon and nutmeg (and mace, if you want), and ladle the mixture into seven hot half-pint jam jars. Fill, but leave 1/4 inch for headspace. Remove the air bubbles in the mixture, and if needed, add more jam to bring the headspace to 1/4 inch. Wipe the rims of the jars, center the lids on the jars and add the bands, screwing them on until they’re what’s called “fingertip tight.” Don’t overtighten the lids.

Step 4: Process the jam

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Fill a canner part-way with water and bring to a simmer, and then add the jars. Remember that the water level will rise as you add jars, but if the water doesn’t cover the jars by a couple of inches, add more boiling water. Bring the water to a boil and process the jars for 10 minutes. Remove the jars with a jar lifter and let them cool.

Editor’s Tip: Add one minute to the processing time for every 1,000 feet of elevation. Below 1,000 feet, process for 10 minutes, and then add one minute for every 1,000 feet above that.

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Apple Jam Variations

• You can chop the apples instead of slicing them: If you’re using small jars and don’t want to wrestle large apple slices into the small spaces, you can chop them. The smaller you make them, thought, the more they’ll soften in cooking as more surface area is exposed to the heat. So, chop, but don’t dice.
• Try different spices: We like the idea of chai-spiced apple jam. Add cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves and nutmeg (and a grind of black pepper if you’re feeling spicy) to combine two delicious autumn treats.

How to Store Apple Jam

For jam that’s been processed in a water bath, you can store the jars for up to a year when they’re fully sealed. Once opened, store them in the refrigerator and use them within one month. Label and date the jars when you make them and open them to take the guesswork out of deciding when they need to be discarded.

Can you freeze apple jam?

Freezing the jam is possible, but you need to use jars and lids either made specifically for the freezer or that are freezer-safe. Many glass canning jars are OK, but there’s a major issue to watch out for: You have to use straight-sided jars. Never freeze jam in jars that have curves, shoulders or other shapes. Those are more prone to breaking as jam freezes and expands. If you want to store jam in the freezer, try one of these freezer jam recipes.

Apple Jam Tips

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Can you use other types of apples in this recipe?

Anytime you change the type of apple you use in a recipe, you risk changing the taste and texture. So, there’s no identical substitute, but you can get close. Braeburn apples may work well in place of Golden Delicious. Granny Smith, the variety most often associated with apple pie filling because of how well the chunks retain their shape, may actually not be a good choice here because of how tart they are and how comparatively hard they remain. You want apple slices that have some bite to them after cooking, but you don’t want chunks that seem almost uncooked. Take a look at the different types of apples to see which ones you might want to use. Also, check out these new apples that may work out well.

Why do you add pectin when apples already contain a lot of it?

Apples contain so much pectin that shredded apples are sometimes added to other jams in place of commercial pectin. However, using commercial pectin even when the fruits in the jam have a lot of their own has two big advantages. One is that you can make more jam than you would without the commercial pectin. Using fruit pectin relies on boiling down fruit juices as you cook the fruit. Reducing the liquid makes the jam or jelly firm up. But if you add commercial pectin, you’re providing pectin without having to wait for all that liquid to reduce. The result is that you end up with more jam or jelly because all that liquid has now thickened. Commercial pectin also helps the jam or jelly set more consistently; there’s less guessing about whether the jelly you dripped onto a plate as a test is really thick enough yet.

Can you make this if you don’t have canning equipment?

If you want to store the jars of jam on a shelf outside of refrigeration, you need to put the filled jars through a water-bath procedure. The easiest way to do that is to buy canning equipment. If you don’t have that and don’t want to buy it, you can still create a water bath using a large pot that’s deep enough to cover the jars with at least 2 inches of water when those jars are elevated on a rack that keeps them off the bottom of the pot. The pot must have a tight-fitting lid, and you must have some sort of jar lifter to help you lift the jars out of the pot safely because they’ll be hot. Follow the canning instructions in the recipe you’re using. But we have to emphasize this: You must put the jars through the water bath properly if you want to store the jars without refrigeration. Otherwise, you’ll have to keep them in the refrigerator and use them all within two to three weeks because they’ll be considered perishable foods and subject to faster spoilage. They will not be safe to consume if left outside the refrigerator without a water bath.

How do you heat up the jars before filling them?

When the recipe calls for ladling the jam into hot jars, it means sterilized jars. If you haven’t done any canning for a while, jar-sterilization methods have changed slightly for some brands. First, always check the instructions for the specific jars and lids you’ve bought. In general, though, to heat up and sterilize the jars and lids, wash everything in hot, soapy water and rinse them off thoroughly. Place the glass jars in a deep pot filled with enough water to cover the jars; the jars should sit on a rack that elevates them off the bottom of the pot. Boil the water for at least 10 minutes (note: this increases as your elevation increases, with an extra minute necessary for every 1,000 feet you are above 1,000 feet; so, 10 minutes at sea level to 1,000 feet, 11 minutes to 2,000 feet, and so on), and then keep the water on a simmer until you need to fill the jars. For the lids and rings, place them in simmering water for the entire time. Don’t boil. You’ll need tongs or a jar lifter to remove everything from the water.