Simple Blueberry Jam – no pectin, just 3 ingredients!

I have never made blueberry jam before but I’m thrilled to bring you my Simple Blueberry Jam recipe today after a freak bargain find at the weekend! I managed to find 4 trays of blueberries priced up at £3 each for 3p each, there was a whole crate that were on their sell by date. We ate one tray but the rest were destined for jam, although I did have to throw away just over a third of the remainder as they were soft and over ripe which is not good for eating or jam making. However, I’m really not complaining at that price, I’ve never seen blueberries so cheap nor so many of them reduced before!

I can’t remember the last time I had blueberry jam but I have never had home-made and I can’t tell you how amazing this Simple Blueberry Jam is, the depth of flavour is incredible totally delicious. I was reading about the pros and cons of pectin use in jam the other day and the point was made that although by using pectin you achieve a shorter cooking time and a slightly higher yield, you don’t get the intensity of flavour that you get with a longer cooking time where more moisture is evaporated away. I had never really thought about this before as I never use pectin or jam sugar in my recipes (well apart from my first ever jam where I used jam sugar but I didn’t like the stiff texture and looking back the flavour was not a patch on my One Punnet Strawberry Jam which just uses lemon juice to aid the setting.

Blueberries are naturally low in pectin so apart from using only the firmest just ripe or slightly under ripe fruits you need to add pectin or lemon juice which aids the gelling process by interacting with the sugar. If you’ve never made jam before it’s never too late to learn, I only started making jam in the last 4 years and just got hooked. The important things are to sterilise your jars, freeze some saucer for testing and always stir your jam or you will burn it to the bottom or your pan. If you get the set too runny you can always pour back your jam and boil it up again until it reaches setting point (you get better as judging this as time goes on but I’ve only ever got it wrong once as I like a soft set jam but I pushed the boundary a bit far that time).

If you grow your own blueberries or ever see a bargain like mine then I do hope you try my Simple Blueberry Jam which makes one good sized jar but you can always scale the recipe up to make more if you have more!

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