Spiced Tomato Jam Recipe

How to make it

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• Cut a shallow “X” at the bottom of the tomatoes; boil tomatoes for 30 to 45 seconds; plunge tomatoes in a bowl of ice water.
• Skin tomatoes.
• Cut tomatoes in half or quarters; seed and cut out hard spots. Put tomato meat in a colander or strainer to let excess water drain.
• Chop tomatoes to ½ inch chunks. See Photo
• Recipe makes about 4 pints of tomato jam. Use pint or half pint jars.
• Sterilize jars and rings. Run them through a complete washing cycle in your dish washer if it has a sanitize option, WITHOUT DETERGENT, and remain in the dish washer until ready to be used to keep the jars warm.
• If no sanitize cycle on the dish washer, boil the jars and rings in water for 10 and hold them in hot water until ready to use.
• Put lids in hot water for several minutes and hold them there, just below boiling, to sanitize and soften the seal.
• Place chopped tomatoes in saucepan and heat slowly to simmering, stirring constantly to prevent sticking and burning.
• Cover and simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Measure 6 cups of the prepared tomatoes into a large saucepan. Add lemon rind, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, and lemon juice. Make sure you use a large enough sauce pan. The volume will double while boiling.
• Measure the sugar and set aside.
• Stir a half cup sugar into powdered pectin then the sugar/pectin mix into prepared tomatoes. The no-sugar-needed pectin makes for a better set and uses less sugar than regular pectin.
• Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly.
• Stir in the remaining cups sugar as soon as the tomato mix reaches a full, hard boil. Stir and bring it back to a full rolling boil that cannot be stirred down. Then start timing and boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
• Fill jars with tomato jam to within ¼-inch of the top, seat the lid and finger-tighten the ring around them.
• Be sure the contact surfaces (top of the jar and underside of the ring) are clean to get a good seal!
• Put jars in the water bath canner and keep them covered with at least 1 inch of water. Keep the water boiling, and the lid on. Most people will only need to process the jars for 5 minutes. If you are 1,001 to 6000 ft above sea level process for 10 minutes.
• Lift the jars out of the water and let them cool without touching or bumping them in a draft-free place (usually takes overnight). You can then remove the rings if you like. Once the jars are cool, you can check that they are sealed verifying that the lid has been sucked down. Just press in the center, gently, with your finger. If it pops up and down (often making a popping sound), it is not sealed. If you put the jar in the refrigerator right away, you can still use it. Some people replace the lid and reprocess the jar, then that's a bit iffy. If you heat the contents back up, re-jar them (with a new lid) and the full time in the canner, it's usually ok.

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