Apple Jam

Apple jam captures the taste of crisp autumn apples in a sweet, pleasantly tart preserve, with tender pieces of fruit suspended in a smooth, glossy base. It takes just three ingredients and no boxed pectin, and a batch simmering on the stove fills the kitchen with a smell that’s about as close to apple pie as a jam can get.

I’ve always thought it somewhat unfair that applesauce and apple butter are so well known, while old-fashioned apple jam, the slightly out-of-fashion cousin of the family, gets overlooked. It has the smoothness of those preserves, but it also has real texture, thanks to the way the apples are prepared before cooking.

Like most of my traditional jam recipes, this one is made without any boxed pectin. Apples are naturally loaded with pectin, so the fruit sets on its own with sugar, lemon juice, and a cook to the gel stage, a technique I cover in detail in my guide to making jam without added pectin. An overnight maceration firms the diced apples so they hold their shape in the pot instead of melting into sauce.

You’ll have a hard time finding apple jam at the grocery store, which is all the more reason to put up a few jars at home while the orchards are overflowing. Whether the batch is strictly for your own toast or destined for gift baskets, everything you need for prepping, cooking, and canning it is right here (and if the harvest keeps coming, apple marmalade and canned apple cider are great ideas too).

Ingredients for Apple Jam

Apple jam calls for only three readily available ingredients, and thanks to the naturally high pectin content of apples, there’s no store-bought pectin required. Quantities are in the recipe card at the bottom of the post, and here’s what each ingredient is doing and what to look for when you’re choosing fruit.

• Apples: Choose firm fleshed varieties suitable for pie making that are both tart and sweet, like Empire, Granny Smith, or Honeycrisp (or a mixture of any pie apples). The apples pictured in this post are Cosmic Crisp, a sweet, crispy variety that’s slow to brown. Avoid soft apples like Golden Delicious and Jonagold, which fall apart during cooking and leave you with something much closer to applesauce than jam.
• Granulated Sugar: Sugar sweetens the preserve, thickens the syrup the apples cook in, and helps the jam reach a good set. This recipe uses a moderate ratio for a no-pectin jam, one part sugar to four parts prepared fruit by volume, so the apple flavor stays out front. If you’d like to reduce it further, see the low sugar options below.
• Bottled Lemon Juice: The lemon juice brightens the flavor, keeps the diced apples from browning, and contributes extra pectin during maceration. It also adds acidity, which helps balance the sugar in the recipe. I recommend Santa Cruz organic lemon juice.

That’s the whole list, and the equipment needs are just as simple. Beyond your water bath canning setup, you’ll want a heavy-bottomed jam pot, a large fine mesh sieve for straining the macerated fruit, and 4 to 5 half-pint jars with two-piece lids.

How to Make Apple Jam

The end goal here is a thick preserve base studded with tender pieces of diced apple. To get there, the diced fruit soaks in sugar and lemon juice overnight, and that simple maceration draws liquid out of the apple pieces. Firmer fruit going into the pot means the apples hold together during cooking instead of breaking apart and melting into the jam.

The recipe starts with 6 pounds of apples as purchased, which yields about 4 pounds of prepared diced apples, or roughly 16 cups. The ratio is 1 cup of sugar for every pound of prepared apples (1 cup sugar to 4 cups fruit), so a full batch takes 4 cups of sugar and 1/2 cup of bottled lemon juice. If you work in weights, 1 cup of sugar is about 1/2 pound, making it 2 pounds of sugar to 4 pounds of prepared fruit.

Prep and Macerate the Apples

Peel, core, and cut the apples into a 1/4 to 1/2 inch dice. The pieces aren’t going to cook down extensively, so resist the urge to go much smaller, since that dice is exactly the texture you’ll find in the finished jars.

Transfer the diced apples to a large bowl and sprinkle them with the granulated sugar and bottled lemon juice. Gently stir or toss until the fruit is evenly coated, scraping up any sugar that settles at the bottom of the bowl.

Cover the bowl and store it in the refrigerator overnight, or up to 24 hours. If you’re pressed for time, aim for at least 4 hours in the fridge, though the longer soak pulls more juice from the fruit and does a better job firming the apple pieces.

Strain and Cook the Jam

When the apples have macerated, strain the fruit through a large fine mesh sieve set over a jam pot or saucepan, catching every bit of that sweet, syrupy liquid. The syrup cooks on its own first, which is what keeps the apple pieces intact in the finished jam.

Set the drained apple pieces aside, but keep them close at hand for the next step.

Bring the reserved juices to a hard boil in the saucepan, then carefully add the reserved diced apples.

Be extra careful, and don’t splash yourself with hot syrup.

Cook the apples over medium-high heat, giving them a good stir every so often to prevent scorching.

Around the 20-minute mark, you can begin testing the jam to see whether it will gel, and it can take up to 30 minutes to get there, so don’t be discouraged if you need to test more than once.

Test the Gel Stage

To test for gelling, take a plate that’s been in the freezer for at least an hour and drizzle a bit of hot jam onto the cold surface. Once that spoonful cools, you’ll see the true viscosity of the jam at that moment, and if it wrinkles when nudged, it has reached the gel stage.

An instant read culinary thermometer works too, since gelling occurs at 220 degrees F (105 degrees C) at sea level and slightly lower at higher elevations.

Whether you prefer a thicker jam or one on the thinner side, once it reaches the texture you like, remove the pot from the heat and set up your station for water bath canning.

Canning Apple Jam

To can, prepare your water bath canner, jars, and lids before the jam finishes cooking, so everything is hot and ready when the fruit reaches the gel stage. This batch fills 4 to 5 half pint jars.

Fill the prepared jars with hot apple jam, leaving 1/4 inch headspace, and a canning funnel with headspace measurements is really helpful here. The jam will be thick, so use a spatula or chopstick to de-bubble the jars, refilling whenever necessary to meet the headspace requirement. Wipe the rims with a clean kitchen towel and apply two piece canning lids, adjusting the ring until fingertip tight.

Process the jars in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes, adjusting for altitude. When the timer goes off, turn off the heat and let the jars sit in the canner for 5 more minutes before removing them, which lets the jam cool slightly and helps prevent siphoning (and a subsequent giant mess). Set the jars on a towel lined counter with at least an inch between them, and let them come to room temperature over the next 12 to 24 hours before checking seals.

Setting Notes

No pectin jams finish setting as they cool, so don’t judge the set while the jars are still warm on the counter. A properly cooked batch can take 24 to 48 hours to reach its final texture, and because you control how long this jam cooks, the set lands wherever you stopped it, anywhere from softly spoonable to thick enough to hold a spoon upright.

If the jam still hasn’t set after two full days, it likely came off the heat a bit early. A runny batch isn’t lost, and my guide to troubleshooting jelly set walks through how to re-cook it (or you can call it apple compote and spoon it over ice cream without a shred of regret).

Apple Jam Variations

If you have particularly gorgeous and delicious apples for this recipe, I’d recommend letting them be the star of the show, no additional ingredients required. If you’d rather dress the jam up a bit, warm spices and a splash of something boozy both play beautifully with apples (and for a fruit twist that leans tart, my cranberry apple jam takes the same idea in a holiday direction).

These add-ins can go into a batch without changing the method:

• Split vanilla bean (add at the end of cooking)
• 3 to 4 cardamom pods (added at the beginning of cooking)
• Cinnamon stick (added at the beginning of cooking)
• Crystalized ginger (added at the beginning of cooking)
• Splash of rum or brandy (added during cooking)

Ways to Use Apple Jam

Although apples usually get filed under dessert, apple jam moves easily between sweet and savory. Spread it on sandwiches with nut butter or cheese, swirl it into oatmeal, stuff it into French toast, or spoon it over pancakes and waffles on a slow weekend morning.

In baking, it can be layered into cakes and other baked goods, spooned into jam tarts, rolled into sticky buns, or used as a filling for apple fritters and doughnuts. The diced apple texture holds up in the oven better than a smooth preserve would.

On the savory side, set it out on a cheese and charcuterie board (try it with aged cheddar or gouda), melt it over baked brie, or serve it beside pork or wild boar. And for something different entirely, it can even be shaken into a jam cocktail.

Storage and Shelf Life

Once the jars have cooled for 12 to 24 hours, check the seals and move any jar that didn’t seal to the refrigerator, where it’ll keep for another week or two. Sealed jars belong in the pantry, somewhere cool, dry, and out of direct light.

Properly sealed jars keep their quality for 12 to 18 months on the shelf. Once opened, refrigerate the jar and use the jam within a couple of weeks. As with any home canned food, discard a jar with a bulging or unsealed lid, mold, or an off smell when you open it.

More Ways to Preserve Apples

Jam is only the beginning when the orchard boxes start stacking up. On the canning side, canned applesauce is the workhorse of apple season, my master fruit butter method works for apples, pears, peaches, and more, and the rest of my fruit canning recipes can keep the canner going well into winter.

Beyond the canner, dehydrated apples make an easy pantry snack, and a crock of scraps can become homemade apple cider vinegar with almost no effort. There’s even a method for boiling cider down into apple sugar, a project for the truly dedicated.

Before you head down to the recipe card, here are answers to the questions readers ask most often about making apple jam at home.

Apple Jam FAQs

If your counters are covered in fruit right now, my full collection of apple canning recipes will keep the canner busy all season.

Apple Canning Recipes

Cranberry Apple Jam

Apple Blossom Jelly (Or Cherry, Peach, Pear, etc.)

Canning Apple Cider

If you like making jam the old fashioned way, without added boxed pectin, try persimmon jam or green tomato jam next, or browse all 50+ jam canning recipes and hundreds more water bath canning recipes on the site.

Jam Canning Recipes

Pear Jam

Caramelized Onion Jam

Blueberry Jam (without Added Pectin)