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Comment by ragall | Hacker News Reader

You can make jam with a lot less sugar. I make my own strawberry confiture at home and use about 5% sugar, plus pectine and sweet lemon juice.

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There's no way that would be legal to sell. The whole point of the sugar in jam is preservation - you may get away with it for a while in a home canning scenario, but really a jam with 5% sugar is not shelf stable, and needs to be stored under refrigeration (commercial low sugar jams have to add an additional preservative like potassium sorbate instead).

It doesn't matter it's not legal to sell. I keep it in my basement which is cold (around 15 C) all year round, without problems.

The Joy of Cooking's recipes do this, but the total sugar content ends up the same because they boil down the juice into a thick syrup first. The sugar just comes from the same fruit as what's being preserved, instead of cane or beets.

In some jurisdiction, you cannot call that a jam, because you added foreign pectin. A jam must only use the fruit's natural pectin, plus sugar to activate the pectin.

Irrelevant.

It depends on the type of fruit though, since there are some fruits that won't set properly with the low-sugar pectin. (This only applies to home canning though, since the industrial manufacturers should have access to other thickeners.)

It does come out a bit less viscous than industrial jams, although enough that it can stay on top of a slice of bread, but it's much healthier and, more importantly, it tastes so much better. Works with berries pretty well.

> It does come out a bit less viscous than industrial jams, although enough that it can stay on top of a slice of bread

It really depends on the fruit though—most of the time it works great, but there have been a few fruits that wouldn't set at all (closer to a syrup than a jam) with a low-sugar recipe, but set perfectly when I added more sugar.

> and, more importantly, it tastes so much better.

Agreed 100%.

This was my impression. I also find most juices can be diluted at least 25 % and its still incredibly drinkable, you just get more bang for the buck

You can make quick mocktails with a fruit juice as base (or a mini can of Coke, 200ml): 1 part fruit juice, 1 part fizzy water, a little tonic water, a few dashes of your favorite bitter (Angostura, orange, cardamon, etc...) and a slice of lemon or lime.

And I can make a bowl of cereal with a teaspoon of milk.

Pity you think that.

I think my comment was a touch deeper than you caught. Jam doesn’t have a strictly required amount of sugar, it’s not defined as having X amount, so saying “you can make it with less” is two people talking about how much milk makes a bowl of cereal. Both are correct, it’s jam either way and it’s a bowl of cereal either way. Think about it.

You're right, good point.

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