Ball Realfruit Freezer Pectin, Homemade Jam and Jelly Recipe, 5.4 Oz

No longer sold at local grocery stores.

I can have instant fresh jam. Just blend the fresh fruit, add the sugar and pectin, blend again, set, and enjoy! Delicious! My favorite!

The 30 minute pectin for freezer jam is hard to find. The price is outrageous. Why is Balk not having it in the stores? It works the best for strawberry freezer jam.

This is the best thing since the sliced bread you will use the jam on! (Homemade bread, if you can). Prepare your fresh ripe (or frozen) fruit, no need to cook it, just clean and remove any stems etc. Mash or cut in small pieces and mix with the pectin and sugar if using. Splenda and Stevia also work perfectly. I found that my fresh strawberries needed very little added sweetener. Pectin is used at about 1 TB per cup of fruit. All you do is mix for about 3 minutes (or until your hand gets real tired!). There is a bit of confusing information as to how many jars of jam this will make, but that is because you may need to add a little more to some fruits to get the consistency you want. I would say there are between 15 and 20 cups worth of pectin. It makes the best jam you have ever had! I tried this with juice and it didn't work very good for making jelly. The Ball web site "doesn't recommend it" for jelly, but I just had to try. I used the Wood's Boiled Cider, (available here on Amazon) and diluted it 1 part cider to 7 parts water. I tested it with two cups of the cider and 2 TB of the pectin. It really didn't set up at all. I will use the low/no sugar pectin next time, and boil the cider as recommended by Ball. I will add a drop of LorrAnn cinnamon oil next time to get that apple/cinnamon jelly taste like the kind I had purchased at a local orchard. (it was $15 a jar, yikes!)In summary, what could be easier than crushing some fruit a little, stirring in the pectin and letting it sit a few minutes to thicken? The entire jar of jam will cost about 50 cents and the best part for me is that you can add any herbs or flavorings you want, to create one-of-a-kind gourmet jams. Grandma never had it so easy!***UPDATE***: I found a recipe for caramel apple jam and altered it to make with instant pectin. 4 cups apples (peeled ,cored and chunky-chopped). lightly boil to just slightly tender, crush a little and cool, then and add 1 tsp butter flavoring and 1 tsp caramel flavoring, (or to taste)and 3-4 TB of instant pectin. and sugar, splenda or stevia to taste.Stir for 3 minutes or so. For apple pie jam, use vanilla instead of the caramel flavoring and add apple pie spices, and raisins if you like. These are not only good on toast, but terrific on yogurt and ice cream too!

This works great for freezer jam.

Did not set up

If you want easy and fantastic, this is the stuff. One weekend every year we visit the farmer's market and buy a dozen flats of berries and make an entire years jam and this is stuff we use! It is so simple that my husband made his own jam this year, all 100 cups of it in one afternoon. I will say that I have tried to make peach jam with this several times and it never worked. For peach, use the old stuff and plan on cooking it. (That is the only reason it got 4 stars.) Anyone who has been successful with peach, please let me know how you did it in your review.I have found that you get about 3 1/2 full batches of jam per flat for raspberries/blackberries and about 6 batches per flat for strawberries.Also, I would recommend the Ball Freezer Jam containers. They aren't glass, don't have to be sterilized for freezer jam, and stack so well for storage for our next yearly jam party.

This pectin made some beautiful muscadine jelly this fall!! Easy to follow the directions. I’m so pleased with this product! Mmm Mmm!!!