Apricot Jam

With this homemade apricot jam recipe you can enjoy sunshine in a jar - all year round! I can honestly say this is the best jam I’ve ever had. Fill delicious cakes with it, use as a glaze for baked goods, or just enjoy as a spread! 

You can't beat homemade

Homemade apricot jam is nothing like what you buy in the shops. It couldn’t be any more different. 

In England I know apricot jam as a transparent orange super sweet preserve – that tastes nothing like real apricots! It is often used for glazing and sticking things together in baking recipes. 

On the other hand, Austrian apricot jam is a taste of heaven. The apricot jam you get in Austria is so good, it’s almost addictive. Once you try it, you’ll never be content with just any old jam… 

We introduced my English family to its delicious fruity taste and they fell in love with it. My niece found it so precious that she even hid a jar of it by her bed! 

So what’s the secret? What makes this jam so amazing is the right choice of apricots and a low sugar-to-fruit ratio. 

With our apricot jam recipe, you will be able to make less sweet and more fruity jam. Summer in a jar! You’ll never go back after that...

Which apricots are best for making jam?

The riper the fruit the better the jam. Jam is perfect for using up imperfect, bruised and squishy fruits. As long as it’s not started to mould you are good to use it. All the apricots we used for this years batch of jam were rescued from the ground. Less waste, more taste!

Apricots are a huge thing in the place in Austria where Paul is from. People in the Wachau valley grow and use a local heirloom variety that is a bit small, but unmatched in flavour.

You can use any variety of apricots to make this jam – but the better the flavour of the fruit itself, the better your jam will be! 

You can freeze apricots and use them to make jam all year round. Cut in half and destone them before freezing on a tray. You can also use frozen apricots to make our amazing vegan apricot cake.

What kind of sugar is best for making jam?

Apricots are not so naturally high in pectin. And the riper the fruit, the less pectin. Therefore it is helpful to use a sugar with added pectin to make it easier and quicker to set. 

Jam sugar

Jam sugar is a special kind of sugar designed for making jam. It contains pectin, and most often citric acid to further help the pectin to gel up. 

Traditionally jam has a one to one sugar to fruit ratio. In other words, for 1 kilogram of fruit you would use 1 kilogram of sugar. Common jam sugar has just the right amount of pectin and citric acid to get the best results in this scenario. 

In Austria and Germany they also sell jam sugar labelled 2:1 or 3:1. These contain more pectin and citric acid which allows you to make a more fruity jam with less sugar. Most often they also contain a preservative to give the jam a long shelf life.

But we cannot get our hands on these 2:1 or 3:1 jam sugars in the UK. We did some research and figured we can get away with regular 1:1 jam sugar using more fruit and still have jam that is tasty and keeps well. 

How to make it

The basic principles of making jam are the same for any kind of fruit, but every recipe has some variation. So here’s how we make our delicious, extra fruity apricot jam. You’ll find the full recipe in the card at the end of the post.

Step 1 - Place the prepared apricots (destoned and cut into halves or quarters) in a large saucepan along with the jam sugar. We use a fruit to sugar ratio of 2:1, using regular jam sugar. 

Tip: If you are planning to make chunky jam, let the apricots sit there with the sugar for around half an hour. This draws out water from the fruits, which prevents the jam from getting runny once jarred and helps it keep longer.

Step 2 - Boil up the fruit on medium to high heat and keep stirring most of the time. The apricots release their water and turn soft. 

Step 3 - Add lemon juice. This has two benefits. It makes the jam less sweet and more fruity but also helps it set better. Pectin gels up better in acidic environments, and we make use of that to make up for the lower jam sugar content. 

Step 4 - Take the saucepan off the heat and blend the fruit using an immersion blender. We like our jam completely smooth with few to no bits. For a chunky jam, simply blend a bit less, but try and get all the big bits. 

If you don’t have an immersion blender, no problem! Puree the fruit in a food processor before heating it up, which works just as well.

Step 5 - Simmer the jam on medium heat. Any froth or foam should dissipate after a while. Do regular gelling tests with cold plates to find out when the jam is ready to be jarred. 

Step 6 - Jar it up while it’s hot! Use clean, sterilised jars. (See below for tips).

How to tell when my jam is done?

The cooking time of jam can vary from case to case, and there are several things that have an effect on it. More obviously, bigger batches will take longer to reach the same gelling stage. 

Also, some fruits have more pectin, some less. The riper the fruit, the less pectin it contains and the longer the jam will need to cook for. 

So no batch of jam takes exactly the same time as another to set properly. But there’s a different way to tell when the jam is ready to be filled into jars.

Gelling test

When jam is warm or hot, it is always more liquid than when it’s cooled down. So how to tell what it will be like? There’s a cool trick (quite literally).

When you start cooking the jam, place a few saucers in the freezer. Once you are at the end of making the jam (see step by step above), it’s time to do some gelling tests. Here’s how:

1. Take a saucer out of the freezer and transfer a small amount of jam onto it. 
2. Allow the jam to cool down on the icy cold plate. A first indicator that it needs more cooking time is if it spreads on its own into a thin layer.
3. Tilt the plate to check how well the jam has set. If it only flows very slowly and gets small wrinkles when you push it with the back of the spoon, it’s done!
4. If the jam fails this test, cook it for a bit longer and repeat the gelling test every few minutes with another saucer fresh from the freezer.

The jam will also slowly get thicker and thicker, but those wrinkles are the most reliable sign that the jam is finished cooking and ready to be jarred. 

You can also see the wrinkles on the jam in the saucepan when you stir it slowly. If you see those tiny folds like small waves in front of a boat, the jam is ready!

Jarring and storing

Here’s what you can do to give your apricot jam a long shelf life:

• Use clean jars and sterilise them either with boiling water or by putting them in the oven at 120°C for 10 minutes. Importantly, do the same with the lids!
• Also sterilise all tools you use for cooking and filling the jam into the jars. This could be the ladle, funnel, etc.
• Jar up the jam fresh from the stove while it’s still hot. This kills off most microbes that might catch a ride. It also makes sure the jar seals itself - with an audible ‘pop!’ - as the jam cools down. 
• Some people put their jars upside down on their lids right after filling. The hot jam sterilises the lid from the inside. You will also notice immediately if a jar doesn’t seal well… 
• Store your apricot jam in a cool dark place and it should keep at least for up to one year. 
• Once opened, keep the jam in the fridge.
• Always use a clean spoon. Ideally, don’t use it for anything else, like spreading the jam on toast. Don’t use the same knife you’ve used to spread margarine. This is one of the most common causes for jam spoilage once a jar is open. 

So, don’t lick the spoon and stick it back in! Or you might just have to finish the jar up to keep it from going bad 😉

How to enjoy your jam

• Spread it - great on toast, amazing on seedy rye sourdough
• As a filling - for crepe or vegan Apricot Jam Doughnuts
• As a glaze - for tarts and pastries like our Vegan Apple Tart
• In sauces - mix with mustard for a tasty dip or marinade
• Spoon it - pure and straight from the jar! Yum! 

More apricot recipes

This apricot jam is our favourite way to enjoy apricots the whole year round, but here are some more apricot recipes we cannot get enough of: 

Vegan Apricot Cake

Austrian Apricot Dumplings

Vegan Jam Tarts

📖 Recipe