Is making home made jam cost effective?

moments_of_sanity

We don't eat an awful lot of jam but I would like to try making some, however, I wondered how cost effective this actually is?

Any jam makers out there that can give me an idea?

torbrex

Even if you grow your own fruit (as I do) there is no way that you could ever justify making jam as cost effective.
however
No price can ever be put on the taste and satisfaction in making jam yourself.

TravellingAbuela

This is true, there is nothing more satisfying than looking at all the jars lined up in the cupboard and thinking "I made all those"!

We do lots of foraging in the summer months and keep boxes and boxes of frozen berries in the freezer so I have a ready made supply of fruit to hand all year round.

Among the jams and jellies I make are Bilberry, Bramble, Blackberry & Apple, Elderberry & Apple, Sloe & Apple, Gooseberry and, my favourite, Pear and Lemon.

All the fruit I use (apart from the lemon) is picked in the wild and, therefore, all it costs me to make is the price of the sugar. And, of course, the electricity!

Meadows

Home made is always better but if you don't eat much is it really worth it?

It will keep for a long while if sealed correctly but you may well end up with far more than you would eat, but it could be given to others and also added to food hamper for family members.

Linda32

If you buy premium brands at around £2.00 a jar, maybe.
Or if you grow your own fruit, or get free fall it probably is.

If you want to have a go, however, then how about marmalade, its marmalade making season in January Seville oranges will be available, and these are cheaper than buying fruit for jam.

You do need to invest in a jam pan. But I make mine do double duty and batch cook in it as well.

rachbc

Probably not but its so much nicer. we pyo strawberries and raspberries and make a small batch of jam - I'd always rather have a few jars of several types than make massive batches.

babyshoes

If you can get the fruit very cheap or free, re-use old jars and buy sugar cheaply (I bulk buy sugar from Costco as we make a lot of jams, preserves etc and also use it for home brew) then it becomes affordable, though probably not as cheap as value jam.
The quality though can be up there with the premium brands (once you've had a bit of practise), so if you compare like-for-like it is fairly cost effective. The taste of raspberry jam made with properly ripe berries picked just a few hours before is really incredible, you can really taste the difference. Commercial jams (even the good ones) will usually be made with fruit picked slightly under ripe to make it easier to transport, so it won't have the same depth of flavour, even if the fruit has ripened since picking.

The thing about cheap jams is that they will often be bulked out with much cheaper fruits like apple, and of course they are made with fruit that's not fit for sale to the public due to age/ripeness of produce, size or dodgy bits.

I've even heard of jams being bulked out with non-fruit produce like squash / pumpkin, though I suspect that these days they'd have to list that as a specific ingredient. I know that when I was a child growing up in a third world country much of the jam available had very little actual fruit in it, unless you paid over the odds for premium brands! My father worked for a company which made a lot of processed foods, and the mixed fruit jam which was a purply-red and tasted vaguely berry-ish was in fact mostly squash, apples and/or grapes, flavouring and colouring. It may have included a few other fruits depending on what was cheap at the time, but not in significant quantities!

kippers

I grow my own fruit as I have four allotments. In the summer I made strawberry jam that worked out at 22p per jar so this is cheaper than even the 'value' jam you can buy. However, I grow my fruit so I don't have to buy it and I bulk buy my granulated sugar as I make loads of different jams for xmas hampers for all my family, so then it would be cheaper this way.

I agree with all the other posters, homemade jam tastes lovely and you know exactly what goes into it.

craigywv

hi i make my own jam too i grow raspberries, strawberries and blackcurrants i get a good enough crop off these but where i really score is in summer i check everyday the yellow sticker reduced fruit in sm last year i was lucky i was getting all the berries for a few pence a punnet apricots also i dont follow traditional methods of jam making just equal amount of sugar to fruit weight for weight boil in pot test on saucer how it setting then put in jars i have collected throughout the year well washed of course, i use granulated ordinary sugar and my jam is lovely dont mean to blow my own trumpet but my family love it. It is not hard set like the stuff from sm but a bit runnyer so if you can get cheap fruit give it a go though i wouldnt dream of going and buying full price fruit to do this hope this helps.xxx

lostinrates

babyshoes wrote: »

If you can get the fruit very cheap or free, re-use old jars and buy sugar cheaply (I bulk buy sugar from Costco as we make a lot of jams, preserves etc and also use it for home brew) then it becomes affordable, though probably not as cheap as value jam.
The quality though can be up there with the premium brands (once you've had a bit of practise), so if you compare like-for-like it is fairly cost effective. The taste of raspberry jam made with properly ripe berries picked just a few hours before is really incredible, you can really taste the difference. Commercial jams (even the good ones) will usually be made with fruit picked slightly under ripe to make it easier to transport, so it won't have the same depth of flavour, even if the fruit has ripened since picking.

The thing about cheap jams is that they will often be bulked out with much cheaper fruits like apple, and of course they are made with fruit that's not fit for sale to the public due to age/ripeness of produce, size or dodgy bits.

I've even heard of jams being bulked out with non-fruit produce like squash / pumpkin, though I suspect that these days they'd have to list that as a specific ingredient. I know that when I was a child growing up in a third world country much of the jam available had very little actual fruit in it, unless you paid over the odds for premium brands! My father worked for a company which made a lot of processed foods, and the mixed fruit jam which was a purply-red and tasted vaguely berry-ish was in fact mostly squash, apples and/or grapes, flavouring and colouring. It may have included a few other fruits depending on what was cheap at the time, but not in significant quantities!

Fwiw, squash and pumpkin can make wonderful preserves in their own right....as can apple, apple jelly of various sorts is probably my favourite.

Op we grow lots of fruit and scavenge other fruit, but quite honestly I never make 'standard' jams like plain strawberry or raspberry. * It's not cost effective in the least. I concentrate on the more unusual preserves that one either cannot buy (e.g. I love peach and honey suckle) or when one can they are expensive (membrillo). Even rose jam, which we love and I certainly could make here, I can buy cheaper than I can make with my free rises, for little more than the cost of sugar. Let alone the energy costs of production at home.


Jam and preserve making is theraputic and wonderful though, and if it's for the experience and taste rather than cost cutting, go for it.


*times I might now make my own jam that I can easily buy as cheaply or more so for ok quality is if I make what I think of as 'bowl jam', just making enough of jam of fruit IN SEASON freely available to me or otherwise at risk of being food wastage for a small bowl full to be greedily gobbled at breakfasts and afternoon teas or to go in a cake. It's never cheaper to waste what is available and a small jam bowl or pot of fresh jam is enthusiastically received, and seems more popular for not being in large supply.

happycamel_2

I make it with frozen strawberries, a lemon, sugar and pectin, it tastes as good as Bonne Maman but is much cheaper, I make it with a high fruit to sugar ratio.