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I was trying to customise blueberry jam for a friend who did not like the jam with the entire fruit in it. So I had to filter out the seeds and skin. But the consistency is always a bit runny.

I use Frozen blueberry and for 650 grams of blueberry I used 150 grams honey. 1/2 a lemon's juice. Thawed berries and heated a bit, filtered the pulp and juice. Then added the honey and lemon juice . Brought it to 96°C (205°F because if I boiled more than 98°C it became too hard) and cooled down before packing.

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    Do you not use any pectin or did you just not mention it? Are you following a recipe?
    – Catija
    Dec 16, 2018 at 3:55
  • This is a three ingredients no pectin jam. Most of the recipes for blueberry jam do not talk about removing seeds. Came across this recipe in a book sometime back. Which said for 2lbs (900grams) 220 grams of honey - so for 650 grams berries I took 150grams.
    – Newtocookingandbaking
    Dec 16, 2018 at 4:10
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    Well... I'm not answering because I don't know much about jam making, so I may be entirely wrong... but I think a lot of the natural pectin is in the solids, so when you remove them, you have none to cause the gelling. That's my first guess. Lots of even whole blueberry jam recipes use pectin, so ... if it's too watery, that seems like the easy solution... but, even if this is the only jam you've ever made, it's more than I've done, so, it's just a guess. :)
    – Catija
    Dec 16, 2018 at 4:13
  • Haha I understand.. thanks for the inputs. I understand that removing the pectin component does impact the setting of jam and it's consistency.. but being high pectin fruits usually berries jams set even if we remove the seeds (I do this with raspberries strawberries and blackberries all of which set well).. but blueberry doesn't even after multiple trials. Always removing seeds gives me only blueberry syrup or a very thick syrup instead of jam like consistency. I don't mind adding pectin but just wanted to try without adding pectin to get the right consistency.
    – Newtocookingandbaking
    Dec 16, 2018 at 5:41
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    Blueberries are not a high-pectin fruit, though. :) at least, not according to the list I've looked at.
    – Catija
    Dec 16, 2018 at 5:42

1 Answer 1

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Blueberries are generally low-pectin fruits, so many jam recipes and jam making guides specifically call for adding pectin. That said, some do not - but these use the whole pureed fruit. When you filter out the seeds and skin, you remove much of what pectin there is in blueberries naturally, leaving you with runny jam.

The solution, then, is to add pectin or some other fruit that contains some.

As a note, unripe fruit, including blueberries, often has more pectin than ripe, but if you're using frozen blueberries, they're likely to be picked at their peak and rather low in pectin.

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    Making seedless jams generally works better with quite a bit of slow cooking of the fruit, mashing it a bit as well. You get more flavour, colour and yield that way. But this isn't really a jam: there's very little sugar compared to the amount of fruit, and it cooks much lower. It won't keep like jam.
    – Chris H
    Dec 17, 2018 at 7:41
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    True.. tried with low flame yesterday and it set better (though not as good as a jam - so I call it a spread).. first few minutes it was medium to high and towards the end simmered it - overall time for 650 gram pulp + juice was 40 mins..
    – Newtocookingandbaking
    Dec 17, 2018 at 11:10

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