who knows how to make jam?

I think that is what bexy13's post was alluding to: buying the sugar with pectin in it is expensive in comparison to buying ordinary granulated sugar. And that does make perfect sense - but only if you have a source of natural pectin available (which, as you rightly pointed out, is in apples but also citrus fruit and some berry fruit too).

 

Pectin is high here in USA. But I have a mania about not paying money for gardening and using the stuff I grow. Spending to produce always bothers me because I could have just bought it instead. A completely spurious logic - because it still is still cheap to buy, but I keep fooling my self. At least the economic utility of growing ones own is marginally better than other hobbies like, say, golf.

I used to re-build my own truck engines and transmissions and things for the same reason - thankfully I quit that about ten years ago when I built my bus.

 

Don't buy expensive 'jam sugar'/pectin stock, make your own pectin stock by simply boiling up apple cores/skins, strain, and freeze. (see table in post #6 above for how much apple pectin is in the solids, rather than the juice). You can always collect the necessary bits in a bag in your freezer until you have enough to boil up.

 

We have a few decent Preserve manufacturers in the UK but nothing,
but nothing,
is as good as home made,
Jenny

 

During the war weren't they making parsnip jam and other crazy stuff? Good for glazing the Sunday roast spam though.

 

I've always used granulated sugar when Jam making

 

so have me and my family. We rarely ever use pectin/jam sugar