It boils down to your choice. As far as I know, just like all other tomato products and the other low acid fruits, acid in the form of lemon or lime juice or at least citric acid, is required for tomato jam safety.

Blogs are good sources for cooking recipes but not for canning recipes. If you stick with the approved sources for canning recipes then you can feel comfortable with the safety of your foods.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP - Tomao Jam recipe

I checked the Ball Blue Book recipe for Tomato Jam. It calls for fresh lemon zest and lemon juice. It does not say "Bottled" lemon juice. Nor does it say fresh lemon juice. Many of the Ball recipes use the word "Bottled" when specifying lemon juice.

In this case - since the Ball recipe also calls for fresh lemon zest, I would make the assumption that the lemon juice could be fresh. So I'm thinking you would be safe with the fresh lime juice that you used.

It puts us at a disadvantage not to know anything beyond reputable canning blogger. There are so many variables in terms of proportions, sugar content and additional possible lower-acid ingredients.

Generally in a full-sugar preserve any risk is mitigated by the preservative and water-absorbing presence of sugar in addition to whatever acid is used.

However, without seeing the recipe itself we can't do more than offer generalities.

Carol

Here is the recipe. Any constructive thoughts are welcome.

5 pounds tomatoes, finely chopped
3 1/2 cups sugar
8 tablespoons lime juice
2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon red chili flakes

Well the approved recipe calls for 2 1/4 lbs. tomatoes ( about 1/2 of your recipe) to 1/4 cup lemon juice so your recipe seems low in acid. Plus it is fresh not bottled so not standardized or stabilized. Bottled is the accepted standard in canning whether stated so or not in the recipe. Plus yours has a full cup less sugar in it for 2x as many tomatoes so less water-absorbing benefit from the sugar as well.

So is yours safe? It might be. But definitely not as safe as it should be. Bottom line - there is no way to know for sure and you have to decide if the amount of risk is acceptable to you. If it were mine I'd remake it by incorporating it into a new batch using the approved recipe. JMO

Dave

The recipe in the Ball Blue Book - which is also a safe, approved recipe:

6 lbs red tomatoes
1 pkg powdered pectin
1 tsp grated lemon peel
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp lemon juice
3-1/2 cup sugar

So your recipe has 1 lb less tomatoes, but 12 times the lime juice and the same amount of sugar.

(I think I also know what canning blogger you are talking about - she recently got a canning cookbook deal? If so, she actually has quite a few "unapproved" practices. I always compare her recipes against approved ones - just to be safe.)

Well, I'm just going to put it in the fridge and freezer. Thanks for the input.

I agree that the 1/2 cup of lime juice is sufficient, especially when compared with the Ball recipe. The NCHFP is a wonderful reliable resource but it's not the only game in town.

However, even with a "reliable" blogger, I always double-check recipes and recommendations against other sources. Even if the recipe is safe, it's so easy to mis-type ingredient amounts or times and throw a recipe off. The Ball Blue Book has occasionally had errors; how much easier for someone who doesn't have a staff of editors.

In preserves I don't generally use the bottled citrus juice and, in fact, in a reliable recipe from the NCHFP, the BBB, etc. if bottled isn't specified, I don't use it. I know in salsas, tomato products, pickles, bottled is always specified for good reason. But if it's peach jam, I don't worry about it. While it's always the safest, most conservative option, with sweet preserves I use fresh. However, if I were making banana jam or some similarly low-acid concoction, I would go with the bottled.

I confess for me the issue doesn't arise in most cases. I tried tomato jam once. Never again. It just isn't a favorite with me.

Carol

The NCHFP is a wonderful reliable resource but it's not the only game in town.

Agree completely that it isn't the only game in town but it is the most convenient for online info. Using it is much easier than going to dig out the canning books and type up the recipe here. ;) And NCHFP is the foundation source for all the other approved recipe sources as well.

And if one is online looking for safe canning recipes anyway then it is far safer to use NCHFP than some unknown blog (not to mention many of the other recipe sites.)

Dave

No argument from me on that. The Ball (or Bernardin) sites are limited in their resources. Of course, not everything is on the NCHFP site, but their search engine can bring up other Extension agencies. The only problem is that the way their search is set up, they want you to search Extension agencies by state. For a general search Google is really more efficient.

Carol