It's not a safety issue. The only issues would be

1) Due to the reduction in sugar the set may be less firm (won't set as well).

2) Once opened the jam may not last as long.

With a slight reduction it's very possible neither of these will be an issue.

Carol

Thanks! I am not using any added pectin, so I'll experiment. I knew if I asked here, I would get a knowledgeable answer!

Absolutely. I put up lots of various jams without commercial pectin every year, maybe 50 pints, and always reduce the sugar by about half from Ball. The jam is not runny. (We have grape vines and I have started using some grape juice for sugars and natural pectin.) Actually, I don't cut the sugar in half as much as throw in enough to sweeten slightly and then add more until it turns glossy and sets in the freezer on a plate.

Choose only very ripe fruit, with taste. This is really the key. Commercial non-pectin preserves load up on sugar to disguise the fact that they don't select fruit carefully.

If you have a liquid at some point, reduce it separately so the whole batch does not have a boiled taste.

For instance, I'm making Concord grape jam right now. I save the juice that leaches out of the insides separately, cold, and simmer only the pulp, then strain this. Then briefly steam and coarse chop (and repick!) the skins and combine them with the cold juice. Then I simmer down the left over juice extracted from the skins with the pulp juice extracted from the insides (about 1/4 of the total, much less with other fruit)

Sometimes I use the sugar with the cooking juices at this point and make a kind of syrup, but I want the skins to soak in the sugar, so not with Concord jam.

You can prepare a lot of pulp at once, but for the last step, when the sugars are becoming glossy, work in smaller batches. That's what they say, actually I am too lazy and big batches work fine if you stir them!

Thought I should report back. I now have 44 jars of grape jam sitting on shelves in the basement, YAY! Reducing the sugar worked just fine, and the jam tastes wonderful. They were concord grapes, by the way. I did find some Ball No Sugar Needed pectin, and used that in two of the batches. Those batches required less boiling time and went a lot faster, but comparing those batches to the ones with no added pectin, the grape flavor was not quite as intense. So I guess if I am lucky enough to get free grapes next year, I will do them all without the addition of the commercial pectin. Thanks again to all who gave me the answers I needed!!

If you are using grapes, it has so much pectin in it that you can definitely reduce the sugar a lot. I do without pectin when using grapes in jam, or in the plum jam I made tonight. Other times I use Pomona pectin or Ball No Sugar Needed Pectin, and then I can use as little sugar as I want. My jams are very fruity and extremely popular. :-) They all get eaten in a few years, but I haven't seen any problems with them not storing well. Banana jam turns kind of brown but I think that would happen regardless of sugar levels.

Marcia

led zep, the only jam that really has a weird color for me with no sugar is strawberry. It turns kind of a gray/pink, extremely unappetizing.

louster, congratulations on all that delicious jam. I try to cut the sugar way down, I like the fruit flavor better, but most people I know that were my Dad's age loved that sugar-y jam, so sweet it made my teeth ache and didn't taste like anything except colored sugar. Maybe that's because it's what they were used to?

Annie

I want to thank all of you for the information about reducing the amount of sugar in jam recipes. I love to can, freeze, and dehydrate fruits and vegetables.

for the past several years I have canned less jams because they are just too sweet, I thought the amount of sugar given in recipes made the jams safe. Now I know better. I have a freezer full of homegrown rhubarb and will combine it with strawberries to make rhubarb/strawberry jam using less sugar. I will process it in a hot water bath to be sure it is safe.

Does anyone have recipes for canning pie fillings that do not contain more water and sugar than fruit?

All the NCHFP pie filling instructions have more fruit than either sugar or water.

Dave

http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_02/canpie.html