Old-Fashioned Green Tomato Jam with Lime & Cinnamon
Green tomato jam with cinnamon and lime is a wonderfully bright and flavorful jam that toes the line between sweet and savory. This old-fashioned recipe is made with no added pectin!
Yield: about 2 ½ cups/600mL
Ingredients
- 2 pounds / 900 g green (unripe) tomatoes, about 4
- 2 cups / 400 g granulated sugar
- 3 tablespoons / 45 g fresh squeezed lime juice
- 2 teaspoons finely grated lime zest
- 1 cinnamon stick
- pinch fine sea salt
Instructions
- Fill a large stock pot or canning pot 2/3 full with water; place a rack of some sort in the bottom and place over medium-high heat. Wash/sterilize your jars and submerge in water bath as it heats. The pot should be just about boiling by the time the jam is ready to go. Keep jars in hot (not boiling) water until ready to use. This recipe can also be stored in the fridge or freezer if you don't want to deal with canning it.
- Peel green tomatoes (they should be plenty firm to peel with a vegetable peeler). Cut in half, then remove a triangular wedge of the core. Coarsely chop remaining fruit, then transfer to a food processor and process until smooth (you can opt to leave it a bit chunkier if you prefer a more relish-like texture). You should have about 3 1/2 cups of tomato puree.
- Pour tomato puree into a large, heavy saucepan, along with sugar, lime juice and zest. Add salt and cinnamon stick and stir to evenly combine.
- Bring to a gentle boil over medium/medium-high heat, stirring occasionally so jam does not scald on the bottom, until jam reaches 217-220ºF (*see notes for altitude adjustments). This will likely take around 30-45 minutes depending on your stove and pan. The jam will be thick and crystalline in appearance, with an applesauce-like texture that falls off the spatula in thick (not watery) drops. The freezer gel test doesn't really work for this recipe, so temperature is really the best indicator of doneness.
- Discard cinnamon stick. Ladle jam into hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch of head space. Wipe jar rims and screw on lids. Process in boiling water for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Check seals. Any unsealed jars should be refrigerated and used within 3 weeks.
Notes
- For folks at high altitude, adjust your target temperature down by 2ºF for every 1000 feet of elevation. For example if you are at 5,000 feet elevation, aim for 210ºF instead of 220ºF.