Recipe for the Best Tomato Jam, Made from Scratch | Foodal (2024)

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Have you ever wished that you could bottle up a moment and save it, maybe to divvy out a few drops at a time, to experience the sheer pleasure of a certain season or period in your life over and over again?

Trust me when I say that no matter how busy you are right now, you need to drop everything and pause for a minute to let me tell you about this recipe.

This tomato jam is the essence of summer.

It’s outdoor picnics enjoyed while the sun sets in the distance. It’s the bottled version of long summer nights, and roads lined with cornfields.

It’s spoonfuls of Saturday morning farmers markets and months of vacation from school, when the weeks stretch out before you, never rising until late morning when the temperature is just beginning to creep upwards as an indicator of the steamy afternoon to come.

It’s a reminder of visits to the pool and the lake and your friends’ houses, when everything smells like cut grass and hot asphalt, with just a hint of the sweet aroma of your neighbor’s rows upon rows of flowers wafting by on a warm breeze.

And look, you don’t have to believe me – yet. But to say that this tomato jam will change your life is no exaggeration.

It’s a unique variation to your typical summery varieties of fruit spreads, like peach or strawberry basil.

But when you try it at home and see for yourself what happens to a pound and a half of freshly picked, blanched, and peeled sweet tomatoes (ones that you plucked from your own garden, or picked up from a roadside stand) you will start to believe in the magic of this recipe.

When they’re combined with onions, basil, honey, and spices, and left to simmer low and slow, releasing their juices and breaking down and turning into something else entirely, you will know that alchemy is real, because you will have created a substance that is roughly the equivalent of tomato gold.

You can spread it on portobello mushrooms, fresh off the grill; slather it on your morning toast, alongside your eggs; sandwich it with fresh mozzarella and basil on buttered sourdough, to make a grilled cheese that tastes like the summer evenings that I remember spending at Spacca Napoli in Chicago, and that will remind you of your own cherished summer moments.

In other words, like avocados, like love, like summer itself, this tomato jam is something to celebrate – for its ability to surprise you, for its pure delicious magic, for its rare and uncanny ability to not only make good on its promises, but to be better than you ever dreamed it could be.

Make it, try it, and share it with your loved ones; it will be worth your time. This is a deceptively simple recipe that will bring you joy, and allow you to experience the simple pleasures of summer at every meal.

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Cooking By the Numbers…

Step 1 – Prep and Measure Ingredients

Wash all of the produce well, and measure out your honey and spices.

Juice the lemon, and remove any seeds if necessary.

Get out a sturdy cutting board and your favorite chef’s knife. Dice the onion and set it aside. Fighting to stop those tears? Check out our tips.

Remove the stems from the basil and discard (or save them for use in a homemade vegetable stock). Chop the leaves and set them aside.

Step 2 – Blanch and Peel Tomatoes

Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. Cut a shallow X in the peel of the blossom end of each tomato (opposite the stem). Fill a large bowl with ice and water to make an ice bath, and set it aside.

Add the tomatoes in batches to the boiling water. Once the skin begins to separate, wrinkling and splitting in some places after about 45 seconds to 1 minute, remove from the water using a slotted spoon and transfer to the ice bath.

Allow the water to return to a boil between batches if necessary, and repeat the process until all of the tomatoes have been blanched.

When they are cooled enough to handle, carefully peel, core, and dice the tomatoes, and place them in a large saucepan or small stockpot.

Step 3 – Cook

To make the jam, add the lemon juice, onion, basil, honey, salt, black pepper, and cayenne to the pot. Stir to combine.

Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium-high heat, then reduce to medium. Keep the mixture simmering until it is thick and syrupy, stirring occasionally. This will take about 1-2 hours (it took 1 1/2 hours for me).

Do not allow the mixture to boil or stick to the bottom of the pan while it is cooking. You don’t want your jam to burn.

Step 4 – Cool and Store

Remove the saucepan from the heat and let the jam come to room temperature before storing in an airtight container. It will keep in the refrigerator for up to three days.

Why Does Homemade Taste So Much Better?

Sometimes, when I look at certain recipes, I have a slight hesitation.

Here’s what goes through my head: “Is it really worth spending the time to make this from scratch when I could just look for it at the store?”

Then I remember, the answer to this question is always yes. There’s a reason that everyone keeps saying homemade always tastes better – because it is 100% true.

The beauty of this recipe is that you can maximize the flavors of the summer garden without using any processed of chemically altered ingredients, so you know that it is fresh. Not to mention, making this tomato jam is a total breeze.

The only major time investment you have to make is while you’re waiting for it to cook down over the stove. But this gives you plenty of time to do other things, and you don’t have to hover!

Clean the kitchen, read a few chapters of a good book, chill with a glass of wine… think of this as an opportunity to get something done that you might not otherwise, or to just sit back, relax, and enjoy those delicious aromas that are wafting over from the stove.

Trust me when I say, once you taste it, you’ll be ecstatic that you decided to make it from scratch.

Tell us what you would use this jam for first in the comments below, and be sure to give the recipe a five-star rating if you loved it!

Photos by Meghan Yager, © Ask the Experts, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. See our TOS for more details. Originally published on June 22, 2012. Last updated: October 16, 2023 at 11:12 am. With additional writing and editing by Meghan Yager and Allison Sidhu.

Nutritional information derived from a database of known generic and branded foods and ingredients and was not compiled by a registered dietitian or submitted for lab testing. It should be viewed as an approximation.