This tomato jam recipe is easy and oh, so delicious. It comes together in about an hour with just a few basic ingredients. And has 101 uses!
Course Side Dish
Keyword Sauce, Tomatoes
Servings 1pint
Ingredients
1 tbspolive oil
1shallotroughly diced
1tspKosher salt
2lbstomatoes
1chipotle pepper in adobe sauceminced
1tbspadobe saucefrom chipotle pepper can
1tbspsmoked sweet paprika
1tbspground cumin
⅔cupbrown sugar
1lemonzested & juiced
Instructions
Over medium heat, saute the shallot in the olive oil and salt in a medium sauce pan. Cook for about 5 minutes until the shallot softens.
Meanwhile, core your tomatoes but cutting into quarters and cutting off the core end. Add chopped tomatoes to shallots.
Add the chipotle pepper, adobo sauce, smoked paprika, cumin, brown sugar, lemon zest, and half of the lemon juice (you will only need half of the lemon juice total.)
Bring all of the ingredients to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for an hour or so, stirring occasionally, until the jam has cooked down to a thick consistency. You'll be able to run a spoon along the bottom of the pot and the jam won't immediately run together.
Once the jam is appropriately...jammy, move into an airtight container (a pint-sized mason jar works well!) and refrigerate until cool. Spread on everything.
Notes
You can use more or fewer chipotle peppers depending on your heat tolerance. I thought 1 chipotle pepper was spicy but not scorching. If you'd like a milder heat level, use half of a chipotle pepper and 1/2 tbsp. of the adobo sauce.
Make sure you use sweet smoked paprika instead of hot smoked paprika; a hot paprika will upend the heat balance.
Any type of tomato will do. Roma, aka plum, tomatoes tend to be the most consistent year round, but any decent tomato you can find should do here.
I found that 2/3 of sugar to 2 pounds of tomato is the right sweetness balance. I tried a full cup and the jam was a bit too sweet (though, I won't lie, still pretty tasty); half of a cup was not sweet enough and tasted more like sauce than jam.