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This easy peach jam is cooked in the Instant Pot, with no added pectin needed!

If you’re looking for an easy Instant Pot peach jam recipe, this is the perfect way to put summer into a jar!

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Peaches are one of my very favorite summer fruits. Biting into a rosy ripe peach while the juices drip down my wrists in rivulets is one of life’s simple pleasures.

Here in Nashville, where I live, it can be a little difficult to find juicy, ripe peaches during the summer. Too often the peaches from the grocery store are mealy and underwhelming.

My favorite peaches come from The Peach Truck, which brings peaches from a family farm in Georgia to be sold at local stands and farmers’ markets (they also ship and travel to out-of-state locations, too!).

I love to use the perfectly ripe peaches for peach sorbet, deep dish peach pie, topped with a honey lime dressing for fruit, and in this easy Instant Pot peach jam!

It’s the perfect small batch peach jam recipe, which you can double if you’d like! I also follow this method to make pineapple jam and strawberry jam in the Instant Pot!

Making Peach Jam without Pectin

The first type of jam I ever learned to make was peach jam. It was just three simple ingredients–peaches, sugar, and lemon juice.

Many jam recipes call for pectin, which is what gives the jam a gel-like consistency.

I don’t always have pectin on hand, but that’s no problem, because lemons are actually naturally high in pectin! Adding the lemon juice not only helps to brighten the flavor of the peaches, but it also helps the consistency.

How to Make Peach Jam in the Instant Pot

It’s really easy to make your peach jam in the pressure cooker! There’s no need for store-bought pectin and no need to even peel the peaches!

Ingredients You’ll Need:

• Peaches
• Sugar
• Lemon Juice
• Vanilla extract (optional)

How to Make It:

(Full printable recipe is available below)

Prepare the peaches. First, you’ll chop up the peaches, discarding the peach pits (no need to peel them–the peels just melt right into the jam!).

Add the slices to a food processor and pulse a few times, just to get them finely chopped up. You don’t want to puree them! The sizes of the pieces won’t be totally uniform–some chunks will be large, while other pieces will be tiny. That variation is what we’re going for.

If you don’t have a food processor, you can simply chop them up finely by hand or use a potato masher to mash them up a bit.

Put the peaches into the insert pot of the Instant Pot.

Add sugar and lemon juice. Next, you’ll add the sugar and lemon juice and give everything a good stir to combine.

Pressure cook. Set a cook time of one minute at high pressure. After the cook time is complete, allow a 15-minute natural release of pressure, followed by a quick release of remaining pressure.

Simmer. When you first open the pressure cooker, the ingredients will be kind of soupy. That’s okay! Go ahead and add the vanilla extract at this point, if using.

Use the Saute function to simmer the contents, stirring often, until the mixture thickens and passes a spoon test (see below for instructions). This usually takes about 10-15 minutes.

Just be sure you are stirring frequently while simmering, otherwise your peaches will scorch at the bottom of the insert pot!

Ladle into jars and cool. Transfer the jam into clean jars and allow it to cool to room temperature before putting them in the fridge or freezer.

I love to serve this on homemade dinner rolls or biscuits, or over a stack of homemade fluffy pancakes! You could also swirl it into some homemade Instant Pot yogurt or single-serve oatmeal.

How to Do a Spoon Test for Peach Jam

Jam thickens and gels more as it cools, so it can be a little tricky to know how long to simmer it, since it’s going to thicken more after we stop simmering it.

This is where the spoon test can be helpful!

While the jam is simmering, put a couple of spoons in the freezer to get nice and cold.

As the jam starts to thicken, quickly dip a cold spoon into the jam and pull it back out, watching to see if the jam starts to gel up on the spoon. If so, it’s done! If the jam is still pretty runny and doesn’t gel, it needs to cook a bit more.

Notes and Adaptations:

• This recipe is for jam suitable for refrigerating or freezing. If you want to properly and safely can your jam to be shelf stable, you should follow instructions for proper preservation. You can also read more guidelines about preserving jam made without pectin.
• I have not tested this recipe with frozen peaches. If you want to try using frozen peaches, I’d recommend thawing them first and draining off extra liquid.
• Jam foams while cooking, which is why we use a 15 minute natural release to allow the foam to subside before opening the vent. However, if when you open the vent you still have foam spewing out, quickly close the vent and wait a couple of minutes before attempting to open the vent again.

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