Green Tomato Bacon Jam

A savory freezer jam made with green tomatoes, sweet onion, and crispy bacon. This is AMAZING mixed with ground beef for burgers.

A note to the vegetarians who have visited this blog before: thank you for coming back! I beg your pardon, but today's vegetable recipe is really directed at the omnivores and carnivores that stop by (and thank you omnivores, if you've been here before, for returning!)
If you're new here, welcome! I blog about feeding my family seasonal produce from our CSA farm share, our garden, or good deals I find. I like to cook based on what I have available, so I created my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient (vegetable, or fruit, or fungus) which you can find in the pages across the top. For more recipes using green tomatoes, please check out my Green Tomato Recipe Collection.

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When I started this blog I didn't fully appreciate the versatility of a green, unripe, tomato. I liked to eat fried green tomatoes and hadn't ventured from there. Then a friend shared her Slow Cooker Green Tomato Garlic Chili recipe and I thought I'd dabble in more green tomato recipes. I've got 10 posted--so far!


I decided to make jam with green tomatoes from sheer curiosity. I saw sweet green tomato jam recipes, and savory red tomato and tomato bacon jam recipes, but I didn't find a savory green tomato bacon jam recipe. I started with this recipe and swapped out the red tomato for a bit larger volume of green tomatoes and onion.

If you grow tomatoes or know someone who does, keep this recipe in mind as the nights get cooler (as tomatoes don't ripen if it's too cool at night).  Sure, you can pick tomatoes and ripen them on the counter, but aren't you getting a wee bit satiated by ripe summer tomatoes?  Are you looking for a little something different?  My answers to those questions are yes and yes, so I'm sharing this today.


Make this jam when your tomato crop is in danger of succumbing to frost.  Store the excess jars in the freezer. Next time you're making burgers, mix 1/4 cup of jam in with a pound of ground meat (I've used beef and turkey so far) then continue with your usual burger making.  I prefer to make quarter pound burgers because I get plenty of protein and sure don't need the bigger burger, and I can make 1 pound of ground meat easily feed our family of 4 on burger nights.

For more recipes using green tomatoes, please see my Green Tomato Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.


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This jam provides that little something extra that elevates a good burger--beyond.

I've enjoyed it other ways (clockwise from upper left corner, ending in the center):  turkey sliders, on a baguette (also good on a cracker with cream cheese), on a gyro,  on a burger (served with Confetti Potato Salad), chopped green tomatoes can be frozen, you have no idea how many green tomato bacon jam photo shoots I've had, burgers and more burgers, and for a double tomato whammy, on a tomato and mozzarella sandwich.  Not pictured but also enjoyed:  spread on toasted bread and used in a club sandwich.

Green Tomato Bacon Jam
By Kirsten Madaus

A savory freezer jam made with green tomatoes, sweet onion, and crispy bacon.

Prep time: 00:15
Cook time: 01:00
Total time: 01:15

Yield: 4 half pint jars

Ingredients:

4 cups green tomatoes, cored and chopped (about 3 pounds to start)
2 cups sweet onion, chopped (1 large)
1 cup white sugar
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons kosher salt
10 grinds black pepper
splash or dash of hot sauce
8 slices bacon, crisply cooked and crumbled (Note: I bake my bacon to get it crispy enough for me)

Instructions:

The easy way to do this is just core the tomatoes and toss them in the food processor, pulse a few times, then quarter the onion and throw that in, and pulse a bunch until it's all pretty finely chopped. If you prefer to polish your knife skills or don't own a food processor, just finely chop both the tomato and the onion.

Dump the veggies in a 3 qt saucepan, add the sugar, vinegar, and seasonings, and stir well.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring often.

Reduce heat to medium, stir in bacon, and cook until thickened and jammy (about an hour).  Stir every 5 minutes or so (this isn't risotto, but don't just forget about it).

Taste and adjust seasonings to your liking (more salt? more vinegar? more sugar?).  Transfer to jars when cool.

This makes 2 pints (4 half pint jars) for me, but you may get a little more or less depending on how thick you cook your jam down.  I store most of the jars in the freezer (up to 6 months) and have one working jar in the fridge.

For burgers, 1 tablespoon per quarter pound burger tastes delicious to my family.  Just add the jam to the ground meat, then season, shape, and cook the patties as you normally prefer.