How To Amp Up Your Tomato Jam With A Little Bourbon

Making an easy and delicious tomato jam recipe or a jammy tomato butter is a resourceful way to use up summer tomatoes. Once you've mastered those recipes, it's time to amp up your tomato jam with a little bourbon. A few of the most common tasting notes for bourbon – including wood, smoke, herbs, and nuts — makes the spirit a great addition to umami-rich tomato jam. 

The key to adding bourbon to homemade tomato jam is when and not how. You want to preserve as much of bourbon's flavors as possible and you don't want it to evaporate with high heat as the tomato jam ingredients boil and bubble. The fact is, whiskey is the only alcohol that fully cooks out of a dish within minutes, and bourbon is a type of whiskey. 

Thus, the best time to add bourbon to tomato jam is after all the other ingredients, including the tomatoes, have gone into the saucepan. You also want the mixture removed from the heat source and to cool lightly before mixing in a splash of bourbon. This way, your tomato jam will have all of bourbon's rich and bold flavors. 

After you've made your delicious bourbon-infused tomato jam, it's time to incorporate it into other dishes. A good place to start would be our Malbec burgers with Creole mustard tomato jam recipe. A splash of bourbon will add even more depth and flavor to our Creole mustard tomato jam, making the burger unforgettable. Of course, you can also use the jam as a sandwich spread or dilute it to make a tomato-flavored salad dressing. It won't be wrong to serve the boozy tomato jam on a charcuterie board too. 

Another way to use your bourbon-infused tomato jam is to incorporate it with butter to make a delicious and flavorful compound butter. The simple method for making compound butter would be to pulse it in food processor along with the boozy tomato jam. 

Other than using the boozy tomato jam for sandwiches, burgers, or to make other sauces, try using it for baking. Use the jam to make sweet or savory thumbprint cookies. For savory cookies, incorporate some cheese, which will pair beautifully with the bourbon-flavored tomato jam. For sweet cookies, we recommend using chocolate or cocoa powder, which will taste so lovely with your homemade bourbon-infused tomato jam.