Kitchen Myths

Facts and fiction about food and cooking, by Peter Aitken

You can scrape surface mold off of home-canned jams and they will be safe to eat

8 Comments Posted by kitchenmyths on November 25, 2011

If you have anything growing on the surface of your homemade jarred jam, it’s a sure sign that the canning process did not work to sterilize the contents of the jar. You may think you can scrape it off and eat the clean-looking jam or jelly underneath, but that’s taking a chance. Molds often produce invisible, microscopic filaments that penetrate into the food and will remain behind when you scrape the visible mold away. These filaments can contain toxins that cause illness. Not worth the chance, in my opinion.

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8 responses to “You can scrape surface mold off of home-canned jams and they will be safe to eat”

Purplepenquin November 28, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Jelly, jam and most other foods I agree with ya. But what about cheese? My dad just cuts off the moldy part and eat the rest of the cheddar or swiss….what say you?

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- kitchenmyths November 30, 2011 at 3:15 pm
  To be honest, I don’t know.
  
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- jamesh May 31, 2013 at 10:13 pm
  from what i have found hard cheese’s you are ok, but soft cheeses like mozzeralla through it away.
  
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Lyne December 24, 2011 at 3:28 pm
My Mother scraped the mold off jelly jam and cheese all my childhood and fed it to her family of seven. All living. ages 58-92. She learned to do that from her Mother and Mother-in-law who did it before her, etc.

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Gourmetologist December 26, 2011 at 11:38 am
Fungi (and molds are fungi) has a funny behavior in cheese, they don’t produce the toxin that the same specie would produce growing on cereals (bread, paistry), fruits or meat. That’s the reason blue cheeses (and white mold cheeses) are safe to eat.

About the post, I would not eat something contaminated (no matter with what) from origin. But something opened and with molds on surface is not unsafe to eat just removing the upper layer (I mean molds only on surface)

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Mimi October 20, 2013 at 8:23 am
It is always better to be than sorry. I always ask this question, would I consume spoil milk.

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Mimi October 20, 2013 at 8:24 am
It’s always better to be safe….than sorry. Buy another jar!

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Donna Gibson September 27, 2017 at 5:43 pm
I scraped a small spot of mold off a home canned raspberry jam, and ate from beneath the surface… Will I get sick??

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