Preserving the Harvest: Making Strawberry Jam

I finally did it. I got up the courage to actually do the cooking and processing necessary to make strawberry jam. Of course, once I had bought the basket of strawberries at the farmers' market, there was no backing out because it's just too many strawberries for two people to eat. Before I did my advance posts on preserving techniques, the equipment and the procedure, I found the whole exercise a bit daunting. The possibility of poisoning my family with botulism has always been the big deal breaker for me in preserving. I remember my mother making chili sauce once when I was a kid and she was so worried about the safety of the preserves, she threw the whole batch out without letting anyone taste it. But once I read through the steps carefully I realized that it really isn't hard to do at all. I decided that I would undertake this little experiment at the cottage where there was nothing to distract me.

Armed with my cookbook Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving, my jars, my big pot and my fruit, I got down to work. I mentioned in the post on procedure that I didn't want to buy a big canning pot with the lifting racks, because I just don't have space for yet another large pot. So other than the actual jars which are of course, entirely reusable except for the actual sealing lid, the only thing I invested in was a jar lifter, which clamps onto the jar just under the lid, allowing you to remove it from the boiling water safely. It was about $5.00 and was well worth it.

I followed the recipe and the canning procedure to the letter and was surprised to find that I had enough jam mixture to fill 3 1/2 jars, rather than the 2 1/2 jars that the recipe said it would yield. Checking them the next day I realized that what I had was 2 1/2 cups of jam mixture and 1 cup of strawberry syrup. One jar is entirely jam and the other two are jam which rose to the top half of the jar and the syrup which remains at the bottom. Next time I will use a slotted spoon to fill the jars rather than a ladle and then use the strawberry syrup for making milkshakes, or on pancakes.

At breakfast the day after I made the jam I opened up the half jar and spread some on my toast. The taste was pure strawberry and absolutely fabulous. What I was entirely unprepared for was the overwhelming flood of childhood memories it evoked. As I mentioned, my mother didn't do this kind of thing, and neither did my grandmother so I don't know where that came from, but it was lovely nonetheless.

This jam recipe is about as easy as it gets and has only three ingredients. Please read the post on the processing carefully before you begin. It's very straightforward, but you want to make sure that you follow all of the steps to ensure a tight seal. Do not cut down on the amount of sugar in the recipe. Process them immediately and for the time called for in the recipe. If you don't get a vacuum seal, the jam will still be fine to eat, just keep the jars in the refrigerator and use it up within a month. Also bear in mind that the recipe has to stand for a significant amount of time between steps.

Favourite Strawberry Jam
4 cups firm strawberries, halved or quartered
2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice

1. Mix berries and sugar and let stand for 8 hours, stirring occasionally.


2. Place berry mixture in a medium stainless steel or enamel saucepan. Bring to a boil over a medium heat. Add lemon juice, return to a boil and boil rapidly for 5 minutes. Remove from het, cover and let stand for 24 hours.


3. Bring berries to a full boil over high heat and boil rapidly for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.


4. Ladle into hot jars and process for 10 minutes as directed in my earlier post.

Makes 2 1/2 cups.

If you wish, you can add 1 cup of finely chopped rhubarb to the strawberries in step 1.

Difficulty Level: Moderate

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