Monday was the first Jam Day of the year!! My darling family went to the farmers market and picked up a whole flat of beautiful, delicious, organic strawberries. Last year, I made strawberry, blackberry, plum, and peach jam. The plums and peaches were all home grown, and we buy our berries from the same farmer every year. Lucious!
That jam from last year was enough for us to give a few jars away to family and friends and its still feeding us now! I can't remember the last time we bought jam or jelly. It is such a blessing to be able to make and serve this to my family. Especially since it is something we use nearly every day. Mostly, we eat jam around here.
Jam, jelly and preserves are 3 different things. The main difference between jam and jelly is the straining. For jelly, you have to strain your fruit/jam through a cheesecloth to get out all the chunks of fruit. Jelly, therefore, is good for people who don't like seeds in their teeth. However, it takes a lot more time and effort. Not to mention the extra cost of buying the cheesecloth.
All things considered, I opt for jam. To make strawberry jam, you need only the fruit, pectin, sugar, lemon juice, butter and a saucepan. To can it, you will need a few more items. Here's the list of the essentials.
1. Jars. You will need a variety of sizes. I use the cute little jars for gifting but most of my jam goes into the pint sized jars. Quart jars are really more for preserving veggies and are too big for jam. Our family can easily consume the pint sized jars within a reasonable time after opening. The first time you buy jars, they come with all the lids and rings you will need. You can reuse the jars and rings as many times as you like, but you will need new lids every time. The jars need to be washed in hot hot hot water and kept hot until you are ready to fill them. I wash mine on the top rack of my dishwasher and then keep them in there with the door shut.
2. A large (really large!!) boiling pot with a removable rack and a lid. Before I bought my canning pot at the hardware store, I used my jumbo stew-pot with the steamer insert. The removable rack keeps the jars from sitting directly on the bottom of the pan or from bumping into each other. This is important because either one of those could cause your jars to crack. Thereby wasting both your jars and the jam!
3. A large mouth funnel. This makes life much easier. These funnels are found in the same aisle as the rest of your canning equipment. They're made just for this purpose and fit perfectly inside the mouth of the jar. A bonus is that you can use it to measure 1/4 inch from the top of the jar. This is called "headspace" and is the max that you want to fill your jars to reduce discoloration and spoilage.
4. A jar lifter. This handy tool looks a lot like spaghetti tongs but its made to grasp jars. The first time I made jam, I tried to use tongs to lift the hot jars out of the boiling water. That was a bad idea!! Several times I lost grip on the jars and they splashed back down into the water. Pretty dangerous, especially if you have little ones running around.
5. A large saucepan or stock pot. You want a tall pot! The boiling fruit and sugar is like lava. You don't want this to boil over and you especially don't want this on your skin or clothes.
6. A smaller saucepan. Here, you will keep your clean bands and lids hot (but not boiling) until you are ready to use them. They sell plastic magnetic "wands" for lifting your lids out but really all you need is a pair of tongs. They work fine for this. It is important to heat your lids because this softens up the sealing compound that is found around the edges. It will get a better seal after being heated and softened.
7. Have plenty of towels around. You will need one laid out to put your clean, hot jars on for filling with your jam. They need to rest about 24 hours after filled in order to seal and "set" (gel). Put them in a place where they won't be in the way.
For about 8-10 jars of jam, you will need these ingredients.
5.5 cups crushed or diced strawberries (about a whole flat will equal 5.5 cups)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 tsp butter
7 cups sugar
1 package fruit pectin
You start with about a flat of strawberries. Wash them up, cut off the stems, leaves, and any parts that look spoiled. Just like any other cooking, the freshness of your ingredients makes all the difference! You need to smash them up pretty good. If you like your jam chunky, leave the chunks bigger. A pastry blender or potato masher works good for this. But you can just dice them up with your knife, too.
Go ahead and fill your water-bath canner half full with water and set to high on the stove. You want this to be ready so your filled jars can go right in. Also, measure out all your ingredients so they are ready to go in, once your fruit get to boiling, you wont have time to stop and measure out 7 cups of sugar!
After you have your berries all mashed up, pour them into your large pot on the stove and add your lemon juice and pectin. Make sure your pectin gets stirred in real good, you can pour it in slowly. The butter/margarine is supposed to help keep your jam from foaming (which is a pain in the ass cause you have to skim all that crud off). I've never done it without the butter, so I don't know if it helps or not. I'd rather just use it and not find out if it is worse without it. I get enough foam as it is.
Bring all this to a full boil and add your sugar all at once. Stir it until its all dissolved and keep stirring, you want it to come up to a rolling boil and boil it like this while your stirring it for a full minute. I wear an oven mitt during this step, the jam is bubbling and steam is rising. Better safe than sorry!
Take it off the heat and skim off the foam. The foam isn't dangerous but you don't want it in your canning jars. It makes people nervous to open a jar of homemade home canned jam and see a bunch of foamy bubbles on top. I usually put all the scraped foam into a saucer and use it at dinner that same day.
Once you've got all the foam off you can start ladling your jam into your jars. Make sure your jars don't have any cracks or imperfections. You've spent a lot of time and put a lot of work on this, a cracked jar can "explode" during the ladling or canning process and ruin your whole batch!
Set your jars out on your towel and put the canning funnel into the first jar. Start ladling in your beautiful jam. Leave head space about 1/4 inch. I usually use the bottom of the funnel as a guideline...don't go past it. After filling your jars, clean off the rims. Make sure nothing is on there or you wont get a seal. Worse yet, you could get spoilage.
Now you've got all your jam in the jars, lift the lids and rings out of the simmering water and finger tighten the rings onto your jars. You don't want it too tight because air has to escape during the canning process.
Using your jar lifter, lower the jars into the boiling water. The water needs to cover each lid by 2 inches. Boil in the water 10-15 minutes. Remove and set them on the towel. They should be left alone for about 24 hours. You should hear a lovely "ping" sound, one for each lid, to let you know the seal is set. After they have cooled and set overnight, test the lid for a seal and clean the jars. Label each with the date and contents and get ready for your next batch of canning!
