If you follow Never Say Die Beauty, you know that I love picking fruit and enjoy making my own jam. I’ve written about making strawberry and blueberry jams in the past. But one thing that has often bugged me about my strawberry (and peach) jam is that because strawberries are a fruit that are low in natural pectin, they often don’t gel the way they should even though I use a commercial pectin like Certo in my recipe. So I often would end up with strawberry syrup instead of strawberry jam. Further irritating me, all the fruit would rise to the top of the jar and just sit there regardless of how many times I would invert the jar to try to distribute the fruit. So much work, rather disappointing results. Plus strawberry jam is my favorite.
What to do?
Fortunately, this past winter I saw an episode of America’s Test Kitchen where they addressed my exact problem. Yay! What they did that sort of surprised me is they skipped using commercial pectin altogether and substituted an apple since apples are loaded with natural pectin! In the recipe I always used, I boiled the mixture for one minute after adding the pectin. In the ATK recipe, it said to boil the strawberry sugar mixture for 20-25 minutes. I thought that the long boiling time might take the fresh taste out of the jam. So I was skeptical about this new method to say the least.
Strawberry jam is also Jeff’s favorite. So I agreed to try one more time to make it correctly. Jeff and I went to Marini Farm in Ipswich MA on Sunday afternoon to pick strawberries.
We were just about the only people in the strawberry fields, and we got to eat as many strawberries as we liked as we picked. We picked 4 quarts.
The strawberries seemed exceptionally sweet this year, maybe because of all the rain we had?
When we got home, I got out my canning equipment – canning pot and jar lifter, funnel, lid magnet, jar holder, jars, new lids, rings, ladle, potato masher, long handled wooden spoon, and a Dutch oven or big pot, and I got things in order. I also brought out my food thermometer.
Here’s the recipe that I used from America’s Test Kitchen that was developed in conjunction with the Times-Picayune Newspaper in New Orleans.
Ingredients
3 pounds of fresh strawberries, hulled and cut into small pieces
3 cups of sugar
1 1/4 cups of peeled and shredded Granny Smith apples (1 large apple worked for me)
2 tablespoons of bottled lemon juice (I don’t remember why ATK prefers bottled lemon juice to fresh – they may have said something about consistent level of acidity – but I decided I should follow their recipe exactly on the first trial.)
Here are the steps I followed.
- Wash the jars and rings in hot soapy water.
- Boil the jars, rings and lids in water in canning pot to make sure they’re super clean.
- Put a small plate in the freezer to do a test for doneness later on.
- I weighed my strawberries on a scale to get 3 pounds, so I don’t know how many cups I used.
- Hull the strawberries and cut them into small pieces. Mine were less than a 1/2″ each.
- Mash 2/3 of the strawberries with a potato masher.
- Measure 3 cups of granulated sugar and 2 T. of lemon juice, and set aside.
- Peel and shred the Granny Smith apple and add to the strawberries in the Dutch oven.
- Add the sugar and lemon juice to the pot.
- Bring to a boil over medium high heat stirring frequently.
- Once it comes to a boil, I continued boiling it for 25 minutes. The recipe says that the temperature should be between 217-220 degrees. However, my mixture never got about 215 even after 25 minutes of boiling.
- After 25 minutes, I took the plate out of the freezer and put about a teaspoon of the boiling jam on the plate and put it back in the freezer for 2 minutes. Then I took the plate out again and ran my finger through the jam. The trail stayed clean, and the jam did not run back together again indicating it was done . So far, so good.
- I took the jars out of the pot and put them on a dishtowel.
- I ladled the strawberry mixture into each jar leaving about 1/4″ at the top.
- I placed the lids on top of the jars and then the rings.
Another important thing I must mention is that I decided not to process the strawberry jam in a water bath once I put it in the jars like I often do. It seemed to me in the past that once the strawberry jam had begun to gel, I put the filled jars back in the boiling water to seal the lids, and the jam liquefied again. I don’t have that problem with blueberry or raspberry jams because they are higher pectin fruits. So I decided to skip the water bath, and we will have to keep the jam in the refrigerator and finish it within two months. Shouldn’t be too difficult 😉
According to the recipe, I should have gotten 4 one cup jars’ worth, but I got 7 one cups jars. Not sure why.
Also I should mention that America’s Test Kitchen warns that you can’t double this recipe or it will fail.
Once the jars were filled, Jeff pointed out to me that the strawberries were distributed throughout each jar rather than floating at the top like in the past. Victory!
I let the jars cool on dishtowel on the countertop, and when they were room temperature I put them in the refrigerator to thicken.
Around midday the next day (more than 12 hours later), I tried it out. Absolutely delicious! And definitely not as sweet as the traditional recipe using pectin that calls for 7 cups of sugar for a similar amount of fruit. Plus the consistency was so much better than it had been with my old recipe. The jam was definitely more gelled, but very spreadable. It was not as hard a gel as blueberry jam or as a jelly, but I thought it was the perfect consistency. This is what it looked like. Check out the cool plate with the Mondrian design that Jeff bought for me at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague in Holland.
I’m thrilled with how this recipe worked out. I have a lot of strawberries left. The recipe had called for 3 pounds, and when I converted that to cups, it said 10 cups. 10 cups is about 2.5 quarts. We picked an extra quart and a half to have some left over to eat, but after I measured 3 pounds on the scale, I had waaaaaay more than a quart and a half left. If you buy your strawberries, have them weighed so you won’t over buy if you don’t want a lot left over.
I can hardly wait till breakfast tomorrow so I can have some more.
Have you ever made strawberry jam? Do you have any tips that you use to get low pectin fruit to gel?
Well said! Well done! Delicious!
Thank you for helping!
Looks lovely! ATK is such a great resource.
Thanks, Rach! I love ATK and Cook’s Country
I’m so going to try this! Im addicted to strawberry jam and always end up buying the expensive jar at the grocery store with the checkered lid because it’s my favorite but you’ve inspired me to make my own!!!
Bonne Maman is good jam but it’s fun to try your own. This will be looser than commercial jam, but IMHO more delicious! Hope you do get it to try it out, Christine 🙂
I have only prepared freezer jam. Haven’t done this in years though as I don’t have a chest freezer like I once did. My kids really went through a lot of it so it must’ve been good.
It’s been so long since I made freezer jam too, Sandy. Something got me to switch over to cooked. I’m sure your freezer jam was delish! Someday when you’re looking for something quick and easy to do, make blueberry jam on top of the stove. Put a carton of washed blueberries in a pot, crush 2/3 of them, add a little lemon juice and bring to a boil over medium heat, stir. When it boils add about a cup of sugar and keep stirring till it thickens. Done. You don’t even need pectin. One carton is enough for a jar or so. I often make it for myself
Yum! I’ve never tried making my own jam, but that looks amazing!
I can’t wait to take my kids strawberry picking this summer. I’ve thought about making my own jam before but I’m not much of a cook and it intimidates me.
Katie, you should try it with your kids. I think Certo and Sure Jell pectins have a “freezer jam” recipe that you could do with the kids that should be easy
I have two strawberry plants this year. I can’t wait to make jam!
That’s so exciting! I hope you do make strawberry jam!
Thank you Allison for this very helpful informative post. I love to cook and sure i will try the same recipe.