Oh Hot Damn, This Is My Jam!

 

Happy Friday everyone! Hope everyone’s week passed by fairly quickly and you all have wonderful plans for the weekend ahead!

In the old part of my home, in the basement, there is a storage area that we the “cold storage”. Basically, it’s a cellar that my ancestors who lived there before me used to keep all their canned goods. Sometimes I can imagine what it was like to live there and I can see it filled with canned jams, jellies, pickles and veggies.

I am so thankful for this area and I love to fill it every year with my canned produce like my pickles. Another thing that I fill the cold storage with every year is homemade jam.

I am a huge homemade jam fan. As a kid I never had store bought jam, ever! Mom made strawberry and raspberry jam every year and that is simply what we ate.

I guess throughout the years my taste buds have been spoiled to the taste of homemade jam. My mother has since retired her jam making skills but I have picked up this tradition ever since I have had my own home. This year is no different.

On Monday I had talked about how I had gone strawberry picking with the intention of making my jam that weekend. While making this jam I thought I would share the recipe that I use. Jam is seriously one of the easiest to make!

Homemade Cooked Strawberry Jam

Ingredients:

- Cleaned and hulled strawberries (one patch calls for 3 1/4 cups and I made a double patch)

- Lemon juice

- Sugar

- Liquid pectin

- Sanitized mason jars and lids

 

1. Sanitize all of your jars and lids.

2. Take the required amount of strawberries and mash away! Mash to your liking. Some people like big chunks of strawberries so mash less. I like fewer big pieces so I mash my strawberries like a crazy person! :-)

 

3. In large pot add mashed strawberries, 7 cups of sugar and 1/4 cup of lemon juice. (I made a double patch so I had to add 14 cups of sugar and 1/2 cup of lemon juice). Stir until all mixed together.

4. Place pot onto stove on high. Continuously stir until mixture begins to boil. Boil hard for 1 minute.

5. Remove from heat and stir in pectin.

*Some people don’t add pectin. The old traditional jams were made without pectin but it takes a long time to boil down enough to thicken into jam consistency. Pectin is a natural product derived from lime.

6. Continuously stir and remove little the bit of foam that forms on the top for 5 minutes. You want to keep stirring (while once in a while removing foam) for the full 5 minutes because you don’t want your jam to set with the fruit floating on top. 

 

You can eat the foam if you want to. It’s delicious!

7. Spoon in jars leaving 1/2 to 1/4 inch head space (the top part of the jar). Clean the exterior of jar if any jam spilled. Tighten on lids. Leave jars to rest for 1 hour.

You will begin to hear your jars popping. You know they have sealed when that little bubble in the middle of the lid cannot be pressed up and down. If for some reason they did not seal add to water bath (big pot of boiling water) for 10-15 minutes. I’ve never had to do the water bath. They’ve always sealed themselves.

My two patches did 13 jars and I also had enough strawberries left for two big baggies of frozen strawberries for smoothies!

It’s tasty, simple to make and just as cost efficient as the bought jam. There is something about the taste of fresh homemade strawberry jam that just screams summer!

When canned, a taste you can enjoy all year round!

Hope you have a great weekend!

xo