Strawberry is almost the first fruit to welcome summer in Ontario; many of the local farms will open to the public for pick-your-own strawberries. Every year my husband and I will bring our son to a strawberry farm to learn where the food comes from while picking some of the freshest fruit home.
Like many other children, my son always has fond memories of going to a strawberry farm, sampling those fresh fruit right on the field. He will walk up and down the aisles, finding the biggest and the best looking strawberries between the leaves and shoving them into his mouth. "It's so juicy! Mommy, look!" my son says happily. His content face is usually covered with delicious juice.
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| The 30 pounds of strawberries we picked this summer. |
This summer, we brought home thirty pounds of strawberries. It was a little crazy. I spent a full two and a half hours hulling them to prepare for the jam making. It was a mind-over-matter job indeed.
There are two common ways to make strawberry jam. One is using pectin and the other one without.
Pectin is extracted from high pectin fruit, like apple, through heat and acid. It is a thickening agent that helps gelling jam or other preserves. By adding pectin, the jam can solidify without too much reduction in the liquid. So, it generally helps speed up the cooking process, also resulting in a larger portion of jam. Though, pectin may cause stiff jam and may also leave some off flavour in the product.
Strawberries contain high amounts of pectin naturally; therefore, it's not necessary to thicken the jam with extra store-bought pectin. My strawberry jam recipe is the traditional way without pectin, which means that it requires longer cooking time to reduce the liquid to the right consistency. The finished product is usually about half of the amount of the fruit. However, the jam is much more fruity and has no off flavour from the pectin.
Thanks for dropping by. I hope you will enjoy this recipe.
Homemade Strawberry Jam without Pectin
自製草莓果醬 (不含果膠)
INGREDIENTS
8 cups Strawberries
3 cups Sugar
1/2 Lemon of Juice
DIFRECTION:
1. Gently rinse the strawberries.
2. With a chopstick, hull the green leafy top of the strawberries. Discard the tops.
3. Pour the strawberries in a big deep pot. Mash them with a potato masher until lumpy.
4. Add sugar and lemon juice. Mix together over high heat until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture starts to boil. Reduce the heat to medium.
5. Continuously boil the mixture until it becomes thicker. Reduce the heat to simmer. Skim off the foam and stir the mixture occasionally.
6. When the mixture reduces to nearly half, test the jam by dipping a cold spoon in the jam. If the jam coats the spoon without falling, the jam is ready. Remove the pot from the heat immediately.
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| I tested my jam on a cold plate. |
7. Bottle the jam in hot sterilized mason jars immediately.
8. Seal the jars in water bath for 10 minutes. The jars need to be totally submerged. Leave the jars to cool and check carefully to see if the lid is moving. The lids should not be movable. Once cool, store them in a dark cool place.
The best part of making jam for my son was that he got to lick the spoon after I finished the jam. Another lovely memory! He said it was a big strawberry lollipop.
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| The batches I made this year. They should be enough to last until next summer. |
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| Yum! |
