Strawberry Jam

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Strawberry jam and strawberry shortcake are my two favorite things to make during strawberry season. Homemade whip cream is a staple with strawberry shortcake and there’s not a diary free substitute I care for. So that means it’s strawberry jam time. Theres nothing quite like a homemade biscuit with a big spoonful of strawberry jam. Unless of course you have grape jelly, but we’ll get to that later this summer.
If you didn’t grow up making homemade jam or jelly it can be a daunting task. There are lots of steps and everything has to be done just right to get it to set up. I grew up making jam and jelly with my Momma but I still don’t always get it right. My strawberry jam last year never set up. I’ll talk you through how to make jam but I highly suggest that you pick up a Ball Blue Book to use as a reference too.

So what is the Ball Blue Book?

Ball is one of the brand names in canning. Their Blue Book is a good reference material for all things canning. It has everything from canning to freezing and dehydrating. It explains step by step what you need to do and talks through what problems you may encounter and what caused them. Plus it has a TON of recipes! There are 3 recipes for strawberry jam in the book; one with regular pectin, the low or no sugar pectin, and then making jam without pectin. I typically use the pectin recipe. The other place you can find canning recipes is inside the box of pectin.

Alright I’m going to try this…what do I need first?

• Water bath canner
• half pint canning jars (if you buy brand new ones they will come with rings and lids)
• for this recipe 2 quarts of strawberries
• 7 cups granulated sugar (that’s just shy of a 4lb bag)
• original pectin
• large stock pot
• a small and medium saucepan
• tongs
• canning utensils to measure the headspace and help get lids out of boiling water

What is a water bath canner?

It’s basically just a huge pot that you use to give your jars a boiling water bath. It has a basket inside that the jars sit in and holds a massive amount of water. Some canning requires a water bath (jam, jelly, tomatoes, pickles) and others a pressure canner (beans, corn, carrots, meat). The Ball Blue book has a whole section in the front explaining pH and why you need to use one method or another.

If you buy a set of brand new jars it will come with rings and lids. However once you process the jars you cannot reuse the lids. As long as the rings are in good shape they can be used year after year. So if you plan on using older jars you will need to pick up new lids. They come in regular or large mouth. Most jelly and jam is made using regular mouth lids. You can reuse your lids that have been canned if you are going to freeze your jars instead of canning them. I keep my old jars in a bag to use for freezing soup and broth in the winter.

Next up is yummy strawberries!

You will need 2 quarts of strawberries; approximately 4 to 5 pounds. Wash the berries good, remove the stems and remeasure to make sure you have enough. I typically buy a flat of berries and then we have extra in case I need more. Strawberries don’t last long in our house. The next thing you are going to do is mash the berries. A potato masher works best. This is messy! I recommend doing it in the tall stockpot you are going to cook the berries in so you don’t lose any juice as you mash them. Don’t try mashing all the berries at once. Put a layer in, mash them good, put another layer in, and continue until all the berries are good and mashed.

Now we have strawberry stew! But don’t rush ahead just yet!

Always prep your battle space when canning!! Always! Get everything and I mean everything you will need out and within arms reach before you start heating up the berries. Once it starts boiling you don’t stop stirring and trying to get something out mid-boil is when accidents happen or jam that won’t set up happens.

So what all do I need handy?

You want your kitchen utensils. You can buy nice canning sets that come with the tongs to remove hot jars from boiling water, a magnetic tool to get lids out of boiling water, a nifty headspace measuring tool that doubles as being used to get bubbles out when canning beans, and a wide funnel to make sure your jam ends up in the jar and not the counter. Well that last one isn’t completely true. I still manage to get it on the counter, but not nearly as much otherwise!

Grab your pectin! There are 3 main types you will find: original, low or no sugar added, and liquid. I typically buy Sure Jell but I think my liquid is actually a different brand. The recipe you use will tell you what kind you need. Inside this box there also was a set of directions for how to make jam and jelly with fruit amounts, sugar amounts, and processing time. It also tell you how to make freezer jam and troubleshooting if your jam/jelly doesn’t set up. For my strawberry jam recipe you need the original version. If I get to make grape jelly for you this year I will be using the liquid version.

Look how clean my kitchen started out! It won’t be for long…

I’m a messy cook. Just how it goes. But seriously take a gander at what all I have out. Left to right I have my water bath canner, small saucepan for lids, large stockpot full of smashed berries, and medium saucepan for jars. As soon as I took this picture I started filling pots. My sink was running behind me with stupid hot water; our water gets nice and hot. It takes forever for that water bath canner to heat up. So fill it up with hot water so that you will have one inch of boiling water above the top of your jars and turn it on high. Don’t forget to take the basket out of the canner and set it to the side.

Next I fill the small sauce pan about halfway full and get it good and boiling. Then I move it where it is in the picture; it’s on the warming eye. I could use the eye in front of the water bath canner but I like to move the stockpot there to fill the jars on my butcher block. Once the small saucepot is moved, go ahead and fill up the medium saucepan and let it slowly start heating up. No rush with it; just put it on medium to start getting warm.

The recipe says it will make 8 half pint jars of jam but prep for a couple more just in case.

I typically add two extra jars and lids just in case it makes more than it says. I’d rather put them in the drying rack to drip dry than be scrambling for clean jars while jam is waiting. Put your lids in the small saucepan but make sure to put them in one at a time and flip every other one over. They fit snuggly together and can be hard to get out when you’re rushing. At this point double check the tops of your glass jars. Even if they’re brand new, run a finger along the top lip and inspect them for cracks. If they are chipped or cracked they will NOT seal. Better to fix it now than when it’s full of boiling hot jam.

Double check to make sure you have everything out and you’re all set!

You also need: a long handled wooden spoon, 1 cup dry measuring cup, tongs, and a damp paper towel or washcloth.

This is when I realized… I didn’t have 7 cups of sugar! I only had 5 1/2. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! So everything got thrown in the fridge until my wonderful husband ran to the store for me the next morning. Always double check your ingredients before you drag everything out! It was perfect too. Eliza was rummaging through my baking pans and Richard was happily jumping.

My recipe calls for 7 cups sugar and one package of pectin.

Last year I used the Ball Blue Book strawberry jam recipe which calls for 1/4 cup lemon juice and 6 tablespoons classic ball pectin. It never set up for me. It could have been something else I did wrong but I decided this year to try the recipe in the Sure Jell Pectin box. The recipe calls for 7 cups of granulated sugar. I HIGHLY suggest you measure this out into another bowl so when it’s time for it, you can just pour it in the boiling strawberry mash. But don’t pour it in now!

Pour in the bag of original Sure Jell Pectin and stir it up good. Turn your to medium high and start stirring. And just keep stirring… and stirring… and stirring… and don’t stop until it comes to a full rolling boil.

What’s a full rolling boil?

It just means the entire pot is boiling and when you stir the boiling does not stop at all. It just keeps bubbling as you stir.

Now pour in the sugar and keep stirring!

When it comes back up to another full rolling boil set your timer for 1 minute. Let it boil a full minute as you keep stirring. While it’s boiling this is a good time to turn the heat up on your medium saucepan to bring it up to a boil. Then turn off the eye with the jam and remove the stock pot of strawberry jam from the heat. This is when I move it in front of my water bath canner. You put it wherever is conveniently located so that you can get the jam out and pour it into the jars and still reach everything else.

Use a metal spoon to skim the foam off the top but be careful not to remove any of the berries if you can help it. I have a little 1/8 cup metal measuring cup I use to skim the foam off with. Just pour it into a bowl or cup to dump down the drain when you’re all done.

I moved my small saucepan off the warmer and put it where the stockpot was to get the lid water boiling again. And I placed my first jar in the boiling water of the medium saucepan and turned it around to get all the sides. I make sure that I always have one jar in the water while I’m filling another jar. That way there is one ready to go when I finish a jar. You are doing two things: sterilizing the jar and getting it to the same temperature as your jam. Boiling hot jam in a cold jar equals bad things happening.

When you remove a jar from the boiling water, immediately put the funnel on the top and use the 1 cup measuring cup to get jam out of the stockpot and put it in your jar. You want to make sure you quickly start filling it as you don’t want your jar to cool down too much. I had a screaming baby while filling jars; thank you Daddy for keeping the fussies away as long as he could. So I was going a bit faster than I like while filling jars. Faster equals more mess when I’m cooking.

WAIT!!!! How full do I fill them???????

You want 1/4 inch head space. What in the world does that mean? Fancy terms but you want 1/4 inch of space between your jam and the lid. That’s where the one tool comes in handy. It’s good for stirring beans to get bubbles out of jars and the other side has stairs on it with the different headspaces you need for canning! Isn’t that cool?! You stick the step on the rim and the bottom should touch jam.

So yeah that’s a lot easier said than done. The more you do it the better you will get at knowing where inside the funnel you need your jam to be to get the right amount of space. Remember when you remove the funnel the level changes! You can always put the funnel back in and add more. It just makes the rim messier if you do. If you have too much just use a spoon and spoon a little out to get it where you need it.

Now for that wet paper towel/washcloth I told you to get.

Use it to wipe off any jam you dripped on the rim and sides. Seriously get any off the top and sides. It will not seal if there is something between the lid and the glass. So use as many paper towels as you need but get it CLEAN!

Now use that handy dandy tool to get a lid out of the boiling water and put it on top of your jar. Grab a ring and tighten it to fingertip-tightness. Isn’t that a fancy term. You want it tight not loose but not oh so tight I need vice grips to open it up. Just nice and snug.

You need to have your basket for the canner sitting on top of the boiling water.

As you can see in my picture, mine is not above the water. It kept falling off and was not being nice. So I had it sitting right next to the hot stuff so my jars stayed hot while I filled the rest of them. I also set it above the boiling water for a couple minutes before I put it in just to make sure everything was nice and hot.

Sometimes you will get exactly what the recipe calls for and sometimes I get more or less. I got 8 jars, but my last one was not completely filled up. These partial jars sometimes seal and sometimes don’t. Always stick them in to process but just know if it doesn’t seal, you need to put it in the fridge.

Be careful to place your jars so they are somewhat evenly spaced and not touching. You don’t want them banging into each other and breaking in the water.

Make sure your water in the canner is simmering.

Then lower the jars into the boiling water.

Double check your water level and make sure there is one inch or close to that of water above the jars. Adjust your heat to medium-high, put on the lid, and bring it to a rolling boil.

Process half pint jars for 10 minutes; basically let them boil while covered for 10 minutes.

While we’re waiting 10 minutes let me show you the labels I found. Ball makes dissolvable labels! No more endless scrubbing of jars to get off the sticky residue. Get these babies wet and it literally falls off!

After your 10 minutes, turn off the heat and remove the lid. Let the jars sit in the water for 5 minutes.

Pull out a hand towel and put it wherever you can leave the jars to cool down without being in the way. After 5 minutes get your canning tongs to remove the jars from the water and set them on the towel to cool down.

And now we wait for the lovely ping of the jars sealing.

It can take up to 12 hours for jars to seal. Mine don’t typically take that long. If they’ve not sealed after an hour or so you can gently press on the middle of the lid and sometimes that will help them seal. Do not retighten the bands if they loosen during canning.

If after 12 hours a jar did not seal you need to put it in the fridge so the jam does not go bad. If when you pulled the jars out of the water it was runny looking don’t panic! It can take a little while for your jam to set up. Mine was runny until the jars cooled down. Then it set up very nicely. Now it’s time to label and store your jam. Ta-dah we just made jam! All while listening to a little squirt play and another one scream. Not all cooking days are well behaved days unfortunately.

If you’ve made jam before you may have noticed I did not check it for gelling while it was boiling. I’m not very good at doing this. The Ball Blue Book goes through that whole process if you are interested in knowing how to. If you are careful to make sure that it comes up to a full rolling boil that cannot be stirred away and then wait the full minute and maybe a couple seconds longer you should be fine. But it’s not foolproof. Sometimes things go wrong and it just doesn’t work. Don’t let that discourage you. You can do this. It’s not crazy hard, it’s just a lot of steps and things to remember. I always have my book out for a reference.

P