Strawberry Jam

Local berries are ripe! After eating the first basket pretty much straight up, I bought some more with the sole intent of making jam. I've made lots of freezer jam before, but never the kind that you process in boiling water so that it can sit on the shelves.

This is the last of the berry washing.


I totally bought too many strawberries (can there be such a thing as too many berries?) but now I have several freezer bags full of them just waiting to be made into smoothies or somesuch.


Crush the berries. I used a potato masher, but I don't think I crushed them enough as the finished product suffers from Floating Fruit Syndrome.


I've added the pectin and stirred/boiled the stuff. Here comes the sugar. It sure seems like a lot of sugar! I don't know how those Smuckers guys can make jam without sugar!


Bringing to a hard boil.


OK, that concludes the cooking portion of the program.


Skim the foam off the top.


Processing the jars.




Fill jars, place in boiling water. I don't have a canning rack to protect the glass jars from the heat, so I used a dishtowel instead.


Because my pot is small, I had to do the jam in batches. Here are the first four.


All in all, I'm pretty happy with my jam. The jar that I've opened is a little runnier than I think the jam is supposed to be, but it's perfectly usable and quite tasty. I think I might get a larger pot for the processing, and perhaps make just one more batch. Maybe strawberry rhubarb this time. Because can you ever have too much jam? :-)