balkanradfem:

Making strawberry jam!

Here’s my harvest, and I got more of them stashed at home, waiting in the fridge.

First part is to wash, clean the leaves, and cut up strawberries! I will never pretend I do these things anywhere but in the bed. I added the wild strawberries on top!

And the rest is also very straightforward, you put them on heat, add lemon juice (a tablespoon per cup of berries), add sugar (¾ of a cup per cup of berries) and you cook for 20 minutes or until you like the consistency and you’re done!

I started cooking these and they turned liquid almost immediately, so I figured I better put them in a bigger pot so they reduce faster. ‘Reducing’ just means the water is evaporating, the flavour intensifies, and you get a thicker consistency. It happens faster if your liquid is stretched thinly over the bottom of a big pot, and if you stir it! I added one frozen cube of lemon juice to all of this, and much less sugar than advised; I don’t like them too sweet or turning into a gel. I already tried canning strawberries with very little sugar and they were still completely fine 10 months later in a sealed jar. This is the consistency I was happy with:

This took about 20 minutes of stirring and reducing, I also mashed the berries with a potato masher to get them all smooth. It’s not the ideal jam consistency, or color, but I’m not looking for a very sweet jam, I only want availability of strawberries thru the winter, and I’m only adding sugar to make sure they don’t go bad.

I don’t know if you can see it but this first jar is filled with boiling hot water, this is quickly poured into a second jar before the first one is filled, so they’re both hot when I’m adding the jam. Afterwards they’re put in a big pot of boiling water, and boiled for 10 minutes so the lids would seal. This made two jars!

Even tho I had a very small percent of wild strawberries, they absolutely dominated the taste and the scent, and it was exactly what I wanted, they’re a complete other level of delicious. Absolutely add wild strawberries to your jams!