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<\/p>\nAs I mentioned yesterday, I made another batch of strawberry jam on Monday. The house is, for the moment, free of fresh strawberries, although Thursday will be here before you know it.<\/p>\n
Making jam, especially using commercial pectin, is dead easy, and I wish that people didn’t find it so intimidating. No more than ordinary cleanliness is required, and it doesn’t take long at all.<\/p>\n
First get your jars clean, and sterilize the lids with boiling water.<\/p>\n
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and make sure your jars are clean. This is what I had left in the clean jar box. <\/p>\n
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I don’t usually like to use jars larger than a half pint (8 oz.) because the jam doesn’t always set well in the bigger jars, and it’s a lot of jam to eat. But needs must.<\/p>\n
Then measure out your sugar. This probably scares a whole lot of people off of making jam. For 5 cups of strawberries, I use 7 cups of sugar. There are low-sugar pectin formulations, and, if you just make jam the old-fashioned way by cooking it down until it’s thick, you can use as little sugar as you like.<\/p>\n
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For my strawberry jam, I hulled and quartered a bit more than 5 cups’ worth of strawberries, and put them in my big pot with the juice of a lemon and then sprinkled the pectin over the top.<\/p>\n
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Then I turned the heat on high and commenced to stir. Even though there is minimal added liquid, the berries start to exude juice almost immediately. <\/p>\n
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I stir and stir until the mess in the pot comes to a rolling boil, which means it doesn’t stop bubbling when stirred. This takes less than 10 minutes. Then dump in the sugar, which is why you measured it out beforehand, and keep stirring until it comes to a rolling boil again. Now set the timer for 4 minutes. This short cooking time is why I like to use commercial pectin; I think less cooking time keeps a fresher fruit taste in the jam. When I make apricot jam without added pectin, it can take an hour for a large batch to cook down. When the timer goes off, turn off the heat.<\/p>\n
Canning has its own specialized equipment, of course. The two things I always use are a wide-mouth canning funnel<\/p>\n
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and a magnetic-tipped lid wand, for picking up the lids.<\/p>\n
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Ladle the hot jam into the jars, leaving a quarter inch of “head space,” which is a canning technical term, not any other kind of reference. The way that two-piece Mason jar lids work is that the air in the head space contracts as it cools, and that creates a partial vacuum in the jar that seals the lids. Too much space will prevent the seal.<\/p>\n
I tighten the rings over the lids and turn the jars upside down for five minutes, then turn them back and listen for the musical “pings” of the jars’ sealing. I wait until the jam is cool to see whether it set, although I rarely do anything about it, if not. Then eat on toast, give away as presents, etc.<\/p>\n
I will freely acknowledge that this is not current safe canning practice, which requires a hot water bath processing step after sealing the jars. I’ve never had a problem with the high-acid, high sugar fruit preserves I make, and I will also not hesitate to throw away a jar that looks odd. But I’m not a food safety expert, nor do I play one on TV. Here<\/a> is a list of publications containing the current wisdom from the USDA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"