Strawberry jam, canned. mmmm. This was the first time we've tried it, and it was Jeffery's idea. I'm glad he initiated this. We made pectin-free jam.
We picked the berries from the Tigchelaar Berry Farm in Binbrook. We got two 7-litre baskets full.
I hulled them and put them into a bowl of clean water. When I got 13 cups, I put them into the dutch oven for the first batch.
Jeffery mashed them with the potato masher into the consistency we wanted. Then we added 1/2 cup lemon juice and 5 cups of sugar (it was supposed to be 6 cups, but Jeffery added only 5). Then we boiled it for about 40 minutes to get to the thickness we wanted. The jam also turned a really dark red as it was cooking.
Meanwhile, we boiled the cans in a stock pot . . .
. . . and heated the lids.
There was lots of foam appearing on the top of the jam during cooking, and we had to skim the foam off while constantly stirring.
When the jam got to the thickness we wanted, we started pouring the jam into the cans!
After the jam was poured and the lids were on, we put the cans back into the boiling water for 15 minutes, making sure the water was well covering the cans.
After we took them out, it was only a few minutes before we heard the "pop" of the cans, and we knew they had sealed properly! There was one jar that didn't seal, and that was because I had accidentally put two lids that were fused together on one jar - obviously, that would not seal properly. We let the jars sit while they got to room temperature, then they would go into the basement for storage.
With the two 7-litre baskets of strawberries, we made thirteen 250mL jars of jam, and one jar of strawberry-vodka compote (for strawberry-vodka cheesecake).
Yum!
