In a (strawberry) jam

Spring is coming upon us, and it's got me all excited about gardening, farmers' markets, and canning.  In keeping with that spirit, I'm looking back at last summer and the canning I wound up doing.  My mother-in-law, at that time, was working at Edible Arrangements, and they had a glut of super-ripe strawberries.  The problem for them, though, is that super-ripe is actually too ripe.  They need fruit that will keep for a couple days while they prep it, and a couple more after that while the customer snacks on the arrangement.  These strawberries were so ripe they had little more than a day before they spoiled.  Their store had a thing set up where they donated over-ripe fruit to the zoo (fruit bats gotta eat!), but they had so many strawberries the zoo couldn't even take them all.  And so my mother-in-law brought them home, we froze them temporarily, and then we canned them.  We canned A TON of strawberry jam/preserves using the following recipe, from Canning for a New Generation, a delightful book that I had found at my local library.  I loved it so much I bought myself a copy, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in canning-- it's good for novices, but full of recipes with unique twists, so even someone with more experience might find something new to try.

Strawberry Preserves (by Liana Krissoff)

3 lbs Strawberries

1 1/2 C Sugar
3 Tbsp lemon juice

Combine the strawberries and sugar overnight in a bowl to pull juice out of the berries.  If you've frozen the strawberries temporarily, you can skip this step, because the freezing will have lysed the cells and released the juices anyway.

Place the strawberries in a pan or stock pot, and bring to a simmer for about five minutes.  Pour everything into a colander to separate berries from juice.  Boil the juice  over high heat for about 15 minutes.  Return the berries to the juice, and add the lemon juice.  Simmer and stir for about 20 minutes.  Skim off foam, and place the resultant preserves in prepared half-pint jars*, leaving 1/4 inch headspace.  Process in boiling water for 5 minutes.

*Prepare jars by boiling while you're making the preserves.  Be sure to dip the lids in boiling water and clean the jar rims before processing as well. For the record, the jars in the photo at left are not half-pints.  They're 4-oz jars that make great gifts.



Now, preserves like this are frequently made with large bits of strawberries.  We used smaller bits of strawberries, thinking to make it more jam-like.  It worked to a point, but I reckon next time I'll partially puree some of the preserves as a further step toward the texture I'm looking for.  Want to kick the flavor up a notch?  Try adding a vanilla bean!  You can do this without throwing off the ratios necessary for proper preserving.  And if you have more jam than fits in your jars, pour it off into a bowl, let it set, and enjoy it right away.