Homemade Strawberry Jam

May is strawberry season in Alabama, and strawberry season is the perfect time to make homemade strawberry jam!

I started making homemade jams and other preserves several years back, and I love the variety and simplicity behind canning your own food! Variety because there are so many recipes available to make—everything from jams and jellies to canned vegetables and soups to salsas, spaghetti sauce and even homemade ketchup! In fact, for Christmas one year my mother-in-law gave me the Ball Canning cookbook with over 400 recipes in it! Simplicity because canning your own food is a lot easier than you think and only requires a few specialized utensils to aid in efficiency.

This year I decided the girls were old enough to help me, so we donned our aprons and got to work. We had an additional helper you’ll see in the pictures courtesy of Monkey’s 2^nd grade “Flat Teacher” project. Monkey and Curly had a lot of fun posing Monkey’s teacher in the different pictures!😊

First: those utensils I mentioned. The first time-saving device is a food processor. If you don’t have one, you can chop up your strawberries really fine with a knife and cutting board, but a food processor definitely makes the job easier!

Next, you’ll need a large stockpot—the larger, the better. I’ve made jam and other preserves in a normal-sized stockpot, but it can get a little hairy when the preserves are boiling madly, threatening to overflow. I’ve learned to use my BIG, tall pot to avoid that problem.

Another labor-saving device is the wide-mouthed funnel, made especially for canning. It fits perfectly inside the mouth of mason jars, but is wide enough for the food to pass through. Finally, there’s the magnetic grabber—actually, I don’t remember what the name of this tool is, but grabber sounds better than magnetic stick-thingie.😁 This is used to pick up canning lids from the hot water they’re sanitized in, but if you don’t have one, kitchen tongs work well, too.

To make strawberry jam, you need 4 quarts of strawberries—enough for 5 cups crushed strawberries—, 7 cups of sugar and 1 box of Sure-gel. Sure-gel is a powdered pectin that helps the jam or jelly set. You can make jam or jelly without it like they did in the old days, but it takes longer, and it’s harder to ensure you cook it the right amount of time. Using pectin shortens the cooking time and guarantees a more reliable product.

Wash the strawberries and cut the tops off, then run them through the food processor.

It’s important at this stage to get the strawberries the size you want them in your jam later on, because they won’t cook down much in the pot. I like very small chunks of strawberries in my jam, so I process them pretty fine.

Put the crushed strawberries in your stockpot, add in the pectin, and stir until it’s completely dissolved. Add in 1 tbs. of butter or margarine—this will help prevent excess foam later on. Bring it all to a boil, stirring frequently to make sure the pectin is thoroughly incorporated.

While the strawberries are cooking, wash your mason jars in hot, soapy water, then rinse and set aside. Separate the canning rings from the flat lids, and place the lids in a small pot of water and bring to a boil. Once it’s boiling, lower the heat and keep it to a simmer. The hot water will soften the wax on the underside of the lids, so that they’ll create an airtight seal on the jar once you’ve filled it.

(It's handy at this point to have a helper to stir the pot while you're washing jars, but if you're not that lucky, it's okay: as long as you're close by and stir it frequently, you're good! 😉)

When the strawberry mixture has come to a full, rolling boil—that’s a boil that doesn’t go down even when it’s stirred—add in your sugar.

Stir the sugar and strawberries together and continue stirring until they come to a boil again. DO NOT LEAVE THE POT AT THIS POINT! You’ll notice that the strawberries get a lot soupier, and once they start boiling, foam will form. This is where that extra-tall pot comes in really handy! If you’re using a regular-sized pot, it’s especially important to keep stirring so that your jam doesn’t overflow onto your stovetop! But if you put the butter in at the beginning and you stir continually, it shouldn’t be too bad.

Set a timer for one minute, and once the jam comes to a full, roiling boil, start the timer and stir it for exactly one minute. Then, turn off the stove, move the pot off of the heat, and get ready to fill your jars.

Line up your washed and drained jars next to the pot. Make sure you have your funnel, a ladle and a pair of tongs or the magnetic grabber close at hand. Once you have everything in place and the jam has cooled a bit (i.e. it’s not boiling anymore), use your stirring spoon to very carefully scrape off any remaining foam from the top of the jam and put it in a bowl on the side. You could leave it in the jam, I suppose, but it doesn’t really congeal like the rest of the jam and won’t taste as good. Be careful not to pull out any chunks of fruit that have floated to the top. Now you’re ready to can the jam.

Place the wide-mouth funnel in the top of your first jar (I’m using a mixture of pint and quart jars for this batch), and then, using the ladle, scoop the hot jam into the jar. Fill it to the top, leaving an inch or so of headspace at the very top. 

Move the funnel to the next jar, use your magnetic grabber (or tongs) to pick up a lid from the hot water bath and place it on the filled jar, then screw on the accompanying ring as tight as you can get it with your fingers. 

I like to use a towel to hold the jar (the jam makes it HOT!), so that I can get it really tight. Then flip the jar upside down on a nearby counter or table, and fill up the next one.

If you check any canning book (like the one on my shelf) or any official canning recipe, they will tell you that once all of your jars are filled, you should process them in a canner to ensure an airtight seal. This involves another very large pot that has been sitting behind everything else you’ve been working on to this point and is filled with water that it is currently heating to boiling. Once all of your jars have been filled, you place them in the canner, and let them boil away for 10-20 minutes (depending on what you’re canning). Ideally, the extreme heat will pull the wax seal tightly against the mouth of the jar, sealing it completely. Pull the jars out using special tongs made for grabbing jars (I’d show you, but mine are packed away with my kitchen stuff right now), and place them on the counter to cool. As they cool, you’ll hear a popping sound—that’s the seal forming. If in an hour, they haven’t sealed yet, you repeat this process until the jars do seal.

I’ve done this in the past, and I have a couple problems with it. One, as already noted, it doesn’t always work the first time, and it takes FOREVER to heat that giant pot up again. Two, sometimes even after the jars are sealed, they can mysteriously unseal unbeknownst to you, and then your food spoils. Not. Fun.

Three—and this is just a pet peeve—you boil all this water and then pour it down the drain when you’re done because it’s too hot to water the plants with (it takes all night to cool), and who would seriously want to put food to cook in that after you’ve put the jars in? Sure, they were clean, but still…. I HATE wasting things, and that includes water. Fourth, not everybody has one of those giant pots, and if you do have them, they’re a pain to store until canning season.

I have an easier way. I recognize it may be controversial, but I’m here to tell you IT WORKS. You flip each jar upside down once the lid is tightened, and you leave it that way overnight. The heat from the jam upside down in the jar melts the wax around the rim, creating a perfect airtight seal. In the morning, you flip them right-side up, label them and put them on the shelf until you’re ready to use them.

That’s it. Nothing else. It’s that easy.

Jimmy’s grandma showed me this trick when she taught me how to can, and I can raise my hand and testify that the only times I’ve ever had food spoil after canning them this way was when I used canning lids and rings that were a little bit rusted and thus compromised in their integrity. So…always use clean, new lids and rings!

No fussing with gallons and gallons of water. No trial and error of trying to get it to seal. Just perfectly canned food. Enjoy! You may never buy jam again!

For those of you who are trying/using homemade jam for the first time, a few words of warning: homemade jam obviously does not have the preservatives that are present in storebought jam, so you have to be careful when using it not to accidentally contaminate it and cause it to mold. I've found it's best when using it to always spread the jam first, then anything else (like peanut butter) afterwards. DO always use a clean knife or spoon in the jar; DON'T put the utensil back in the jar after using on some other piece of food. And always, always store in the refrigerator!

Of course, if your helpers decide they want to lick the pot clean after making the jam.....that's totally permissible! 😂