Vigorous boiling causes a lot of foaming and so it's important to have a jam pan or a pot with tall walls, at least 7 inches, and not to overload the pan. Hence, I begin cooking over medium-high heat. Ideally, you'd want to evaporate excess water as quickly as possible. Once macerating is done, we begin cooking our jam. I leave my strawberries to macerate overnight but a few hours will do. You will have to cook the jam longer which will impact the shape and the firmness of the fruit. If the liquid is inside the strawberries when you begin to apply heat, that won't be so easy. This is extremely important as that liquid can be easily evaporated given high enough heat. It draws a lot of liquid out of the strawberries. Macerating is a technique that softens fresh fruit and draws out its natural juices, in which the fruit then soaks, sort of like marinating. Making strawberry jam begins with the process called maceration. Two-three pound batch size would be recommended. In my 16.75 Qt jam pan I can make batches as big as 6 lbs which would take about 50 minutes to cook but I try to keep my jam batches at 5 lbs or less, depending on how much fruit and berries and I need to process.Īs well, if you want your jam to be lighter in color with firmer fruit/berries - decrease your batch size. If you are going to use a smaller pan, reduce the batch size accordingly. A 2-3 lb batch of strawberry jam will be ready in about 15-20 minutes or so. In my 16.75 Qt, 11" bottom jam pan I can prepare 5 lbs of strawberries (plus sugar) in about 35-40 minutes. The trick is to use a large, preferably copper jam pan and not to overload it. You would think that with this low sugar content the jam would have a hard time thickening without pectin but it does just fine. I experimented with dropping the ratio of sugar to 60%, 50% and then 40% and 30%, and realized that 40% was just perfect. One pound of sugar to one pound of strawberries is way too sweet for me. The only thing I changed to the family recipe is to reduce sugar from 1:1 ratio to just 40%. And guess what, the strawberries never disintegrate and hold their shape just fine. Its flavor is more intense, akin to how beef's flavor becomes more intense after dry aging. It's a little darker than if you used pectin and thickened it within 10 minutes, capturing all that unnecessary water inside, but who cares? I love the darker, rich burgundy color of the strawberry jam that was cooked a little longer. Made this way, the jam comes out thick, jammy, chewy and ridiculously good. That's what true strawberry jam tastes like. Let me tell you, I wouldn't make it any other way as it's exceptionally delicious. I've been making strawberry jam this way for years and that's even how my grandparents and great-grandparents used to make it. Do we really want to copy commercial jam makers? At home, you can make the real strawberry jam that will taste a thousand times better. Commercial jam makers love using pectin as it increases their yields but that comes at the expense of the taste and texture. In my opinion, strawberry jam made with pectin tastes more like strawberry-flavored jello. What they don't tell you is that pectin changes the texture and the taste of strawberry jam. They say that pectin will make strawberry jam thicken faster, the color will be light and that strawberries will hold their shape. Many books instruct to use pectin when making strawberry jam. It goes so well with Dutch babies, English muffins, or pancakes. A true artisanal delight with a very long family history, you won't find anything like it in a store. This jam is thick and chewy, with an intense strawberry flavor and rich burgundy color. This recipe is for low-sugar, addictively delicious strawberry jam made without any added pectin.
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