How to make strawberry jam
Hi I’m Rosemary Jameson from Jam Jar Shop and we’re going to show you quick and easy it is to make great jam from these fantastic British strawberries.
The first thing you’re going to do is to wash your jars in hot soapy water. Rinse them and put them in a medium oven, about 100 degrees, to dry them off ready for when the jam is made. When you’ve washed your jars and got them in the oven, get two plates or flat saucers and pop them in the fridge for later for testing the jam for a set.
Next you’re going to need to prepare the fruit. Just use an ordinary potato peeler otherwise it’s quite tough on your fingers. Okay we’ve got on and a half kilos of strawberries here and that’s going to make us about six to ten jars of jam, depending on the size of your jars of course. Mash the strawberries slightly so that it speeds up the heating up and cooking of the fruit.
You’re going to need one and a half kilos of sugar. This is the jam sugar with added pectin. I’m just going to squeeze the juice of two lemons as well. The acid in the lemon juice helps to react with the pectin to get the jam to set. You need to be careful adding the sugar. You add it away from the heat. If you do it on the heat there’s a danger it will hit the bottom of the pan and just cook straight onto the pan. So it needs to go onto a gentle heat now to dissolve the sugar. And you’ll hear it and feel it. It’ll be gritty and you need to stir it on a low heat just so that it’s not, you don’t get that any more it’s nice and smooth. Don’t start to heat it fiercely until that sugar is dissolved. I’m going to add a knob of butter at this stage which will help disperse any foam which just naturally comes from the sugar, there’s nothing wrong with it, and the butter helps to prevent it happening and also dispersing it back into the jam.
It’s best to just really boil it fiercely at this stage because you need that chemical reaction and it’s never going to happen if you don’t boil it fast enough or hot enough. This is our jam on the plate that we put in the fridge a couple of minutes ago. And to test if the jam is going to set or not, just push it with your finger from the side, push it away from you, and you can see the surface crinkling up which will mean that the jam will set fine in jar when it’s cool.
Ladle the jam in, nice mixture of syrup and the fruit in each jar. And then you need to fill the jar right up to the top. Using lids, seal it up tightly. Just twist them on and leave them. As the jam cools it will shrink slightly and form a vacuum which will enable you to keep your jam for two or three years if unopened.