Recipe: Strawberry Jam

So many berries!

With all the needle controversy at the moment, strawberry farmers are in serious struggle town. The start of spring has brought bumper crops that are sadly being wasted as supermarkets look to contain the problem. This means strawberries are cheap, plentiful, and our farmers desperately need us to BUY THEM.

This weekend I headed down to the farmers market and bought up a SHIT-TON of strawberry seconds (aka the slightly dodgy looking ones) to make jam for my work. In the spirit of cut them up, don’t cut them out I’m sharing my recipe with you lovely people. Now’s the time to channel your Granny and get preserving!

This recipe is all about ratios. So you’re gonna have to do some math. I believe in you.

Strawberry Jam

Step One: Buy a shit-ton of strawberries. Cut the green tops off them and then slice them in half lengthwise (to check for needles…) and give them a quick wash.

ALSO at this point you need to put a small saucer in the freezer. We’ll get back to this later, trust me.

Step Two: Weigh your strawberries and chuck them in a big, heavy bottomed pot. Feel free to insert your own heavy bottomed joke there.

Step Three: THIS IS THE MATHS BIT don’t be scared. Now weigh out 80% of the strawberry weight in sugar. That means if you have 2kg of strawberries, you need 1.6kg of sugar.
Also throw in 1 tablespoon of lemon juice for every kilo of fruit. This is going to help everything set and it’s just a thing people do. Don’t ask too many questions, I don’t have all the answers.

Step Four: Mash everything up real good with a potato masher or a big old whisk (or your hands, whatever, I’m not judging).

Step Five: Stick your pot on the stove and bring it to boil and give it a good old simmer for fucking ages. Don’t let it stick and burn but also don’t stir it too much. This is a fine line but it’s important!
If you let it stick and burn, well, you’ve got shit jam. If you stir it too much then you risk the sugar crystallising and it’ll be cloudy instead of clear and shiny.

Step Six: WATCH YOUR JAM. I’m serious. Keep watching, get obsessed, become one with your sticky jammy goodness. You can skim off any of the white scum that will gather on top- this is delicious with ice-cream.

Continue to simmer vigorously for fucking ages.

Step Seven: Check if your jam is thick enough by dolloping a tiny bit of jam on that saucer we froze earlier (see? I told you we’d get back to it). Push at the edge of the jam with your finger and see if it wrinkles up. If not, keep going with that simmer for more fucking ages.

Step Eight: Sterilise enough jars by giving them a really thorough wash in very hot soapy water, and give them a hot water rinse DO NOT DRY THEM. Stick them in a VERY low oven for 10 minutes. After you’ve washed the lids, stick them in a small pot of water and bring it to the boil.

Step Nine: Carefully ladle the hot jam into the hot jars and screw the lids on SUPER tight. This will seal them shut and they will keep for fucking ever. You’ll hear the tops of the lids popping as they cool down.

And there you have it! Jam! Delightful!

Go forth and preserve, good humans.