Homemade Organic Strawberry Jam 自家製有機士多啤梨果醬

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中文食譜 - 自家製有機士多啤梨果醬

Homemade Organic Strawberry Jam
Ingredient for ~800ml Jam

• 1kg Strawberry 
• 750g sugar
• 3 lemons

Preparation

Stage 1: Jam Making

• First, place a clean plate in the fridge.  Soak the jars and lids in a pot of warm water and set aside.
• Juice the lemons, reserve the seeds and tie into a cheesecloth bag. Clean and hull the strawberries, cut them into half and place in the soup pot.
• Gently heat the strawberries for 5 minutes to vaporize the excess water. Pour in the sugar, lemon juice and cloth bag, bring to boil in high heat. Stir gently to the bottom of the pot to avoid burning. The jam will start to thicken after 30 minutes.
• Use a spoon to check the consistency again and again. If you see the jam can jell the spoon instead of dripping down quickly, then take the cold plate from the fridge for the jam test.
• After the jam test is passed, ladle into cleaned jars and close tightly. The first stage of strawberry jam is done. 

Stage 2: Preserving 
(If the jam will be eaten right away, you can skip these steps.)

• Reheat the hot water, put the bottle jam on a steam rack and boil hard for 15 minutes. The water level should be higher than the jars.
• After sterilized, line the jars on upright on a table to cool down for 24 hours, and don't distribute the bottles during this period.
• Next day, check the bottles one by one. Press the lids with your finger, if the lids don't pop up, they are vacuumed successfully. If you find the jars which failed the vacuum, put into the fridge for tomorrow's breakfast : )

Your homemade strawberry jam is full of fruity aroma. Why only eat as a bread or cracker spread? How about as the filling of your favorite butter cookies and spongy cakes? Or pour over vanilla ice-cream and cheese cakes? I am sure it is the best gift idea for your family and friends, let's discover more together!

Descriptions Automatiques - I. Sur Un Vaisseau - Assez Lent - Erik Satie

The super fresh and yummy strawberries. All picked from an organic farm located in Yuen Long.

Ingredients checklist: Strawberries, lemons and sugar.

Utensils checklist: A scale, a plate, a big soup pot, a cheesecloth bag, a ladle, a spatula, a spoon and jam jars.

Strawberries for jam sounds pretty certain. In fact, all berries are low in pectin and not ideal for jam making. But lemon, especially it's seeds are rich in pectin, which is the best natural ingredient to balance the consistency.

Hull the strawberries one by one and cut into half.

Pour in sugar, lemon juice and seeds. You are right, it's a lot of sugar. Apart from providing the sweetness taste, sugar is also a natural  preservative. This is the wisdom from the people of former times in fresh fruit preserving.

At the beginning, the liquid is still very thin. Stir gently and watch the changing consistency.

The jam become thicker and thicker. Stir to the bottom gently to avoid burning. Nevertheless, stir too frequent may delay the jam setting point.

The jam should start to jell after 30 minutes. Use a spoon to check the consistency. From each time of checking, you should able to see the jam become more jell and sticky.

The Jam test - It is very hard to tell is the boiling jam already jelled, now the prepared cold dish become very helpful. When the hot jam meet the cold plate, it should shows how it's look like after cooled. If the jam is still runny, continue boiling and test it again.

Ladle the finished jam into the clean jars.

The first stage of strawberry jam is finished. If you will eat it right away, then store in the fridge after cooled.

Second stage - Preserving: Place jam jars in water bath. After sterilize, the jam will able to keep for one year in a cool dark place. After opened, please store in your fridge.

If you don't have jars special for canning.  Store the bottled jam upside down can prevent air run into the jars and affect the original quality. Design your favorite labels with the canning day.  Now the flavor of strawberry season is sealed.

Mini Tips:

• Jam Test - Coz it is too hard to describe, so I decided to show you my video. Spoon the jam on the cold plate, you will see the jam is set.
• Use a stainless steel pot to boil the jam.
• Use glass jars and lids coated with plastic. The jam should not direct contact the metal lids, as the acid content will corrode the metal and become inedible.

Reference:

Historical Foods

The National Center for Home Food Preservation

UNL Food: Home Food Preservation

Canning Jars: The Ball Company , The J. WECK Company , Le Parfait

Visit my pervious post for organic farm information: 探訪有機農莊 - 美麗的士多啤梨園