I decided to divide up the bounty and make three different kinds of strawberry preserves. All three recipes are adapted from Small-Batch Preserving.
1) Oven-Baked Strawberry Jam with Balsamic Vinegar and Black Pepper (right in photo)
2) Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam (3-day process) (center)
3) Whole Strawberry Preserves with White Wine (left)
Oven-Baked Strawberry Jam with Balsamic Vinegar and Black Pepper
You can find lots of sun-cooked strawberry jam recipes if you search. But, since I live in the urban environment this isn’t very practical for me. This recipe gets a similar result with long baking in a low-temp oven.
1) Mix 5c washed, hulled, and halved berries with 2.5c sugar
2) Let sit, stirring occasionally, for 2 hours.
3) Add 1/8c balsamic vinegar and some ground black pepper. Bring to a boil.
4) Cook 10 mins. — it will foam a lot, just keep stirring, don’t skim.
5) Pour into large (9×12) glass or ceramic baking dish.
6) Bake at 170 degrees for 8-10 hours (or 3 hours if you have a convection oven).
This jam came out the best — flavorful and thick. Because the baking evaporated most of the liquid, the jam turned out well without pectin (though it didn’t “hold” when the jar was turned sideways). Go easy on the ground pepper — a little goes a long way!
Strawberry Rhubarb Jam
Day One, in the evening
1) Wash, hull, and halve 4c strawberries.
2) Finely chop 2 stalks rhubarb (slice rhubarb 2-3 times lengthwise before chopping)
3) Mix berries and rhubarb with 2c sugar. Let sit, stirring occasionally, for 8 hours.
Day Two
4) Add 1/4c lemon juice and bring to boil. Boil 5 mins.
5) Remove from heat, let stand, covered, for 24 hours.
Day Three
6) Bring to boil for 5 mins.
7) Can and process in hot water bath for 5 mins.
This jam tasted great, but never achieved a consistency that I liked. It stayed too syrupy — even though I left it in the fridge for a week between steps 5 and 6 (not intentionally). One idea is to separate the berries from the syrup on day three and boil the syrup until it achieves a gel (a lot longer than 5 mins) and then add the berries before canning. I may try this if the jam doesn’t thicken up in a couple days.
Whole Strawberries Preserved in White Wine
For this preserve, I set aside all the same-sized berries that were well-shaped and blemish-free. I wanted this preserve to look as fabulous as it tastes.
1) Mix 3 c washed and hulled (whole) berries, 2 c sugar, and 3 tbln lemon juice. Let sit, stirring occasionally, for 4 hours.
2) Bring to a boil for 2 min., remove berries with slotted spoon.
3) Add 1/2 pouch liquid pectin and boil until achieves set (about 7 mins).
4) Put berries back in pot and bring back to a boil.
5) Can and process for 5 mins.
I ended up with two half pint jars of preserved berries and one half pint jar of jelly. The jelly set well after a full day, but the syrup around the berries never gelled. The photo to the left shows the jelly gelled at the bottom of the jar (where the berries didn’t reach), but not set when it was surrounding the berries. I’ve never seen this pattern before and am not sure why this happened. Please leave a comment if you have an idea!