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!
OMIGOD! The one with balsamic looks too good! When are you going to suit your day job and do this for a living?
The preserved berries are so pretty!!
I just recently made a strawberry-rhubarb jelly with a similar process, except that I did boil the syrup to try to achieve a good gel. I found that when I added the fruit back, it somehow broke the gel, similar to what you are seeing. This is the process I used:
1) Macerated 1 lb of whole strawberries with 3/4 lb of sugar and 1 lb of sliced rhubarb with 3/4 lb of sugar overnight (separately). Also added half a lemon’s worth of juice to each one.
2) Next day, drained off the syrup and boiled to 220 F. Used the frozen plate method to check for a good gel.
3) Added back the rhubarb slices and boiled for 5 minutes
4) Added the strawberries. I intended to boil them just for 5 minutes, but the temperature dropped when I added the strawberries (they were cold from the fridge). I can’t quite remember what I did at this point. I think I boiled it for maybe a total of 15 minutes, bringing the temp back to 220 F. I added some lemon zest strips in an attempt to increase the pectin. When I tested the gel on a plate, it was not gelling nearly as well as before, but I went ahead and jarred/processed it anyway. I was afraid that overboiling would destroy the pectin.
There was a little extra which I didn’t process. I stuck that straight in the fridge and the gel was fine (soft, the way I like it). The jarred stuff seems somewhat liquidy after 1 week. In fact, if anything they seem more liquid than right after I jarred it. The temperature has been going up around here so perhaps that’s why. Anyway, I thought it was interesting that I seemed to lose the gel when I added the fruit to the syrup. I wonder if it’s related to the lack of gelling around the strawberries that you’ve seen.
Hi Janet,
Thanks for the note! I’m interested that you saw the same phenomenon with your berries and syrup. I notice that most of the strawberry jam recipes are long and complicated and don’t use pectin, so maybe there is something unique about strawberries that makes it especially difficult to get a good set. I’ll ask around and see if I can come up with any answers!
–Amy
Hello Amy,
I’m Venita from Atlanta with a healthy obsession with the book Small-Batch Preserving. I was so excited to run across you website.
I made Favorite Strawberry Jam this past weekend. My Jam is also runny and I followed the directions very carefully. Your comments on the recipes you’ve tired make me feel better. I thought I was doing something wrong. Why don’t they use pectin with the Strawberry recipes if strawberrys are already low in pectin? I’ve wanted to do the oven strawberry recipe but I like my jam to gel a little bit so I think I would be disappointed. I have a few questions. What is the formula for making your own recipes; like where do you get this kind of info. Second, I really really dream about making the Fresh Fig and Strawberry Jam. Have you tried it? Where and when do you get fresh figs? In Georgia, I just saw our first batch of local peaches hit the stores and I love to make Peach Jam. I’m looing forward to this summer and experimenting with the book. Like I said, I’m a little obsessed with this form of cooking becasue a) I don’t know if my jams are any thing special and b) I don’t need this much preserves in my life but I guess using it all myself is not the point. I need to be giving my bounty away.
Thanks for reading my response and any advice you have would be great.
Venita
Hi Venita,
How great to hear that someone else loves Small Batch Preserving as much as I do! I’m not so sure about the Favorite Strawberry Jam, though. I’ve seen similar recipes in other places (that leave the berries overnight a couple times), so it’s not just that our beloved book is crazy. I think I’ll stick with the oven-baked version (or just use some pectin).
To answer your questions:
1) I think too much fuss is made about strictly following the recipes in jam books. So long as you use at least 1 part sugar to 2 parts fruit (or 1:1), add a little lemon juice, and use some kind of pectin, it’s pretty rare that the jam doesn’t work out well. Of course, you have to remember that dry and liquid pectin are used differently, but if you use them correctly, I’m pretty sure they are interchangeable. Also, Pomona’s Pectin comes with a “how to create your own jam recipes” section, which I’ve found helpful.
2) I also LOVE figs, and have been asking everyone I know in my region (DC Metro area) if they know where I can buy fresh figs. So far, I’ve got a couple leads on “a guy with a fig tree” near so-and-so. I may go knocking on doors later in the summer if I get bold enough. I haven’t yet found any local farms with figs or any regional companies. California companies sell them in bulk, but I’d prefer to buy locally if I can.