Strawberry Jam - My Gateway into Canning.

     I was watching the CBC the other day & had the chance to watch one of my favorite local bloggers getting interviewed on the Lang & O'Leary Exchange. (You can see his spot on tv here  CBC - Well Preserved Interview. I found Joel MacCharles & his  wellpreserved.ca blog after I started mine, but I read his regularly. He & his partner are far more experienced with food preserving than I am, so it's nice to have a community touchstone you can check in with once in a while. 

     What I had to laugh about was his statement that strawberry jam was his "gateway" into the canning world. It's so true! Strawberry jam is almost exclusively what everyone starts out with when canning. It was certainly my first foray into preserving. Ontario strawberries are much smaller, more flavorful & tart than the generic stuff that gets trucked in green from California. It's also nice because you don't have to drive far to see the farms where they are grown. Toronto is a huge city, but it's not terribly far removed from it's farm districts.

      This year was unfortunate because it was cold & wet. Our local strawberries were not nice at all. Most baskets were small, brownish & mushy when they turned up in stores. The farmers market we have locally hardly carried any strawberries at all this year. Hopefully next year will be better. Until then I will still enjoy the jam I canned last summer, & perhaps use my remaining frozen berries to try making a shrub for the first time? (Fermenting & infusing intimidates me a bit, but I am going to get around to trying it eventually)

My basic recipe for strawberry jam is here:

(Makes roughly 5-250 ml jars)

4 cups of crushed strawberries (cleaned & stemmed of course)

1 cup of thick cut strawberry pieces.

1 package of low sugar pectin

1 cup of orange juice

2 tbsp lemon juice

1 cup of sugar (optional of course)

Directions:

1. Prepare your canner, jars & lids - everything must be sterile.

2. In a large stainless steel pot combine strawberries, juices, & sugar.

3. Whisk in your pectin until dissolved.

4. Bring to a boil over high heat. Stir frequently so it doesn't burn (roughly 10 min.)

5. Remove from heat & skim off the foam.

6. Test for Jell.

7. Can as you regularly would & process for 10 min.

If you like you can substitute different items in for different jams. Say half strawberry & half rhubarb? It's up to you what flavour combinations you enjoy.