Have you ever made your jam? It is very simple. You don't need perfectly shaped strawberries, but they do need to be tasty. The daredevil can of course indulge himself and start combining flavours.
I made strawberry jam myself. Nice for ourselves but also to give away a few jars. It's a job of nothing, but sooooo much fun! Come on, let's make strawberry jam ourselves.
Strawberry jam is also often combined with rhubarb. The sweetness of strawberries, with a nice spicy sourness of rhubarb.
The easiest way to make jam is with a gelling sugar from the supermarket. You have regular gelling sugar, but also gelling sugar that is a little less sweet. Choose what you prefer.
A package of gelling sugar contains granulated sugar and pectin. What exactly does pectin do?
Pectin
Pectin is often used as a thickener. As soon as it comes into contact with sugar, it becomes a kind of gel. Incidentally, most fruits themselves contain pectin, but often not enough to get a good gel. Fruits such as strawberries, grapes and raspberries contain less pectin. That is why you use less fruit to the sugar. In proportion, you then have slightly more pectin and sugar than with other fruits and your jam will still become jelly-like.
Did you know that you can also make strawberry jam without sugar and pectin? Instead of pectin, you use chia seeds. More information you will find it here.
Would you like to save the recipe for later on Pinterest? You can easily do so via this link.
Make your own strawberry jam
Ingredients for approximately 4 x 350 ml jars.
900 grams of strawberries
1 kg gelling sugar
Juice of half a lemon or whole lime
How to make your own jam
Put a large pot of water on the stove. Clean your jam jars with glass or iron lids thoroughly and boil them for 5 minutes in a large pot of water.
Let the jars and lids rest upside down on a clean tea towel until use.
Want the tastiest jam? Then stir the fruit into pieces through the sugar the day before and let it soak in well. For me, it is usually a last-minute job. This time I had bought a large batch of strawberries at the market and wanted to use them quickly. The strawberries were still nice now. That is why I cut the strawberries into pieces and put them in a large pan.
Bring to a boil with the jam sugar and lemon or lime juice.
Stir it regularly well. The sugar will melt, and the strawberries will cook along. Boil the fruit for 4 minutes. In the meantime, prepare the jars.
Fill your preserving jars or old jam jars with a soup or gravy spoon. You will see that a large part of the strawberries have become smaller and that you have a large part of jelly in your jars.
Close the lids and turn your jar upside down for about 10 minutes. The jars and lids are now vacuum sealed.
Clean jam jars thoroughly before storing your jam
That is certainly possible, after all, most fruits contain pectin. You can then cook fruit with regular granulated sugar 1:1 and cook it gently for half an hour. The important thing is that the jam does not caramelize. I find it a bit of a waste to cook fruit for half an hour because then it is completely cooked. But maybe you like that!
Can you also make jam without gelling sugar?
Storing jam
Because the jam jars are hermetically sealed and very warm, you can keep them outside the refrigerator for up to a year. Once you open a jar, it has a limited shelf life.
I like to make small jars myself. That way I can easily give them away as a gift or take a jar to work for my afternoon bread.
You can find lots of information and inspiration on the website wecken online.
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