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Strawberry Freezer Jam |
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Recipes
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Written by Julie
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Monday, 30 June 2008 21:55 |
For the most ardent of jam lovers, this is the month of strawberry freezer jam.
If you've been buying jars of commercially produced jam over the years and have never tasted actual strawberry freezer jam, prepare to be amazed. Once you're hooked on the genuine article, you will become manic come strawberry season, and spend more hours than you care to count feverishly hulling and stirring crushed strawberries into frighteningly large quantities of sugar in order to put up your own little (or, not-so-little) stash of freezer jam to tide you over until next June.
I've been making strawberry freezer jam since I was a kid. Back then, not only would I make the jam, but I'd also pick the berries. These days, I depend on the incredible Shuksan and Rainier strawberries available at the Day Road strawberry stand. (Get 'em while you can!) I picked up my first flat (6 qts) of berries last Wednesday, and paid $35. This might sound like a lot for berries, but when you figure that you can make about 30 half-pint-size jars of jam out of that, and you consider the astonishing difference between the luscious, sweet, deep garnet-colored, local berries and the tennis-ball texture of the spongy pinkish berries available year-round in supermarkets, it all seems like an incredible deal! Plus these berries are at the perfect stage of ripeness for jam-making, having just been picked that morning.
Karen Selvar grows her strawberries using organic methods in the Manzanita Bay area of Bainbridge, and trucks her berries over to the Day Road stand each morning before 9AM, when they're in season. You can still get them this season, even into early July, thanks to the slow start to summer weather, but prepare to arrive right when the stand opens. I showed up at 2:30PM the first day the stand was open, and it was already shut and completely sold out. I arrived at 8:45AM on the second day of the stand's being open, thinking I might snag some boxes of berries before the crowds showed, only to discover that at least ten other people had the same idea, and the gates were still closed. The following day, I returned to buy a half-flat, or 3 quarts ($18), and I found the stand swarmed with other jam-makers, who were practically running back to their cars with their loot, avoiding the covetous looks of those of us still waiting in line.
To make strawberry freezer jam (or any jam, for that matter) requires some advance preparation. It helps to have jars with lids and rings prewashed and ready to go. If you buy them new, you will want to wash them in hot water and get them completely dry prior to jam-making. You will also want to have your pectin sourced ahead of time. I tried to buy Certo, my favorite version of pectin in liquid form, only to find one box left at Safeway, and none at T&C. This year I tried something called Sure Jell, which is made by the same folks who make Certo, only to discover to my dismay that it requires cooking (something Certo does not), which added a slightly irksome step in my otherwise streamlined no-cook freezer jam process.
If you do have Certo, you will need only sugar and lemons to complete your process. According to the recipe, each batch of strawberry freezer jam uses 2 cups crushed berries to 4 cups sugar, a ratio that can give anyone pause. The sugar effectively eliminates the need for cooking the jam, because it suspends the fruit and acts with the acidity in the fruit and the pectin to jell it. There are alternatives to using this much sugar, but I've never tried them, and I'd welcome feedback from those who have. Additionally, there are different kinds of pectin that are especially for use with freezer jam (Bernardin makes one, I believe) but I have no experience with these.
In addition, you will want a funnel that fits into your jam jars, lots of clean glass bowls and wooden spoons for multiple batches of jam, and a potato masher or a food processor with a steel blade. I mash my berries in a food processor, using short pulses to keep the berries pretty chunky. For the extra-finicky jam maker: look for a strawberry huller. I picked up a stainless steel huller on sale a few years back for 50 cents, and I've found it completely indispensable every June. It allows you to stem and hull the berries quickly, sort of like pinching off their tops and tiny fibrous centers in one twist, rather than needing the motion of a paring knife, which results in a loss of both juice and fruit.
After two afternoons of work, I had 47 jars of strawberry freezer jam sealed and ready to freeze. Did I forget mention that it helps to have an extra freezer for storing the fruits of your labor? The jam keeps in the fridge for a few months, too, in case you you've run out of room in your freezer. And I've found that neighbors and friends are generally thrilled to receive jars as an alternative to wine or flowers for dinner parties. If you don't wait too much longer, you can enjoy what my family lovingly refers to as "red gold."
To read the Kitsap Sun's take on Karen Selvar's berries, visit http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2008/jun/17/bainbridge-strawberries-slow-to-hit-the-stands/
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