In a jam

A few weekends ago we realized that it was the middle of strawberry season AND there was a pick your own strawberry field just outside of town. Fresh strawberries? Um, yes please!

We fell in love with the cute little farm and went a little overboard with the picking...2 gallons overboard! It was only $20 and a bit of our time, and it was nice to get out in the field and out of the city for a bit.

Nonetheless, we had a LOT of berries. That means it's JAM TIME!

Now here's the rub. Neither the boy nor myself have ever made jam. So it was bound to get interesting.

First we discovered that pectin, the stuff you need to make jam all jam-like and not soupy, requires a ton of sugar. The stuff we had was about 7 cups/batch. Ick. I can't stand overly sweet strawberry jam....I like it to have a little bite to it! Fortunately we ran across this article from the UT agriculture school and discovered low-sugar pectin. And being the scientist that I am, we decided to do an unofficial test of two brands: Ball and Sure Jell.

And then the fun began.

First, the decapitation

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One gallon down, one to go!

And sterilization of the jars:

We followed the directions on the pectin boxes, which of course meant that the Ball batch was different than the Sure Jell batch. For instance, the Ball pectin required apple juice to set while Sure Jell did not. But the Sure Jell did require a certain amount of sugar (4 cups I think) while the Ball let you use a range of sugar, or sweetener, or even honey! We kept it simple and went for sugar.

The berries were beaten to a pulp and the cooking of the strawberry goo was fast and furious. Of course, the boy had to show reclaim his manliness by drinking a Guinness while stirring jam in my apron!

Not the cleanest project in the world, but fun! We bought this kit when buying jars, and it was TOTALLY worth it. Jar lifter, lid lifter magnetic stick thing, and funnel. Yeah, you need those!

Ten minutes in a boiling water bath, 24 hrs on the counter and.....

Whew! Lotsa jam. Now we are going to have to eat a whole lot of toast....