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I've got guests in who are fascinated by the amount of cooking I do, so today is just pure fun. Found a sale on some strawberries (4 lbs for $5), so it's clearly time to make some jam.
Canning intimidates me. I don't do much of it, and what I've done is limited to jams. But this jam? It's sort of scary how easy it is. Three ingredients: 2 lbs strawberries, 4 cups sugar, 1/4 cup lemon juice.
(Note: I doubled the recipe because I had 4 lbs of strawberries and plenty of people who love this jam. Something about having something made without high fructose corn syrup, I guess....)
First you hull the strawberries. You can cut them in half, too, if you are so inclined. I do when the berries are really big. (Hulling is basically removing the stem from the berry by cutting around in a circle. You'll usually get some fibrous white material attached to it.)
Then, mash them up. I use a potato masher to do this.
Measure out how many cups of crushed berries you have. For the recipe above, you should have four cups. Add these to a thick bottomed pan (I use a dutch oven) and add the sugar and lemon juice. Heat the ingredients over low until the sugar has dissolved. (This takes maybe five minutes.)
(There would be a photo here, but my iPhone battery ran out. Sorry!)
Then increase the heat to high. Here, you need a thermometer. The strawberry/sugar/lemon mixture needs to reach 220 degrees. This will take at least 20 minutes, and you do need to keep an eye on it, stirring constantly toward the end, or it WILL bubble over, and the mess you're facing won't be pretty.
In the meantime, you can prepare your canning supplies. I boil everything - jars, rings, funnel, ladle, tongs - for 10 minutes. When I take the pot off the heat, I add the lids. I have no particular explanation for why I handle my sterilization this way, just that this is how I've read it should be done. I use a really large pot to do this. Fellow canners out there - I'm very interested to hear how you do this!
Once the berry mixture hits jam point, add the jam to the jars.
To test whether it's jam, put a plate in the freezer for 5-10 minutes. Then add a small amount (a teaspoon or so) to the plate and let rest for 30 seconds. It should jel up and move slightly when the plate is tilted. If it is runny, it's not ready.
Once the jam is in the jars, wipe the threads of the jars with a wet paper towel and put the lids on, followed by the rings, and tighten.
From here, I put the filled jars in a water bath for 10 minutes. Once again, I do this because it's part of the recipe process. My understanding of the water bath is that it essentially adds significantly to how long the jam will last, if done properly. All I know is that when I make this stuff, it lasts around our house for about 5 months. (Typically this recipe makes 6 8-oz jars of jam.)
If I could keep any tomatoes alive, that would SO be my next attempt. I have a black thumb, though. My gardening attempts are the kiss of death to any chlorophyll based life form. Dammit.
Without further ado, here are tonight's Top Comment nominees:
From Dragon5616:
In his diary Here's an opportunity for input to my classroom, teacherken asked for suggestions for integrating mobile technology into his classroom, and Guy Fawkes delivers some good input.
From Ed Tracey:
In the diary by plf515 about Jews in Denmark
- when it
comes to the subject of history, former high school teacher Temmoku cites
your-friend-and-mine Michele Bachmann
in saying, "Learning is
selective, and many learn only what they want or what interests them".
From BeninSC:
By anyone's standard, ct is a miracle worker! Little wonder, then, that Mr SeeMore asks for help with this common problem. ;)
From sardonyx:
In a diary for a new group on white privilege, mamamedusa writes about being of Appalachian-American descent, and We Want Change writes about discoveries made while being in a Chicano Thought Class discussing white Privilege as it pertains to Latinos of Mexican heritage.