One of my main wished for the garden this year was to grow enough strawberries to make a jar of jam, and this week I have gathered a strawberry harvest and made the fruitiest, most balanced jam I have ever tasted.
I don’t like commercially produced strawberry jam, and I will always opt for raspberry jam if given the option, because I find that most strawberry jam tastes of nothing but sugar, with no balance and all of the taste of the fruit eclipsed by the syrupy sweet taste that the sugar imposes upon it.
What I set out to make was a jam that balanced all of that added sugar with something that enhanced the fresh fruit and added a deeper fruit flavour back in layers of freshness with a gentle sour note underneath.
I spent a long time looking online at recipes that suggested more fruit, less fruit, less sugar, adding vanilla, cinnamon and various other ideas, bit none seemed to suggest the flavour that I was after.
Most strawberry jam recipes call for the juice of a lemon to be added, because the acid in the lemon juice activates the thickening process of the pectin, so I did consider simply increasing the amount of lemon juice, but I wanted something that added richness of flavour rather than just sourness.
Looking through my pantry I narrowed my ideas down to two ingredients: balsamic vinegar and pomegranate molasses, and settled on the latter for it’s punchy, fruity sour kick as well as the gentle, dark savoury finish.
Pomegranate molasses is nothing like regular blackstrap molasses. It has a deep, rich fruit flavour that absolutely buzzes your mouth. It’s perfect for adding to strawberry jam. I also added a pinch of salt, to enhance the natural fruit flavours.
This batch of jam was a risky experiment in some ways, but I am absolutely convinced this is the best strawberry jam I have ever had the joy of tasting.
I managed to get two 400ml jars, a smaller 275ml jar and three little single-serve breakfast preserve jars from my 1kg of strawberries. I dressed these strawberry-shaped Kilner jars with lid toppers cut in a shape to echo the sepals of a strawberry. Made from felt, I designed the lid dressings in a graphics program and uploaded and cut them on my cricut. They were designed for these jam jars but will fit any standard size preserving jars and can be resized to work with any sized jar neck opening, so I’m hoping to use them in the future to make homegrown jam and preserve gifts: lid topper .svg
I’m definitely going to make this recipe again, so I am overjoyed that I wrote it down as I was making it.
Homegrown Strawberry Jam
No instruction on sterilising jars or canning preserves safely is given here. Dedicated canning and preserving resources are best consulted to ensure that your canning procedures are safe.
Ingredients
- 1 kg strawberries
- 1 kg granulated sugar
- 1 sachet pectin or use jam sugar with pectin already added
- 1.5 lemons juice only
- 3 tbsp pomegranate molasses
- ½ tsp granulated salt
Instructions
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Add the strawberries to the bottom of the heavy bottomed pan with roughly ⅓ of the sugar and leave for an hour, so the sugar and begin drawing the water from the strawberries (maceration).
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Heat the strawberry and sugar mix gently for five minutes, until that the strawberries start to break down and release their juice.
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Stir the pectin powder into the remaining sugar, and add it to the pan along with the lemon juice and salt, and continue to gently heat.
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Keep the mixture heating gently until all sugar crystals have been completely incorporated into the jam. Mash the larger pieces of fruit with the potato masher.
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Once all of the fruit and sugar have been fully incorporated and heated through, and are of an acceptable size, bring the mixture to the boil, aiming for a temperature of 104.5℃ (if using a jam thermometer) or when the mixture looks like rapidly blinking fish eyes. Whilst the jam is climbing to boiling point, skim off any foam from the top of the mixture and dispose of it.
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Once the jam has met the setting point (it will still be very runny but look smooth and glossy) check that it will set by dropping a little hot jam onto one of the frozen saucers, waiting a minute and them pushing the surface of the jam on the saucer to see if it lightly wrinkles. If it does not, boil for another few minutes and try again with another saucer.
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Once the setting point is reached, place into your sterilised jars and process according to best canning practices.
The strawberries are only just starting to reach their peak harvest in our garden, so I may yet manage another batch of jam before the end of summer, to give as gifts, but for now one of these jars is already open and being enjoyed atop some beautiful scones.
