If you're looking for a modern day, healthy, sugar-free strawberry jam recipe - this is not the one for you. Welcome to a perfectly unhealthy, full of actual sugar, old-fashioned Certo strawberry jam recipe.
This year I switched from Charlotte strawberries to Audrey strawberries which means I'll have to wait another year to have enough strawberries to make strawberry jam from my own berries.
I got some local strawberries to make my jam though because I can't go through a year without strawberry jam. My preferred way to eat it being on a spoon straight out of the jar with a chaser spoon of plain Greek yogurt.
This is this year's batch.
Let's make jam! This is for those who have never made jam, so forgive me for oversimplifying if you are a jam aficionado. This post is for people who want to learn how to make strawberry jam.
You're going to need several of these plus the dirty garden fingernails.
Oh you need to know exactly how many? Seems awfully demanding to me but O.K. I'll play that game. Here's the actual strawberry jam ingredient list complete with accompanying photos and instructions.
How to Make Strawberry Jam
(enough to make 7 or 8, 500 ml. jam jars)
1. Gather your ingredients.
The little green basket of strawberries is 1 quart. You'll need 2 of those to make this recipe.
2. Hull and mash your berries.
3. Sterilize and heat your jars.
It's important that your jars are clean and sterile so even if you just bought them, wash them in the dishwasher first on hot.
Set your oven to 210 degrees Fahrenheit. Once it's heated up stick your mason jars in the oven. You need hot jars for the jam to seal properly.
4. Pour your berries into a heavy bottomed pot and add ¼ cup of lemon juice, then 1 cup of sugar. Stir. Let the sugar, berries & lemon juice sit for 15 minutes.
5. Prepare for sugar shock. Add the remaining 6 cups of sugar to the pot. Stir to incorporate then bring the mixture to a vigorous boil. Stir for one minute then remove from heat. Add liquid pectin and stir.
6. Stir and skim the jam for 5 minutes. If you skip this step, your strawberry's won't evenly incorporate into the jam.
Your jam is now made. From here on in it's just a matter of getting it into a jar.
7. Grab a hot jar from the oven. At this point you need to work quickly so your jars, jam and seals stay hot. I leave my jam on the stove on low to keep it hot, but not cooking
8. Fill the jars using a ladle and a funnel.
9. Wipe the jar rim then place seal on top.
10. Set your jam aside and wait to hear the rims "pop".
The concave dimple on the rims will suck in and become convex when the jars have sealed. For reasons known only to the most mystical of jam makers, the odd jar won't seal. It just won't.
There could be a small chip or irregularity on the rim, or maybe the jam fairy is just angry at you. Whatever the cause, you can just stick this unsealed jam jar(s) in the fridge. It'll be the the first jar you eat. So no need to worry or cry. Or call the Certo hotline.
Classic Strawberry Jam
Ingredients
- 2 quarts strawberries once mashed they need to equal 4 cups
- 7 cups sugar
- ¼ cup lemon juice juice of 1 mammoth lemon
- 1 pouch Liquid Pectin cannot substitute with powdered pectin
- 8 mason jars
- Funnel
- 8 seals
- 8 rings
Instructions
- Gather your ingredients.
- Sterilize and heat your jars. Wash & dry them then stick them in an oven at 210 F to heat up.
- Hull your berries by removing the stem and white pithy part.
- Mash your berries. If you like blobs of berries in your jam, make sure you don't overmash them.
- Pour your mashed berries into a heavy bottomed pot.
- Add ¼ cup lemon juice, then 1 cup of sugar. Stir.
- Let the sugar, berries and lemon juice sit for 15 minutes.
- Add the remaining 6 cups of sugar.
- Stir the sugar to incorporate it, then bring to a boil stirring constantly. Once you get to a vigorous boil, stir for one minute then remove from heat.
- Add liquid pectin and stir.
- Stir and skim the froth off of the jam for 5 minutes.
- Grab a hot jar from the oven. At this point you need to work quickly so your jars, jam and seals stay hot. I leave my jam on the stove on low which keeps it hot without further cooking it.
- Fill the jars using a ladle and a funnel.
- Wipe the jar rim clean with a damp paper towel or cloth then place a seal on top. Screw a ring on the jar, finger tightening only. Screwing on your lid too tightly will prevent a proper seal from forming.
- Set your jam aside and wait to hear the rims “pop”
Notes
- 1 Tablespoon = 23 calories.
- It's very important to wipe the rim of your jar after filling it. If you don't, and even the slightest residue is left on the glass your jar won't seal.
- This recipe comes from Certo (the makers of liquid pectin). It does not call for the jam to be processed in a boiling water bath. However, over the years I've found I get a much stronger seal if I process the filled jars in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
- To perform a boiling water bath simply submerge your filled and sealed jars into a pot filled with boiling water. Do this immediately after you fill the jars. The water needs to cover the jars by a couple of inches. Time your 10 minutes from the moment the water comes back to the boil.
Nutrition
I'd like to end things with a personal story. Years ago one of my sisters did a very mean thing. The sort of thing only a sister would do. So now, I am going to do my own very mean thing. I'm going to tell the whole world about her mean thing.
My sister, myself and my cousin were in my mother's kitchen. We were all sitting around a bowl of strawberries when I spotted it. The perfect strawberry. I don't mean a pretty good one, or an O.K., one. I mean THE perfect strawberry; the one strawberry marketers around the world have been searching for their whole lives.
I picked the strawberry up with the reverence it deserved. I admired it from every angle and showed it to my relatives. As I held it up to the light I proclaimed it had a higher purpose in life than to be shoved into one of our mouths that instant. I had big plans for this berry. Maybe a decorative accent on a pie, or a topper on the perfect strawberry shortcake. The possibilities were endless as I stared at that jewel of a berry sparkling like a glistening ruby.
Then my stupid sister grabbed it out of my hand and shoved it in her mouth and laughed hysterically.
Of course I killed her right there and then and my sister is now dead. Metaphorically speaking anyway, she is dead to me. Well, really only when I think of this story is she dead to me. When I need her help or to borrow something she's very much alive.
You think that's a sad story? Wait till I tell you about the time I had to call the Certo jam hotline. What a fiasco that was.
If you're feeling a bit woozy at the moment, you may have hysterical sugar coma syndrome. Don't fret. Once you make and eat the jam that'll go away and you'll slip easily into an actual sugar coma.
Like Karen, I don’t eat much jam, but when I do it had best contain a lot of sugar! The Certo package contains a leaflet with recipes for several flavours of jam as well as a telephone number for the Certo help line if you have any really tough questions. You can certainly use powdered Certo but the quantities of ingredients and the method will differ a bit so follow the recipe in the package. While heating the jars I always put the seals and rings in a pot of simmering water. This sterilizes them and softens the
rubbery ring around the edge of the seal that adheres it to the rim of the jar. And it is the seals (not the rims) that will each pop
once when the air in the headspace cools and contracts. You will hear them pop if you are near-by.
, but the
Hi Jan. I have funny news. Those seals don't need to be warmed in water anymore. That used to be the recommendation but now the seals are made so you can just put them straight on the jar. :) ~ karen!
Who knew? Obviously I’m old(ish)! However I might still like to think that I had sterilized the lids.
Thank you Karen! I love your tutorials. I do have a question. I cannot eat sugar or many sugar substitutes, because for some reason they give me migraines. I have tons of fruit trees and I would love to make jam, but I am worried that you need sugar to preserve them properly when you can them. What do you think?
How would you adjust the recipe if you wanted to do strawberry rhubarb jam?
Thank you, this recipe made me feel so much better about the one I have with 5 cups of berries and 7 cups of sugar. Everywhere else I was reading had MUCH less sugar and I was starting to get nervous.
Excellent! Yeah, I'm not usually a sugar fan, but to me THIS is jam. :) ~ karen!
Karen, This is a great jam recipe, and it couldn’t be easier to make. After making several batches that I shared with friends and family, I decided to spice up the next batch with a cup of finely diced fresh Jalapeños (no seeds) and lime juice. It came out beautiful, and tasted fabulous. The strawberries are still the star, but now has a touch of warmth from the peppers. Such a versatile recipe. I usually have about a cup of syrup left in the pot which I keep and use as simple syrup.
Hi TS. It *does* sound great! Sweet and hot is a favourite of mine. :) But if you canned them, you're taking a big risk, so those jars should be kept in the refrigerator. Once you change a canning recipe at all it alters the acidity levels. So treat those jars as perishable, not as something that's been preserved. ~ karen!
Every time I eat a strawberry I think of your sister eating your strawberry and laughing. The tears in your eyes were so sad.
I forgot!!! YOU WERE THERE. I'll never get over it. Charlie's pretty perfect looking. I have a mind to bite his head off in front of her. ~ karen!
Hi. I followed the recipe this morning using strawberries that I had originally hulled and then froze. I hauled them from the freezer, thawed them out and after mashing them up real good, carefully measured 4 cups. I carried on and finished all the rest of the recipe. I ended up with 4 x 500 ml jars of jam - very,very good jam.
Where did the other 4 go?
Hey Darlin!
Can I / May I (?) use the same process for Blueberry Jam?
P.S. You are the very best :-)
Hello Karen
Thanks for reposting this delicious recipe. I just made it exactly as you did but I did not get the yield you did, in fact I got almost 1/2 so I’m thinking it’s actually 8 x 250ml jars, not 500ml.
Looking at your picture, I think those jars are indeed 1/2 pint.
Regardless, it’s deeee lish :)
Same for me. Must be the explanation,
This looks delicious, but my version is a lot less complicated. I use 4 cups of berries to 3 cups of sugar. And the berries from our garden are so sweet I use 3 cups of berries to 2 cups of sugar or a bit less even. And that's it. I only mush the berries a tiny bit, no pectin, no lemon. It cooks a big longer and comes out great. (I use the plate in the freezer method someone mentioned.) I might try your oven thing though. That will make it even simpler!
Hi Ann. Just be careful if you're preserving. The reason for the lemon in recipes like this is to keep the proper balance, so the food can be canned. :) ~ karen!
I have an old phonograph record from the 1940s where a comedian does a routine on Cinderella. He calls the ugly sisters the--
Sisty Uglers
Feel free to order your sister a name tag with this on it.
(and, why do the strawberries I get in the U.S. never look this good?!?)
My mom made Strawberry Jam and only Strawberry Jam for over 40 years. My dad had it on toast every morning, probably forty 1/2 pint jars a year. It was sealed by pouring 3/8ths of an inch of hot, liquid paraffin "canning" wax on top. I never saw a bad jar. If I was there I got the job of pushing on the top and breaking the seal.
With tomatoes and tomato juice she might lose 1 or 2 year from the 50+ quarts she canned.
Hi Peter! The reason you have to follow modern standards for canning and not do things like pour wax on top is because produce has changed since then. Methods that worked for vegetables years ago don't work safely work now. Why? Because our vegetables are different so our canning methods have to be different. Hybridization of plum tomatoes for example. They aren't as acidic as they used to be in the 50's. So they can't be preserved safely without water bath canning for instance. Just a note. :) ~ karen!
This is one of those recipes where I add booze in the end, tequila and some lime zest to be exact, and I call it “Mama’s Tequila Sunrise Jam” :)
But the oven! Why has nobody told me to use the oven for my jars? Me with just four little burners trying to maneuver four extra extra large pots??? Ingenious!!!
I play bob marley jammin . I’ve used this for a long time now . The oven tip Is so nice . Marley and jammin this weekend.
How long can you store the jam?
It’s been almost a decade since you shared your recipe & process, but this is my first time making strawberry jam. I cannot emphasize enough how much my husband appreciates the recipe! I had to go out and pick more berries two days after making three batches, because he wanted to make sure we had enough. Awesome recipe that had turned out excellent all 5 batches I’ve made.
That's great! Wow, lol, that's a lot of jam!! I'm already looking at my strawberry patch this year wondering what I'm going to do with all of them. I love it, but I really don't eat all that much jam!! I suspect I'll be giving a LOT away. ~ karen!
I lost my Mom's recipe & came across yours a few years ago. I can't thank you enough for it. Step by step it is the best strawberry jam I've ever made. My grandchildren will only eat mine now, even the 2 year old, great grandson. Thank-you again for posting, & love your sister story. Marie
You’re a gem. Funny and practical. Recipe saved, though we (too) tore out our strawberries which had become dominated by wild eensy strawberries so let us know if the new variety is good; I’ll order next year (I’m sitting here with a fresh hip replacement so won’t be adding anything to the garden soon; perhaps this Fall.)
Yes, I know I'm posting a comment four years after everybody else, but stumbled upon your website while fishing around for different jam recipes. I have been making jam and jelly for about fifteen years now, and to be honest the thrill is mostly gone, it has turned into a big old chore, but now when I make strawberry I will think of your mean sister story. If you send me your address I will send you some mulberry jelly that will make you swoon!