Homemade Strawberry Jam, from fields to the shelf

DISCLAIMER: This recipe requires knowledge of canning/jarring. Please read canning food safety guidelines and follow instructions to ensure no bacteria is introduced into your finished product. If you are well versed in canning, making your homemade strawberry jam will be a breeze!

Fresh strawberries are aplenty during the spring. For as long as I can remember, here in Ashburn, we have always gotten our fresh strawberries from our favorite local farm operation, Calhoun Produce. Not only are their fruits and veggies the best, but the family is also seriously the sweetest and so supportive of our community. I am all about supporting a local family business and a Georgia Grown product.

As with most fresh produce, there are windows on when it is available and after that, you gotta rely on other sources for your fresh veggies and fruits. But you can save your fresh produce in different ways so you can enjoy them year long. Being able to put up and save fresh veggies and fruits is a family tradition.

This is strictly a making jam post but if you want to get more info on the whole “canning” process, definitely check out the Georgia Grown canning article! They go over food safety tips and are much more knowledgeable than I am.

Conveniently, the recipe is on the back of a Sure-Jell packet.

2 qts. of strawberries
1 Box of Sure-Jell Fruit Pectin
1/2 tsp of butter
7 cups of sugar

First, take your fresh strawberries and give them a good wash. Typically, strawberries are not washed until you are ready to eat them because they soak up water and can rot very easily. Your strawberries are coming directly from a field and need a good rinse.

After rinsing, you need to cut off all the tops with leaves.

After cutting, get your strawberries cut and crushed into small pieces. A Tupperware chopper is useful for this. This can be done with a food processor. I also imagine this can be done by hand but we wanted expediency and chose the tried and true chopper.

You are now ready to start the cooking process. Put your crushed strawberries in a dutch oven and add in Sure-Jell and butter on high heat. Bring to a rolling boil while continuously stirring to ensure it does not burn to the bottom of the pot.

Once you reach a rolling boil (meaning it is still bubbling even while you are stirring), add in sugar. You should bring mixture back up to a rolling boil and boil it for one minute. This is super important because the instructions emphasized it.

After the 1 minute boil, remove from the heat and transfer to your freshly boiled jam jars. You will also need to boil the full jars in a canning water bath to make sure they are sealed properly for shelf storage. Again, please follow the canning guidelines to ensure proper food safety! This is very important!