Strawberry Jam

It's high time to make this year's strawberry jam, as the strawberry season will end soon. It's really very, very easy and tastes so much better than the one you can buy. (And you get a 100% natural, no preservatives, no pectin, no artificial flavors jam) 

All you need is:

•  strawberries
• preserving sugar
• jam funnel 
• clean jam jars

I used 2 kg of strawberries and 1 kg preserving sugar, the result is 8 jam jars filled with strawberry jam. Sterilize the cleaned jars by boiling them completely submerged in boiling water for 10 minutes (this will preserve the jam for a longer time). Keep the jars in the hot water until they are ready to be filled. Rinse the strawberries, gently pull off the leaves and cut into small pieces and weigh on a kitchen scale. After that put them into a large cooking pot (make sure that the pot is big enough to to allow for the foamy expansion that will occur) and add the preserving sugar, bring to cook while stirring. Skim off the foam with a spoon diligently and lower the heat to about medium, so that the jam is still bubbling but not boiling over. When the strawberries have turned soft, but still hold their shape, you have two choices as to how to proceed: One is, just leave the berries in there (I used this alternative, because I wanted some texture to the jam.) The other is to use a hand blender, to crush them if you want your jam to be smooth. Continue simmering until the syrup has thickened up and use the jam funnel to fill the jam jars. If you use jam jars with a rubber gasket and a side latch just close the lid immediately and it's fine, with a jam jar with a twisting lid make sure to close the lid immediately too, but to also turn them upside down for approx. 5 minutes.

I also found some really nice labels here for the various jams:

Time for a toast with my homemade jam... :)

Kram,

Isabell