This is the strawberry freezer jam that tastes like fresh strawberries!

This recipe is for those of you who’ve made cooked strawberry jam and been disappointed that it’s too sweet and not strawberr-eeey enough.

Now to mention that many national brands of strawberry jam have a long list of unpronounceable ingredients… let’s skip those ingredients and the food miles by making your own.

You can make this with both fresh picked or previously frozen berries. And feel free to use the wonky looking or almost too ripe ones for jam. When you’re growing your own, you’ll likely harvest a few cups to a few pounds a day, and if you want to save up and make a batch of jam, just freeze whatever isn’t eaten at the end of the day and defrost once you’ve got enough berries and time.

More on growing Strawberries HERE.

If you go to a Pick Your Own Berry Farm and come home with 16 pounds of berries (yep, happened to me before) this is a great way to preserve that summer sweetened flavor all through winter and right into next spring.

I also love how fast this Strawberry Freezer Jam comes together. It is literally a 10-minute process once the berries are clean.

Technically, you should freeze this jam in plastic freezer containers. And sometimes I do- but I also use freezer safe mason jars. I pack my freezer jam jars into cardboard boxes, so if something does crack it will be contained.

To prepare strawberries, give them a quick rinse and remove the hulls and any extra weird clumps of seeds on the bottoms of the berries (are those berry butts?). Then crush with a potato masher or similar tool. Crushing the fruit really decreases its volume, so I usually end up preparing about 8 cups of cleaned and hulled fruit that gets crushed down to 4 cups of prepared fruit.

Pick a Pack of Pectin

I love Pomona’s brand pectin for making lower sugar cooked jellies and jams but haven’t had great luck with it for freezer jams. I think it may be affected by the lower amount of cooking time. For freezer jams I usually go with the low-sugar Sure Jell pectin. The different kinds of pectin (high or low-methoxyl) are truly fascinating to me; derived from different foods like citrus peel or apple with different setting times and temps, but that is another rabbit hole for another day…

Strawberry Freezer Jam Recipe

Ingredients:

4 cups prepared fruit3 cups sugar, measured into separate bowl1 1.75 oz. box pectin Sure Jell (*low sugar)1 cup water

Directions:

Thoroughly clean six 8-ounce or four 12-ounce containers or (plastic or freezer safe glass) and lids. It never hurts to sanitize jars with boiling water for ten minutes. The plastic containers just wash thoroughly.Prepare the fruit as mentioned above. Measure exactly 4 cups prepared fruit into a separate bowl and set aside. Slowly mix sugar and pectin well in a medium saucepan, then stir in the water. Bring to a boil on medium-high heat, stirring constantly. Once boiling, cook and stir one more minute, then turn off heat and pour in prepared fruit immediately. Stir briskly (I like to use a whisk) for one minute or until well blended.Fill containers quickly to within 1/2 inch of tops. Wipe off rims of jars or containers and cover with lids. Once cooled off, move to refrigerator. You can refrigerate freezer jam up to 3 weeks or freeze up to 1 year.

And somehow, I always end up with a partial jar that makes that goes right into the fridge to enjoy!

I love this strawberry freezer jam on yogurt and granola, smoothies or toast with brie or goat cheese. My kids eat it old school with PB+J.

I hope this has inspired you to make some of your own jam! Whether you grew the berries, picked them or bought them- skipping the many ingredients in store bought jam is better for the flavor and your health!

Dig In,
Michelle

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