Food: Strawberry Jam Recipe and Tutorial

Today my boys made strawberry jam with our local 4-H group and Tessa from Doty Creek Crafter. I thought I'd take photos and share the how-to with all of you. Many thanks to the 4-H leaders for allowing me to take photos. I omitted all the photos of children other than mine for privacy reasons.

First you have your adorable children wash, wash, wash their hands and remove the lids and rings from the new jars. 

Toss the jars in the dishwasher. Don't forget the detergent. Put that sucker on HOT water and a heated dry. 

Get yourself some berries. {We opened up 6 boxes of strawberries and ended up with 8 half-pint jars of jam.} Now, rinse those gorgeous things off and spread them out on paper towels to drip dry.

 Give the kiddos a plastic knife and have them cut the tops off and cut the berries in chunks. 

 Yum! 

Now put your jars, lids, and rings in your water bath canner. The water just needs to be simmering. This will reduce the risk of the jars breaking when you put hot food into them.

Grab your other ingredients. Sugar, pectin, and lemon juice. 

 Add 1/4 cup of lemon juice.

 7 cups of sugar. 

Stir.

Cook the berries until they are juice and maybe a little mush. I guess about ten minutes. Stir them often so they don't stick. 

Now, you may skim the foam off of the top if you want, though I don't usually do that. Just whatever you prefer. Laddle the mixture into a sifter of some sort. I don't know the official name for this thing, sorry. 

Sift the mixture over a clean pot until no juice is coming through the bottom. The reason we do this is to keep  bits of fruit and seeds that are in there from being in your jam. Set the sifter and leftovers aside.      

Move the juice back to the stove, turn the heat on high, add in 1 package of pectin, and heat until it is a rolling boil. Let it boil hard for one minute. Stir continously. Remove from heat and skim foam if you want. 

Now comes the fun part. Very carefully remove your jar from the canner and laddle the jam into the jar. Leave 1/4 inch of headspace. 

Caution: the jar and the jam will be HOT. If you are doing this with children, make sure they are properly supervised. 

Now wipe any juice from the rims of the jars and quickly put on your lid and ring while the jam is hot. You may need to hold the jar with a dishtowel while you put the lid on. They say fingertip tight.

The Ball Blue Book of Preserving says the next step would be to process the jars for 10 minutes in a boiling-water canner. To do this you just put the jars on the canning rack and lower them into simmering water. Make sure they are covered by at least one inch of water. Cover with lid and heat to a steady boil for the amount of time on the recipe. Turn off the heat and let the jars stand in the water for 5 minutes. Remove jars from water and sit them upright on a towel on the counter for 12 hours. 

Now with that being said, I normally don't do the processing at the end. We eat our homemade jam so fast there really isn't a need for it. After we put the lids on we leave them sitting on the stove top. In about half an hour they jars should be sealed. When they seal the tops will be flat or even look like they are caved in a smidge. There will be no bump on top and it won't make a popping sound when you touch them. If the jars haven't sealed, and the jam is still hot, turn the jar upside down for about 15 minutes. It should seal. Then we put in the fridge and forget it. But you may want to do what book calls for if you aren't going to eat yours straight away.

 At the end of the day each child put their name on the cupcake wrapper under their jar. Didn't they turn out great?! 

I'm sharing this at My Simple Country Living and at Homestead Barn Hop.

Food: Wild Blackberry Jam - Recipe and Tutorial

Michael, the boys, and I picked 3 lbs and 12 oz of wild blackberries in two quick rounds when we were out and about on the 4-wheeler. The boys wanted my Mom to make them blackberry jam, but I decided to give it a go myself. Of course I talked to Mom on the phone 25x in less than an hour since this was my first attempt at making jam.

I thought I'd take pics along the way and share the process with you. I didn't get as many pics as I would like.. because it is kinda hard to take pics while doing this by yourself. But I did manage to get a few.  REMEMBER I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL. I AM LEARNING AS I GO AND CAN'T BE RESPONSIBLE IF YOUR JAM FLOPS. LOL.

First I gathered my supplies. {Berries were in the freezer overnight... so they look a little frosty in this pic cause they were adjusting to the room temperature.}
The first thing I did was wash and dry my jars. You can sterilize them by running them through your dishwasher I've heard or by boiling them in a canner.  Someone even suggested heating them in the oven at 250. {What is your method?} Then I dumped my berries in a colander and rinsed them off a few times. I made sure there weren't any weeds, bugs, twigs, mud or anything like that in there. Once I knew they were clean, I put them into my deepest cooker and added 2 cups of water. I let them come to a hard boil and boil for ten minutes, stirring them quiet often to keep them from sticking. Once they finished boiling... I grabbed another cooker, a dipper, and my sifter. I held the sifter in one hand over the clean cooker and dipped the berries and juice into the sifter. I then sifted the berries until no juice was coming through the bottom. The idea was to get only juice into the clean cooker without any seeds. I'd then dump the seeds into a bowl and then repeat the process over and over until I had all the seeds in the bowl and the juice in the cooker.  The seeds looked like this after being sifted. I forgot to get a pic of the juice.

I then rinsed the first cooker and sifter out. I poured the juice through the sifter again into another bowl. This made sure that any extra seeds were caught. There were a few that had made it through the sifter the first time. Now the juice was free of seeds and ready to go on with the process.  
I used a one cup measuring cup and measured the juice as I put it back into the original deep cooker. I had five cups of juice. The instructions on the Jel Ease was to use four cups of juice, but Mom said it would be fine.. to use the five cups of juice and just add in another cup of sugar. Blackberries have a lot of natural pectin and it wouldn't be an issue.  I put the cooker that was filled with juice on the burner, set the stove to high, and dumped in the Jel Ease. I stirred continuously until the two were at a rapid boil. Then I dumped in six and a half cups of sugar and began to stir, stir, stir as it boiled rapidly for three minutes. When three minutes was up, I moved the cooker to the front burner and began dipping it out of the cooker and into the jars. Mom told me to leave my jars sitting on the stove the entire time so that they would be hot when I began filling them up. So I did. I had enough jam to fill eight and a half jars. They are half pints. I quickly put on the two piece lids on while the jam and jars were hot so that they would seal. I used a thick dish towel to hold onto the jars as I tightened the lids.

As you can see.. I made a mess. I didn't have a funnel. About thirty minutes after I put the lids on, I went back to see if they were sealed. Mom said the lids would be smooth on top or even look as if they were caved in. There would not be a bump on top and when you touch the top, it wouldn't make a popping noise. Five of the jars sealed but three hadn't. I didn't check the half filled jar because we were going to eat it straight away.  I was about to panic, but Mom said not to worry. If the jars were still hot, to turn them upside down and they would seal. Sure enough they were hot, I turned them upside down, and left them for about 15 minutes. I went back to check and they were sealed. I plan to put them in the fridge anyway, but I still feel better knowing they are sealed.

 

I tossed some biscuits {from a can} in the oven and we went to town on the half jar.  I was surprised. It turned out great and the boys loved it. Even Michael approved.  

Pick Your Own has a great post about making jam if you'd like to check that out as well.

I am sharing this at Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop, Homestead Revival Barn Hop, Made by You Monday and Farm Photo Friday

Food: Cherry Jam Recipe

Remember the cherries we picked for Mom yesterday? Now they are Jam. Sweet, yummy, jam! Eleven jars to be exact.

We ate it with our blueberry muffins and it was delicious!

Many thanks to my wonderful Momma who is so very sick {needs another kidney transplant} for making the jam. I took two jars home and left the rest for her and Dad.

Next time, I'm gonna make it for her! 

*Edited To Add* 

I spoke with Mom tonight and she explained to me how she made the Jam. I figured I'd pass that info on to you. 

  We picked the cherries for her from the tree in our yard, but you could buy them too.

First she washed the cherries. Then she put them in a pot/cooker with a little water and cooked them; pits and all. Once they cooked she put them in a strainer and used her hand to push on the cherries to remove the juice.

Have all your ingredients measured out before you start the jam making process. 

Take about four cups of the cherry juice and a pack of Jel Ease and bring it to a hard boil. Remove from heat, add five cups of sugar. You can add two teaspoons of lemon juice if you are using sweet cherries. Mom didn't use it. After adding in the sugar; bring the mixture to a hard boil again and boil for two minutes. Finally add to your jars. 

Here is a step by step photo tutorial from Pick Your Own.

I am sharing this tutorial at I'm No Chef's cooking challenge. This weeks theme is Cherry. Stop by and check out the other submissions.