Just for you, Casey!
Homemade strawberry freezer jam is one of my favorite things to eat. Seriously. It's WAY better than Smucker's and certainly better than that all fruit yuckfest we feed Theo (sorry, buddy). Eat this and you will never eat store bought again! It's easy, trust me.
Ok, here we go.
First, wash and hull your strawberries. I had 4 cups CRUSHED to work with, roughly 4 pints.
You need two boxes of this to make 5 jars of jam. The directions are inside the box. Be SURE you are using the "quick and easy" side. You shouldn't be cooking any fruit here.
Use a potato masher to mush up all your strawberries. You could use a food processor, but who wants to wash that? Not me.
It should look like this when you are done. You are NOT looking for puree. This is jam, people. It should be like me - a little chunky.
Next you add 4 cups of sugar and two cups of mashed strawberries. Stir well, preferably with a wooden spoon. Just seems more pioneerish, right? I had to do this during nap time because my boy loves him a wooden spoon. Let this stand for 10 minutes.
Next, you will boil 3/4 cup of water with a box of the pectin. Boil for a minute and stir it the WHOLE time. Don't drop any boiling pectin on your foot while trying to take a picture. Not that I would know why this is not a good idea or anything. Just sayin'. Stir it into the sugar/strawberry mix and stir it up for three minutes, making sure all the sugar is dissolved. Or, until your arm gets tired, which I am sure was less than 3 minutes in my case.
Ladle ever so neatly into Mason jars (standard size). Or, make a giant mess and just rinse them off afterwards. Your choice. Leave a 1/2 inch at the top for expansion.
And, there you have it. Strawberry jam! Let it set up at room temp for 24 hours. Then put in fridge for up to 3 weeks or in freezer for a year. THAW IN FRIDGE. Use liberally. I find it is best on cheap, white, gluten filled, GMO'd, ABC'd, EFG'd, HFCS filled bread, myself. Hey, we can't all be perfect.
Let's talk about what else you can learn from this picture - our house is a wreck and we eat Dunkin' Donuts. What can I say? We have a toddler, 4 jobs between us, absolutely no help with Theo and I am in the pregnancy of doom. Sometimes you need a damn donut or five.
Thank you for this- can't wait to try it!! My quick trip strawberry picking this weekend was last minute, and so I didn't plan ahead and didn't get enough berries for jaim :( I did make homemade strawberry shortcake though! And the same day we went strawberry picking, we stopped at Dunkin Donuts on the way home...I even let Ellie have 2 munchkins for the first time. She was in heaven :)
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