I've added free labels for your jars here, in a Word format! Just download, edit, and print in label paper.
I've got some other pages for specific types of jam and butters, too:This example shows you how to make either Strawberry jam or Strawberry - Raspberry - Blackberry Jam - also called Triple Berry Jam (my favorite, and everyone I give a jar to, says it has become their favorite, too!) But you can use this recipe to make any type of jam; where there is a difference, I will point it out! The yield from this recipe is about 8 eight-ounce jars (which is the same as 4 pints).
It's fun to go pick your own and you can obviously get better quality ones!
At right is a picture I took of wild blackberries - they are plentiful in late June throughout Georgia. I usually look in rural north Georgia.
I prefer to grow my own; which is really easy - but that does take some space and time.
As
mentioned in the Ingredients section; you may use frozen berries (those without
syrup or added sugar); which is especially useful if you want to make some jam
in December to give away at Christmas!
Above and at left are strawberries and blackberries that I picked at a pick-your-own farm. If you want to pick your own, here is a list and links to the pick your own farms.
Jam
can ONLY be made in rather small batches - about 6 cups at a time - like the
directions on the pectin say, DO NOT increase the recipes or the jam won't "set"
(jell, thicken). (WHY? Alton Brown on the Food Channel says pectin can
overcook easily and lose its thickening properties. It is easier and
faster to get an even heat distribution in smaller batches. It takes about 8
cups of raw, unprepared berries per batch. For triple berry jam, I use 4 cups of
mushed (slightly crushed) strawberries, 1 cup of raspberries and 1 cup of
blackberries. For strawberry-only jam; you will need 6 cups of mushed
strawberries.
Now's
a good time to get the jars ready, so you won't be rushed later. The dishwasher
is fine for the jars; especially if it has a "sanitize" cycle, the water bath
processing will sanitize them as well as the contents! If you don't have a
dishwasher with a sanitize cycle, you can wash the containers in hot, soapy
water and rinse, then sanitize the jars by boiling them 10 minutes, and keep the
jars in hot water until they are used.
NOTE: If a canning recipe calls for 10 minutes or more of process time in the canner, then the jars do not need to be "sanitized" before filling them. But really, sanitizing them first is just good hygeine and common sense! See this page for more detail about cleaning and sanitizing jars and lids.
Put the lids into a pan of hot, but not quite boiling water (that's what the manufacturer's recommend) for 10 minutes, and use the magnetic "lid lifter wand" to pull them out. Leave the jars in the dishwasher on "heated dry" until you are ready to use them. Keeping them hot will prevent the jars from breaking when you fill them with the hot jam.
I'm
sure you can figure out how to wash the fruit in plain cold water.
With strawberries you must remove the hulls. With other berries, just pick off any stems and leaves.
Then you just mush them up a bit - not completely
crushed,
but mostly. Most people seem to like large chunks of fruit but crushing them
releases the natural pectin so it can thicken. You will need about 6 cups, mushed
up.
If you want seedless jam, you may need to run the crushed berries through a
Foley food mill (at right). They cost about $30.
It works well for blackberries, not so well for raspberries, and no one tries
to remove strawberry seeds (they're so small). I suppose you could train monkeys
to pick them out, but they'd probably form a trade labor union. But I digress..
Depending
upon which type of jam you're making (strawberry, blackberry, raspberry,
apricot, peach, grape, etc.) you will need to use a different amount of sugar,
jam and pectin. The precise measurements are found in each and every box of
pectin sold. For most fruit; like berries, with the low sugar pectin, you will need 4 cups of sugar. With regular pectin, about 7 cups of sugar. Mix the dry
pectin with about 1/4 cup of sugar and Keep this separate from the rest of the
sugar. If you are not using sugar, you will just have to stir more vigorously to
prevent the pectin from clumping. This helps to keep the pectin from clumping
up and allows it to mix better!
If you would rather try to make jam with no added sugar, click here for those directions!
Stir
the pectin into the berries and put the mix in a big pot on the stove over
medium to high heat (stir often enough to prevent burning). It should take about
5 to 10 minutes to get it to a full boil (the kind that cannot be stirred
away).
Why use pectin? You may run into grandmotherly types who sniff "I never used pectin!" at you. Well, sure, and their generation took a horse and buggy to work, died of smallpox and ate canned meat and green beans that tastes like wet newspapers. Old fashioned ways are not always better nor healthier. Pectin, which occurs naturally in fruit, is what makes the jam "set" or thicken. The pectin you buy is just natural apple pectin, more concentrated. Using pectin dramatically reduces the cooking time, which helps to preserve the vitamins and flavor of the fruit, and uses much less added sugar. But, hey, if you want to stand there and stir for hours, cooking the flavor away, who am I to stop you! :) Having said that, there are some fruits that have naturally high amounts of pectin (see this page for a list) and they simply don't need much or even any padded pectin.
Notes about pectin: I usually add about 25% - 30% more pectin (just open another pack and add a little) or else the jam is runnier than I like. With a little practice, you will find out exactly how much pectin to get the thickness you like.
Another tip: use the no-sugar needed pectin. You can still add sugar to it and it cuts the amount of sugar you need from 7 cups per batch to 4 cups or less! And it tastes even better! On the other hand; I have never had success with the No-sugar pectin without adding ANY sugar. It always turned out runny and bland. You might want to try using the no-sugar recipe with a mixture of sugar and Stevia (in a prepared form like Truvia, it measures same as sugar; if you use another form, you will need do your own conversion) - or Splenda, if you prefer, ; sugar and white grape juice, or just white grape juice - that will cut down the sugar, but still preserve the flavor.
Is your jam too runny? Pectin enables you to turn out perfectly
set jam every time. Made from natural apples, there are also natural no-sugar
pectins that allow you to reduce the sugar you add by half or even eliminate
sugar!
Get canning jars, rings, lids and pectin deliverd:
Lids:
put the lids into a pan of hot water for at least several minutes; to soften up
the gummed surface and clean the lids.
Need lids, rings and replacement jars?
Get them all here, delivered direct to your home, at the best prices on the
internet!
When the berry-pectin mix has reached a full boil, add the rest of the sugar (about 4 cups of sugar per 6 cup batch of berries) and then bring it back to a boil and boil hard for 1 minute... If you bring it back to a full boil fairly slowly (on medium heat rather than high) that will help reduce foaming.
Remove from the heat.
Foam...
What is it? Just jam with a lot of air from the boiling.
But it tastes more like, well, foam, that jam, so most people remove it.
It is harmless, though. Some people add 1 teaspoon of butter or margarine
to the mix in step 6 to reduce foaming, but food experts debate whether that may
contribute to earlier spoilage, so I usually omit it and skim.
But save the skimmed foam! You can recover jam from it to use fresh! See this page for directions!
See here for related tools, equipment, supplies on Amazon
I
keep a metal tablespoon sitting in a glass of ice water, then take a half
spoonful of the mix and let it cool to room temperature on the spoon. If it
thickens up to the consistency I like, then I know the jam is ready. If not, I
mix in a little more pectin (about 1/4 to 1/2 of another package) and bring it
to a boil again for 1 minute.
Notes about "set" (thickening or jell): It takes 3 ingredients for jams and jellies to set: pectin, sugar and acidity. The amount of pectin that is naturally occurring in the fruit varies from one type of fruit to another and by ripeness (counter intuitively, unripe contains more pectin). See this page for more about pectin in fruit. It takes the right balance, and sufficient amounts of each of pectin, sugar and acidity to result in a firm jam or jelly. Lastly, it takes a brief period (1 minute) of a hard boil, to provide enough heat to bring the three together. Generally speaking, if your jam doesn't firm up, you were short in pectin, sugar or acidity or didn't get a hard boil. That's ok - you can "remake' the jam; see this page!
Why? Otherwise, the fruit will often float to the top of the jar. This isn't
a particular problem; you can always stir the jars later when you open them; but
some people get fussy about everything being "just so", so I've included this
step! Skipping this step won't affect the quality of the jam at all. I usually
don't bother.
You will also notice that the less sugar you use, the more the fruit will float (chemists will tell you it is due to the decreased density of the solution!)
Fill
them to within 1/4-inch of the top, wipe any spilled jam off the top, seat the lid
and tighten the ring around them. Then put the filled jars into the canner!
This is where the jar tongs come in really handy!
Keep the jars covered with at least 2 inches of water. Keep the water
boiling. In general, boil them for 5 minutes, which is what SureJell (the makers
of the pectin) recommend. I say "in general" because you have to
process
(boil) them longer at higher altitudes than sea level, or if you use larger
jars, or if you did not sanitize the jars and lids right before using them.
The directions inside every box of pectin will tell you exactly. The
directions on the pectin tend to be pretty conservative. Clemson
University says you only need to process them for 5 minutes. I usually
hedge my bets and start pulling them out after 5 minutes, and the last jars were
probably in for 10. I rarely have a jar spoil, so it must work. But you
don't want to process them too long, or the jam will turn dark and get
runny. See the chart below for altitude adjustment to processing times, if
you are not in the sea level to 1,000ft above sea level range.
Note 1: If you plan to eat the jam immediately, or don't have canning equipment, you can let it cool, then store it in the fridge or freezer! It will keep for a month or two in the fridge and almost indefinitely in the freezer
Note 2: Some people don't even boil the jars; they just ladle it hot into hot jars, put the lids and rings on and invert them. No authority I know recommends this, and putting the jars in the boiling water bath REALLY helps to reduce spoilage! To me, it makes little sense to put all the working into making the jam and then not to process the jars to be sure they don't spoil!
Recommended process time for jams in a boiling water canner. | ||||
Process Time at Altitudes of | ||||
Style of Pack | Jar Size | 0 - 1,000 ft | 1,001 - 6,000 ft | Above 6,000 ft |
Hot | Half-pints or Pints |
5 min | 10 | 15 |
Lift
the jars out of the water with your jar lifter tongs and let them cool without
touching or bumping them in a draft-free place (usually takes overnight) You can
then remove the rings if you like, but if you leave them on, at least loosen
them quite a bit, so they don't rust in place due to trapped moisture. Once the
jars are cool, you can check that they are sealed verifying that the lid has
been sucked down. Just press in the center, gently, with your finger. If it pops
up and down (often making a popping sound), it is not sealed. If you put the jar
in the refrigerator right away, you can still use it. Some people replace the
lid and reprocess the jar, then that's a bit iffy. If you heat the contents back
up, re-jar them (with a new lid) and the full time in the canner, it's usually
ok.
Once cooled, they're ready to store. I find they last up to 12 months. But after about 6 to 8 months, they get darker in color and start to get runny. They still are safe to eat, but the flavor and texture aren't as good. So eat them in the first 6 months after you prepare them! Another trick is to keep the uncooked berries or other fruit in the freezer and make and can the jam as needed, so it's always fresh.
Other Equipment:From left to right:
|
![]() You can get all of the tools in a kit here: See here for related tools, equipment, supplies on Amazon |
Summary - Cost of Making Homemade Strawberry Jam - makes 8 jars, 8 oz each** |
||||
Item | Quantity | Cost in 2024 | Source | Subtotal |
fresh whole berries (strawberries) | 10 cups | $11.00/gallon | Pick your own | $13.00 |
Canning jars (8 oz size), includes lids and rings | 8 jars | $11/dozen 8 oz jars or $0.92/jar Lids alone are about $ per dozen |
Grocery stores, like Public, Kroger, Safeway and sometimes, Big Lots, local hardware stores and big box stores | $6.50 |
Sweetener - see step 4 | 4 cups | $2.25 | Grocery stores, like Public, Kroger, Safeway and sometimes, Big Lots, local hardware stores and big box stores | $2.25 |
Pectin (no-sugar, low sugar or regular, dry) | 1 and a third boxes * | $2.10 per box |
Publix, Kroger |
$2.80 |
Total | $24.55 total or about $3.07 per jar (if you already have the jars, and just need new lids: $2.38 per jar And if you grow your own strawberries, it's almost free! |
|||
* pectin use varies - blackberry jam
needs very little, raspberry a little more, strawberry the most.
** - This assumes you already have the pots, pans, ladles,, and reusable equipment. Note that you can reuse the jars! Many products are sold in jars that will take the lids and rings for canning. For example, Classico Spaghetti sauce is in quart sized jars that work with Ball and Kerr lids and rings- some authorities do not recommend these, saying they are more prone to break, and while I have found that is true of mayonnaise jars, I have found the Classico spaghetti jars to be pretty sturdy. |
[General picking tips and a guide to each fruit and vegetable] [How much do I need to pick? (Yields - how much raw makes how much cooked or frozen)] [Selecting the right varieties to pick] [All about apple varieties - which to pic
k and why!] [Picking tips for Vegetables]
[ Strawberry picking tips]
[ Blueberries picking tips]
[ Easy Home Canning Directions] [FAQs - Answers to common questions and problems] [Recommended books about home canning, jam making, drying and preserving!] [Free canning publications to download and print]
Water bath canner with a jar rack
Pressure canners for gas, electric and induction stoves: Presto 23Qt or T-fal 22Qt
Canning scoop (this one is PERFECT)
Ball Blue book (most recent version)
Get the
most recent version of
the Ball Blue Book
Get the
most recent version of
the Ball Blue Book of Home Canning