Recipe Ingredient List Strawberry Balsamic & Black Pepper Jam (Makes 4 half pint jars)
2 2/3 cups crushed strawberries*
6 teaspoons bottled lemon juice
3 Tablespoons Ball RealFruit* Classic Pectin(buy at local grocery store; link provided just to show you what it looks like)
3 1/3 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons Balsamic vinegar
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (optional)
1/2 teaspoon butter (optional, but highly recommended as it’s very helpful reducing foam)
Reduced Sugar Alternative Strawberry Balsamic & Black Pepper Jam (Makes 3 half pint jars, with a little leftover)
2 2/3 cups crushed strawberries*
6 teaspoons bottled lemon juice
3 Tablespoons Ball RealFruit* Classic Pectin(buy at local grocery store; link provided just to show you what it looks like) 2 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons Balsamic vinegar
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (optional)
1/2 teaspoon butter (optional, but highly recommended as it’s very helpful reducing foam)
*2 2/3 cups crushed strawberries is approximately 1.5 of the 16-oz clamshell packages of strawberries. So buy 2 clamshells at the store.
Thanks for that…I think I will watch you this time and make plans for the next time I do it.
In response to @Magpie generally, historically we make jams and jellies by boiling fruit with plenty of sugar and then transferring them to sterilized jars, we used wax paper discs and cellophane to seal them. They would have been kept in a cool place. Apart from that, and again historically, meat would be salted and smoked, root vegetables kept in a store. I am not an expert, but I’ve never heard of anyone in Ireland in my extended family or friends doing water bath canning. Pre-deep freezing soft fruit went into jam, apples were stored carefully fresh. We don’t have a massive variety of fruit/veg to preserve. Milk was turned into cheese and butter (which was stored in bogs)
I’ve just found a fascinating article about why we don’t can in the same way. And it’s evident I need to learn the proper way to do it. Although I mostly only do jams and chutneys. We learned these techniques from the British.
Goodness, I finally just read through that article, and it was both fascinating and perplexing. I tend to think of the US, Canada, and the UK as being on the same basic wavelength about most common things. We might each have our peculiarities from country to country about certain topics (differences in thoughts on gun ownership come to mind - though I am NOT attempting to start a debate on the topic!), but I feel like for the most part we’re not all that different on things like our families, jobs, food, hobbies, and widely accepted ‘everyday’ science. And if anything, I expect the British to be more open minded than many Americans, who so often dig their heels in, rather than learning from other countries. It was so startling to read about their refusal to listen about food safety and science.
I learned a whole lot, and I also managed to get some 250ml kilner jars with the two part kids. I won’t ever be doing the open pot method of preserving again!
Wow. Just, wow. Off with the nose to spite the face kinda thing, eh?
When we first got together Robert wanted to watch one of his favourite movies with me, First Winter. I already understood the dangers of home canning or it would have put me off for life. Death by mid-winter peaches? No thank you very much indeed!
I picked up some little jars and jam pectin, now to hopefully find nice strawberries in November. We had frozen but somebody in the house gobbled them all up, I’m looking at you miss @Pigeon !
@MistressJennie what’s the purpose of the rack for inside the pot? I don’t have exactly that, but I’m sure I’ve something suitable, if I know what it does…
The rack keeps the jars off the bottom of the pot, both off of the direct heat of the burner, and allowing water to circulate all around the jars. The one shown in my photo above is a green plastic basket that came in Ball’s basic tools kit, back in about 2012. I don’t love it, but it works fine, so I haven’t replaced it. It holds 3 pint jars, or 4 half-pints, but it also narrows at the bottom. If it didn’t, I could fit 5 half-pints, which would be nice.
Their new basic tool kit comes with a silicone rack, that just lays on the bottom of the pot. I like that it’s both flat, and foldable, perfect for easy storage. (The green basket is more bulky and annoying to store, though it does fit within my big water bath canner.) The Inspoline kit I linked to comes with a metal rack, that is basically a round version of a cake/cookie cooling rack. Just about 1/2" tall, to keep the jars off the bottom of your stock pot, and allow water circulation.
I have a cooling rack for baking that fits into the bottom of our large pot, it works ok but doesn’t have handles for easy lifting out. That’s ok though, the jar lifter works great.
I have seen a few places (even very reputable places like the Big Ball book I liked above) mention that if you don’t have a rack, you can attach multiple lid bands together, and use them as a rack. This seems like an interesting idea at first, but then I worry about what you use to hold the bands together. Will it melt if it’s plastic like a zip tie? And once you’ve attached them together, how stable is the base they create? The bottom of half-pint jars is pretty small. Will they slide down into the rings? So yeah, I haven’t tried that ‘hack’, as I’m not sure it’s all that good an idea, especially when something like a rack is so cheap and easily available, and useful in other cooking projects.
And yeah, with a big traditional water bath canner, there is a metal basket that serves as the rack, with handles, that you can hook to the sides of the pot. You sort of lift from the handles, and then rest the handles on the lip of the pot, holding the jars halfway up out of the pot. I have NEVER, EVER used that as a feature. Ever. First off, if you did try to do so with a full pot of jars, especially quart jars, it would be incredibly heavy to lift. Add to that my very short stature, and I’d be trying to lift a heavy, boiling hot, objects, at boob to face height. It’s just a dumb plan in my book. But the jar lifting tongs are your best friend when canning. They are the thing I feel like you absolutely can’t do without. You just reach in and grab one jar at a time, without back strain or possible burns.
It’s just never seemed like a time saver to me, to pick up all the jars, even smaller half-pints, at once. By the time I get my step stool to the stove, and grab some pot holders, and lift the rack with both hands, I could easily have plucked all 8 jars out with the jar lifter tongs.
@Edel, scroll down on this listing on Amazon, and you can see a pic of their silicone rack in action. (Actually, there are pics of basically all the tools in action.)
I feel like that would be useful in other instances, such as just a trivet on your counter tops when cooking, or when I do something like candle making and need a place to put my pot of hot wax. So when my jar lifter tongs eventually die, I’ll probably pick up their new kit, and ditch my old plastic basket.
Reminder to those interested: The Small Batch Canning class will be next Saturday, November 13th and signups are still open! So far we only have 3 people registered.
This is a class that is easy to take, even if you can’t take it at the time it’s offered, because it will be recorded and you can play it back at anytime. I’ll be going over tools, terms, and ingredients for the first part, then making a batch of jam. You totally do not have to be following along, making jam as I do. You can watch the entire class through, then go back and rewatch while making your own jam.
Strawberry Balsamic & Black Pepper Jam