Homemade Strawberry Jam 2

You will never ever use store-bought strawberry jam after making this yourself! Flavorful, fresh and natural tasting, with rich crimson hues, your family will savor every bit of this homemade strawberry jam – hands-down the best jam I’ve ever had.

Ingredients (makes 8 oz or half a pint of jam):

• Strawberries (1 16oz basket)
• Turbinado Sugar (3/4th cup)
• Lemon Juice (2 tbsp)

Method:

• Wash and dry the strawberries, remove the stems.

• Depending on how chunky you want your jam, puree till the desired consistency is reached. My kids like the jam non-chunky.

• Pour the strawberry puree into a heavy-bottomed vessel. I got around 2 cups of puree.
• The amount of sugar depends on the sweetness of the fruit and also on individual preference. The strawberries I used were quite sweet, so I used only 3/4th cup of sugar (less than half the amount of strawberry puree).

• Empty the sugar into the pan and on medium heat, stir the strawberry and sugar mixture, till the sugar dissolves. Let the mixture come to a boil, while stirring continuously.

•  Add the lemon juice.
• With constant stirring on medium heat, the puree will gradually reduce in size, darken in color and thicken in consistency.

• After 15-25 minutes, the flame can be switched off.

• A plate check will determine if the jam is ready to be switched off. Keep a plate in the freezer and drop a little jam into the plate. Keep the plate back into the freezer for a minute or so. If the drop has set in its place without flowing, and has reached a gel like consistency, your jam is ready to be poured into a sterilized glass jar. In the following picture, I tried the above test thrice. The rightmost blob is the right consistency.

• Transfer the mixture carefully into a sterilized glass jar.

Tastes (Rasa):

Sweet (strawberries, sugar), sour (lemon), salty (none), bitter (none), pungent (none), astringent (strawberries).

Doshic Influence:

Any jam, homemade or otherwise, is going to be kapha aggravating in excess. In moderation, this recipe is quite suitable for all doshas, in moderation, since it has mostly natural sugars and no refined white sugar. Even the raw sugar added is minimal in amount.

Tips for Usage:

If canned using proper care of sterilizing the jars etc., this jam will stay for a month or so. Refrigerate it and use a clean dry spoon for removing the jam. Lower sugar jams don’t stay as long as their high sugar counterparts, since the sugar acts as a preservative. It is better to make in small batches and use up the opened jam bottle within a month.