Recently I recommended Ball freezer jars. Since then I’ve been using them for all sorts of things: salad dressing, Iris’s lunch, plutonium. And now, actual jam.
Neil wrote:
> By the way, freezer jam totally kicks regular jam’s ass. My Mom made a LOT of jam back in the day (we never bought the stuff) and when she switched to the new-fangled freezer recipe there was no going back. Regular jam to me tastes overly “cooked,” bland and too sweet. By comparison, freezer jam tastes like fresh fruit in jam form. Much easier and faster to make, too.
On Sunday, Laurie came back from the farmers market with four pints of strawberries and turned half of this bounty into jam. Iris attacked the strawberries with a potato masher. The carnage was total. Then Laurie stirred in pectin and sugar. Too much sugar, as it turned out, since the strawberries were already very sweet. Even so, this is the best strawberry jam I’ve ever had.
It’s great on an Eggo with whipped cream, Greek yogurt, or mascarpone. For snack this afternoon I had it on a wheat berry english muffin. “I think I got a wheat berry!” said Iris, all excited.
Here I was hoping this post would end with instructions for freezer jam. Is it as easy as it sounds?
Yeah, it really is….We used to go out to Remlinger u-pick, load up, and then I’d make jam and serve it in the family restaurant. Also used it to top cheesecakes. I’d deliberately leave the berries chunkier for a little more texture…..Good stuff….
The jars came with a sample pack of pectin, and I used the recipe on the pack. It said: Mix sample packet of pectin with 2/3 cup sugar. Crush fruit. Stir pectin/sugar into 1 2/3 cups crushed fruit. Continue stirring for three minutes. Ladle into jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Leave jars on counter for 30 minutes to thicken. Serve immediately, refrigerate for up to three weeks (I think), or freeze for longer storage.
The line I would have added, as Matthew said, is Taste fruit, and use less sugar if it’s very sweet. Assuming the strawberries are there, we’re planning to get a half flat on Sunday and make more jam. I love hulling strawberries; it’s the only knife task at which I feel proficient.
Good deal!!
Now that sour cherry season is here, I know what to do with all of the left over cherries – other than making pies!
Excellent! Next you should try making plutonium jam. Of course it’s better if you use the special “low mutation” pectin.
wait…so the only actual freezing is “freeze when you’re done if you want so it’ll keep longer?”
going by the name “freezer jam,” i was all ready for there to be some magical step involving, well, a freezer.
like that three-layer jello that you have to stick in the fridge and wait for the magic to happen. even THAT doesn’t have the word “fridge” in the name.
so it just as easily could have been called “easy schmeezy, freezer, or not, jam?”
Only a parent says “for snack yesterday…” Instead of “a snack yesterday.” :) In addition to snack being a real meal now, I have a new affection for the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and I understand that sometimes one must examine cheese with one’s ear to be clear that it can’t be eaten that way…
So no. Freezer jam does not taste better than regular jam. I suspect that mums-y probably boiled the jam for about 10 hours for it to thicken.
I make about 10 different kinds of jams a summer. All in small batches.
You boil the berries/fruits sugar at a super high furious boil for 10-15 minutes. Make sure that it’s not burning. Can, process and voila.
Tastes fresh and good. I suss that mum just didn’t make jam the right way when boiling.
Oh and another comments. With my super-fast boil method no pectin required. You just test the thickness as it boils. After I ditched the pectic, my jams turned out much nicer. And be sure to use bottled lemon juice too when making jam to act as a natural preservative.
I really don’t think you want to be impugning my Mom’s jam making skills. Suffice it to say she knew what she was doing.
I have tasted all kinds of fancy-schmancy expensive jams and I still think freezer jam tastes brighter and fresher (and therefor better). It doesn’t matter how short a time you boil strawberries, they still taste cooked.
I wonder if the freezer jam method is particularly suited to strawberries. I’ve never tasted a cooked strawberry that I liked, and I agree with Matthew that this is the best strawberry jam I’ve tasted. The best jam I’ve ever tasted, however, was a jar of plum jam, cooked and canned by Mrs. Stratman (my former elementary school teacher and dear family friend). That one, single jar was much beloved and never to be repeated (the house with the plum tree was sold). Plums would not work well for freezer jam. I’m wondering about peaches, though…
We had a plum tree in our front yard when I was a kid. Smallish purple leaves, small purple plums with red flesh; I think they may have been Santa Rosa plums, or a mostly-ornamental variety related to those. We made the most glorious cooked jelly out of those plums. Raw would not have worked well; the flavor needed to concentrate by cooking out a lot of the water.
I like to put just a little bit of rhubarb in my strawberry freezer jam. Adds a note of tartness and a little bit of complexity. Strawberries make a fine freezer jam, but raspberries and blackberries are even better.
I apologize for insulting mums jam-making skills. It was wrong of me to assume that she used the same process that my family used for generations. My mum used the long slow boil method and her strawberry jam wasnt’ very good. (brown, overcooked etc) Like Laurie, I’ve always disliked strawberry jam, frozen, or boiled. For your very reason of brighther/fresher flavour.
I also agree that it likely depends on the fruit being used and that strawberries, raspberries, brambles (softer fruit) all lend themselves nicely to the frozen jam method.
I will stand firmly corrected in my frozen method perceptions if someone can provide a good frozen jam recipe for black or red currants. (apricots and sour cherries too)
BTW – I made a great peach jam with rosemary using the rapid boil, no pectic method last year and we use the jam as a marinade to to slow-cook pork. Yummy.
The reason why I boil not freeze is because I don’t have space in my freezer for 5×10 jars of jam every summer. Boiling them allows me to have lower sugar, organic, home-made jam through the winter. My two year-old goes through a jar every week. We also use the jams as hostess gifts when we go a-visiting. It’s just nice to stock up for the year. (we’re down to 3 jars now- 1 black currant, 1 raspberry, 1 peach) Happy jam-making.
Hey, this is no fun. I wanted a jamfight.
I was spoiled by strawberry freezer jam from Iris’s age. My grandma would herd me and my sisters through the strawberry fields, joking that they needed to weigh us before and after we entered the fields and charge us for all the berries in our bellies. Then we would return with flats and flats of berries, strawberry and raspberry, and use the entire day for making freezer jam, an entire years supply. So I never really knew there was any other kind!
I scoured the market before I left looking for lemon verbena, wanting to add it to a batch of strawberry freezer jam this year but no luck.
Maybe we could make sour cherry freezer jam?