This post is long overdue, really. Sorry about that. It’s been a busy week, plus I’ve spent ages tweaking the photos.
Anyway, we went strawberry picking last Saturday at Lyon Farms near Creedmoor. At $1 a pound, it’s incredibly good value. DO and I picked nearly 12lbs of strawberries in less than an hour. It’s pretty easy work, and with the weather as good as it is at the moment, there’s no excuse not to go get some lovely fresh berries:
On the plant…
And in a box!
OK, so you’ve gone to some pick-you-own place (there are tons of them around) and you’ve picked your large box of strawberries. Now what on earth are you going to do with all that fruit?
I decided to make preserves. Recipe and pictures follow. The recipe and sterilizing procedure may look long and daunting, but it’s really not hard. Once you’ve done it a couple of times, it becomes very routine and quite fun. Give it a go!
Strawberry Preserves
(lightly adapted from Pickles and Preserves by Marion Brown)
Ingredients:
- 8 cups strawberries (measured after cleaning, stemming and cutting off green bits)
- 8 cups white sugar
- 1 tbsp butter
- 2 tsp vinegar (I used red wine vinegar, you can use pretty much anything)
- 2/3 cup water
Clean berries!
Equipment:
- Wooden spoon
- 1 large pot (I used my Le Crueset, but anything of similar size - 5.5 qt - will do fine)
- 1 shallow metal tray for cooling purposes
- 12 4oz canning jars (available from Food Lion and elsewhere)
- Tongs (preferably with silicone tips for a good grip on those jars)
- Metal ladle
- A few clean kitchen towels
- A clean cloth for wiping syrup off jars
OK, got all that stuff? That’s a very large amount of sugar, so go get a 5lb bag or two…
Put the sugar, water, vinegar and butter in your pot and turn heat to medium-high. Stir constantly. It will be hard to do at first, but as the water heats, the sugar will begin to dissolve into a very thick syrup. There will still be crystals, but it will look and feel like a liquid. If you have a thermometer, you want the solution to be between 145F and 150F
The first time I tried this, I heated the sugar too slowly, eventually evaporating the water and getting the sugar to melt, rather than dissolve. This is not good. It will result in a seriously overcooked jam, which will harden to a pretty nasty jello-like substance when it cools.
Add your clean berries to the pot and stir gently, but well. The strawberries should be coated in sugar crystals. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally:
Berries almost boiling!
Once the mixture is boiling, set a timer for 15 minutes and reduce the heat closer to medium. Be careful! The mixture tends to overflow, spilling sugar onto your burner and making the kitchen smell awful. This is not good. You want your kitchen smelling like strawberries, not burnt sugar! Stir the mixture down if necessary, and keep a close eye on it.
When your timer goes DING, turn the heat off, move the pot off the hot burner and let it rest for a minute or two until the foam settles.
Pour the hot preserves into your cooling tray and put the tray somewhere safe (like the oven) to cool. This will take at least 4-6 hours. I just left them to cool overnight.
Preserves in cooling tray
Good morning! Today we will learn how to sterilize jars and can our preserves!
First thing, make sure those hands of yours and all your equipment are clean. Wash everything with lots of hot water and soap. Those new jars may look clean, but it’s worth scrubbing them anyway.
Fill your large pot with water, place six jars with their screw-tops (not the lids!) in the water and set the pot on the stove over high heat. Fill another, much smaller pot with water and do the same. The smaller pot will be used to sterilize the lids, which are not supposed to boil, as the high temperature would denature the sealing compound. Heat the small pot to 180F (just sub-simmer) and put the lids in. Reduce the heat to medium-low to keep the temperature steady.
Once the water in the large pot is at a full boil, put in your tongs and ladle. Set your timer to 10 minutes and have a cup of coffee. Seriously, have a cup of coffee. You’re going to be handling very hot glass and sterile equipment that cannot touch anything. You will have to concentrate. Drink coffee. It helps!
Lay out kitchen towels in a few layers on the table or counter top. Do this as close to your stove as possible. Take the cooled preserves out of the oven and place near your towels.
Once your timer goes DING, grab an oven mitt, pick up the tongs from the boiling water, being extremely careful not to touch the silicone. Use the tongs to pick up one HOT glass jar and place it carefully on the clean towels. Put the tongs back in the boiling water and pick up the ladle.
Under no circumstances should you touch the the inside of the jar or any of the metal parts of your equipment, nor the lids with your fingers.
Carefully ladle some of the preserves into the jar. You want to get mostly strawberries and not too much syrup. Almost fill the jar, leaving 1/4″ gap at the top. Put the ladle back in the boiling water.
Using a clean cloth, carefully wipe any syrup off the threads of the jar.
Using the tongs, pick up one of the lids from the smaller pot and carefully place it on the jar. Pick up a screw top with the tongs, place it over the jar and screw it finger-tight.
Repeat with each of your six jars.
Using your tongs again, carefully place each of the jars into the boiling water. You may need to top up the evaporating water. I kept an extra pot boiling on the side for this purpose. Set your timer to 20 minutes and drink more coffee.
Using the tongs once again, carefully remove each of the jars and place it on your towels. Each jar should go ‘pop’ as the temperature drops and the seal completes.
Completed preserves!
Repeat the whole procedure for the other six jars.
Once your jars are cool (4-6 hours), you may place them in a cool, dark place where they will keep for up to two years. You now have lots and lots of preserves. Be nice, give some to your friends!
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