Berry Jam Crazy

The May category for the 2019 Food in Jars Challenge was berries. Strawberry, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, cranberry … whatever your little heart desires. Our personal favorites are strawberry or raspberry, but we like all flavors of berry jam!

 

We aren’t anywhere near having fresh berries in our area yet for this year, though we do have a pick-your-own strawberry farm a quick road trip away.

I had some berries in the freezer yet that I picked there last year and I also had some rhubarb and blueberries in there too. Based on that freezer stock, I decided to make 3 different recipes for the May challenge, all relatively small batch

 

Balsamic & Strawberry Jam

Since last year, I have been thinking about making the Food in Jars recipe for a Small Batch of Strawberry Balsamic Jam. Until recently, balsamic vinegar was one of the few foods I hated (another is beets.)  However, I ended up at a gourmet olive oil and vinegar store a couple of years ago and during the tasting process of some of their awesome products, decided balsamic is actually pretty good. Ok, I confess … really good. I followed the jam recipe exactly, but I did add an extra teaspoon of balsamic vinegar per some reviews I read. The balsamic flavor still isn’t strong, but I think it may come out more as the jam ages a little. This recipe yielded 3 jelly jars for me.

Blueberry-Rhubarb Jam

The next recipe I made was low-sugar Blueberry Rhubarb Jam with Pomona’s Universal Pectin. I started using Pomona’s a few years back and I love it. Almost anytime I make a jam, I make it low-sugar and this stuff works so well. This recipe yielded 5 jelly jars for me.

Strawberry Rhubarb Hot Sauce

I recently started visiting our local library, and I always seem to get stuck in the cookbook aisle. I own so many cookbooks, I try not to buy new ones unless I really really need them (like the Food in Jars Kitchen book I had to have last month when it was released.) On my latest visit to the library, I found a copy of the Preservation Pantry by Sarah Marshall.

Due to copyright reasons, I can’t share the recipe here – but the book’s recipe for Strawberry Rhubarb Hot Sauce caught my eye in the library and I had to bring the book home with me.  The recipe calls for jalapenos for the “hot” part, and I instead used serrano peppers that were frozen from our garden last year. This sauce is HOT.  I haven’t quite yet decided what we will use it for, I”m thinking for sure some grilled chicken, but it may also be good on pork. We do a lot of grilling in the summer, so I’m hoping to find some good uses for it. This recipe yielded 8 jelly jars for me.

Jam Gadgets & Ingredients

In addition to using Pomona’s Universal Pectin for recipes that need pectin, I also only use Zulka Pure Cane Sugar. It is minimally processed, non-GMO, and does not have bone char in it as most processed sugars do.  I also always make my jam in my Lodge Enameled 4.6-quart Dutch Oven – it is the perfect size for most of my batches and works well. It also works great to use silicon spoons to stir the jam – since it takes a lot of stirring, and you don’t want to scratch the enamel finish. My Cuisinart Immersion Blender also makes frequent visits during my jam sessions – I used it in the Strawberry Rhubarb Hot Sauce to grind all of the peppers and fruit smooth. It also comes in quite handy during making mustard, applesauce, cranberry sauce, tomatillo salsa, and more.

So, it was a fun month of preserving with berries. I’ll be looking forward to going to pick some new strawberries as soon as they are ready at the local u-pick farm, and raspberries from our Everbearing Raspberry Plants as soon as they start producing for the year.

If you are preserving anything with berries in your kitchen, feel free to share in the comments!