This is a true story of a jam making virgin lady, called Shabi 😊. It is a long story but I hope you make it to the end.
I visited a farm called Robintide in King city for strawberry picking. This was one of the items in my bucket list, that since I came to Canada was never able to do it.
I always either were working or late catching it before the season ends. It was such an amazing and fun activity. The strawberries were not big but really tasty and sweet.
I love homemade jam but I never made it myself in my life. Yes you heard me, I was a jam making virgin!! My mom is really good at making any type of jam and she always made them according to seasons. So during her stay with me, she always made few different types for me and leave it in the fridge.
This summer she wasn’t able to come back because of COVID and since she had a heart surgery. [I truly miss her and her jams]
In my head: Now it’s time for me to make my own jam and maybe it can be as good as hers.
Here was my challenge ;I never watched her from start to finish, and only helped her a bit.
But I remembered few key points:
🍓She always says: don’t add any water, just add the sugar on top of the strawberries and leave it for a bit.
🍓I remember she would ask me to help her removing the foams.
🍓She says adding lemon juice is essential.(never asked her why)
🍓She also used just a bit maybe 1/4 less sugar than strawberries, and I used to say wow that’s too much sugar.
Now I thought to myself these informations are really useful , but how much lemon, and what temperature and how long ...
So I googled and checked few different recipes online and each one had different amount. And there was no mention of temperature and foam what so ever.
Also watched a video on Instagram which was very specific on removing the foams and the approximate time that the entire process will take.
Gathering all the information from different sources (except my mom since it was night time in Iran) it seemed to be a piece of cake.
So after washing and drying the strawberries, I started removing the green part and cutting those.
Then I measured the strawberries and it was 1kg and 300g, so I used my baking judgment and added 900g of organic sugar on top it.
If you ask me how did I come up with that number I would say,NO CLUE 😊.
Now this parts gets really funny.
I knew I should leave the sugar to melt a bit on top of the strawberries before turning the stove on, so I thought to myself maybe I should make peach jam too. And very quickly I got to work peeling and cutting the peaches, added sugar and .....
It’s too funny for someone with no experience and expertise, now making 2 jams at the same time.
Making the story short, everything was going well until the crazy foams started appearing. And me watching two pots at the same time and trying to remove all the foams, was just too crazy, and not fun at all.
It felt like a endless loop that no one in any recipe and video will tell you. At that point I really appreciated my mom’s patient, and I wish I helped her more during the hardest process of jam making, which I am going to call it the Foaming Loop Madness.
After one hour of this madness, the jams were ready. My strawberry jam turned out a bit dark , which I have no idea what was the reason. It appeared to have more foams than the peach one, which I continuously removed.
I added the lemon juice towards the end, which it should of be done once the boiling process starts. But I know that can’t be the reason since I did the same thing with the peach jam.
Also the cooking time was the same, one hour for each.
At the end of the day, I managed to make decent Strawberry and Peach jams. I guess the fun part was pouring it into the cute jars, and taking pictures.
When my daughter tried this morning she says it just tastes like gramma’s. And I felt a sense of satisfaction, but will I do it again, don’t think so.
I am going to leaven my ingredients and measurements here. Hopefully a jam expert will read this post and will answer some of these questions.
Ingredients:
Strawberries 1300g
Sugar 900g
Lemon Juice 2.5 Tbsp
Vanilla extract 1 tsp
Temperature: I used high then after boiling started switched to medium high
