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My Mother's Best Strawberry Jam Recipes

When I was young, eating and cooking strawberry jam was one of the favorite occupations in my family. ;-) Well, not quite... but apart from growing our own strawberry plants in the garden, we planned a trip to a strawberry farm at least once every year.

Usually my father, my sister and myself would go to one of the farms, where you can pick your own strawberries and spend there about half a day eating and picking strawberries.

I guess, the eating was the best part of it :-) But we'd also pick about a hundred pounds of fresh fruits and bring them home where my mom was waiting to make jelly, confiture, freeze the berries, juice them, make shakes, short cakes, etc.

We'd put the strawberry jelly in small glasses (the ones they use for baby food. Guess, where we got those from!).

Off course, you can use bigger glasses as well, but the advantage of the small ones is, you will eat it very soon, so there's no chance it'll go bad once opened.

If you don't have enough glasses at home (you will after a few years, I promise!), start by buying a jelly making kit. My mother always has refused to use any preservative different from sugar and some small amount (about one teaspoon per glass) of alcohol.

I think she's right, because if you want to have preservatives in your jam, you can buy it in the supermarket.

Usually jelly is made 1:1 proportion fruit to sugar. This means for each pound of fruit you take one pound of sugar.

This proportion has proved of value for a long time, but recently people became more calorie-conscious and wanted to reduce the amount of sugar used in their food.

My Mom (and many other experts) says you can lower the sugar part down to 2:1, which means 2 pounds of fruit for each pound of sugar.

But the sugar in the jam is used mainly as conservation method. Less sugar means, less storage time.

If you plan to eat your strawberry jam in less than 6 month, this shouldn't bother you. But if you usually need longer to eat the jelly, then stick to the 1:1 ratio.

In our family this has never been a problem, because we'd eat one glass every two days.

Now you know, why we have so many strawberry jelly recipes!

Strawberry Jam Recipe

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe

Strawberry Apricot Jam Recipe

Strawberry Jelly Recipe with Whole Strawberries

Jelly Recipes with Champagne, Rum or Kiwis

Even more flavorful than the normal strawberries are the wild strawberries you find in the woods.

But everything that is truly unique is difficult to make. The tiny little "Fraises de Bois" strawberries are incredibly flavorful, but it takes a great many to make up a jar of jam. Which means a long day for you lying on your knees picking them :-(