In today’s post I’m going to be sharing with you how to make strawberry freezer jam.
Last year I canned a bunch of jam. I think in the end we had around 30 jars. It was delicious, and we were happy with it.
We were happy with it, that is, until we tasted freezer jam.
You see, we had some friends come and visit us, and they brought freezer jam with them. Now, they did use wild strawberries, as opposed to going to a strawberry patch and picking them at a farm, but the main difference was that it wasn’t processed in the canner.
Their jam was AMAZING!
My kids, the sweet souls that they are, would say mine was just as good. But I knew the truth. This freezer jam was definitely better. I finally got my oldest to cave and admit it.
So, this year I decided I was going to make some freezer jam too. I am still going to do some canning when it comes to jam because we only have so much freezer space, but I wanted to make at least some freezer batches.
I am convinced that one of the reasons freezer jam tastes so good is that you don’t actually cook the strawberries. You use uncooked strawberries and I think that lends itself to an absolutely fresh strawberry taste.
The other benefit of freezer jam is that it doesn’t use nearly as much sugar. Canned jam uses about 4 cups of sugar, as opposed to freezer jam that averages about a cup and a half.
That’s a HUGE difference.
Anyways, we recently went strawberry picking and picked a whack load of strawberries. This year’s strawberry picking trip gave me a moment where I realized how helpful the kids are becoming as they get older. They are now almost 12, 10, and 7 and each kid really pulled their weight.
We’ve been going picking every year since our oldest was a toddler. Those first few years especially are a mixture between trying to convince your child to put the berries in the basket and not in their mouth, and then dealing with a possible tantrum when they’ve just had enough of sun and standing out in a field picking berries.
But – year after year we have gone, and now it’s just routine. Not only that, they know what happens after we pick berries. Delicious food happens, oh yes it does! They want that end result just as much as I do.
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WHAT TO FREEZE THE JAM IN
One of the things that had scared me off from making freezer jam is how to store it. I’ve had a history of cracking mason jars in the freezer. However, I think I’ve learned the secret. I’ve had no cracks on mason jars since doing the following.
You want to leave an inch of space at the top. You also want to put them in the fridge before you transfer them to the freezer so they have a chance to get cold and aren’t shocked in the freezer.
Now, there’s still the odd time a mason jar will break because, sometimes it just happens no matter what you do. But it won’t happen often hopefully.
Of course, if you want to avoid the whole mason jar issue, you can put the freezer jam in freezer bags, and lay them flat to freeze. when you are ready to use one you can just defrost it and then snip the corner of the freezer bag and squeeze the jam into a mason jar that you will stick in the fridge.
They also have plastic jam containers specifically for freezer jam, but I find them to not be very cost effective and have preferred to use what I have on hand to save money, but if that’s something you might want to use, you can check them out here.
HOW TO MAKE STRAWBERRY FREEZER JAM
What you’ll need:
A bowl to mash your fruit in
Another bowl to mix pectin and sugar
4 cups of strawberries
1 1/2 cups of sugar
One package or serving of pectin (This is the stuff you want which is specifically for freezer jam)
Jam jars (or whatever you choose to put your jam in.)
Canning funnel (trust me, you’ll want one of these.)
The first thing you are going to do is hull your strawberries if you haven’t already. Then, you are going to need 4 cups of crushed strawberries, so start mashing! This is a very important point to remember – your 4 cups is AFTER you’ve crushed the fruit, not before.
I found the best way to mash the strawberries was to do it a layer at a time. If you try to do it all at once it’s very difficult.
In a separate bowl, mix your package of pectin and 1 and a half cups of sugar.
Add your mashed fruit into your pectin mixture. Stir this for about 3 minutes.
Transfer to your jars or containers. This funnel is a life saver for me -otherwise I’d have jam everywhere. As you can see I still managed to make a mess. I mean, how did I get jam on the OUTSIDE of the funnel. Amateur, clearly.
Let it stand for about 30 minutes so it can thicken. Put it in the fridge for a few hours and then transfer to the freezer. Except for the jar you’re going to eat right away. That one can stay in the fridge. 🙂
That’s all there is to it! Can we also just mention about how much easier this is than canning jam. If I had the freezer space I’d make all my jam this way. The part that took me the longest was hulling strawberries.
Now, you can use this same procedure with other fruit like raspberries and blueberries. However, there are some fruits that you use different amounts of sugar and fruit. Often you’ll find the exact amount at the back of the pectin package for different fruit options.
It’s best to consult the package before trying to interchange the fruit so that you are sure to get the results you want. However, I’m not going to lie, I’m a bit of a rebel and I would just chance it anyways. 🙂
Next week we are going to make rhubarb and strawberry jam and I prefer to make this using the canning method because you have to cook the rhubarb in jam or it just doesn’t taste very good. You can make rhubarb strawberry freezer jam, but you still have to cook the rhubarb separately first. Since I need to preserve some jam anyways due to freezer space, I might as well do the rhubarb strawberry jam this way.
We love to have a variety of different jams on hand, so when raspberry and blueberry season comes around soon, we’ll be picking some berries and making more jam. We go to local U-pick farms for our berries. We do have a very small amount of wild strawberries on our property, but not enough to make anything out of it.
We also do have quite a few raspberries, but wild raspberries are so much smaller than the u-pick farm ones that we only really get a jar or two from our own raspberries. So, we do a mix of both.
This is the time of year I absolutely adore. With everything growing, the things you can do with the harvest is never ending. We like to make pies, jams, crumbles, and whatever else we can think of during growing season. There’s nothing like fresh, local food, some grown ourselves, and some from local farms.
So, now that you know how to make strawberry freezer jam, you can go get yourself a bunch of strawberries and make this deliciousness!
