Making Strawberry Jam

So I had a load of strawberries (2kg in fact!) sat in my fridge that were about to go past their best, so decided to make some jam with them.

Homemade jam is so easy. For this recipe I had 2kg of strawberries so matched it with 2kg of jam sugar. With this was a little bit of lemon juice.

The first step is to sterilise the jars you will be using. Get a large pan and fill with water and bring to the boil. Put your jars and lids into the boiling water for 10 minutes. Hey presto, your jars and lids are now sterilised.

Now you are ready to make the jam! So get your strawberries and take the hull off. The best way to do this without cutting away too much strawberry fruit away is to hold your knife at a 45 degree angle to the leafy top and cut around the leaf, cutting out a cone shape section of the strawberry. As you are doing this cut any large strawberries in half but smaller ones can be left.

Wash the strawberries and dry them thoroughly. Once dried, place the strawberries in a pan and mash down, if you like a chunkier texture to your jam, don't mash them up as much. If you prefer a smoother jam then mash a bit more. When you have your mashed strawberries how you like them, pop the sugar and lemon juice in the same pan and mix together.

Warm the mixture on a low heat until the sugar crystals have dissolved fully. As soon as they have, increase the heat and bring to the boil - it should be about 105 degrees centigrade - this helps the jam to set (should take about 10 minutes to reach this temperature) There will be a foam that forms on the top - this is totally normal so don't panic! We will deal with this in a moment!

Once you have reached 105 degrees centigrade you can take the pan off the heat. Right, back to the foam - this is the time to skim it from the top. Try not to take the foam off as it forms, just once at the end is fine, otherwise you can end up skimming all your mixture away! Once skimmed, your mixture should look like this...

Now you can get your sterilised jars and fill them with your jam mixture. Leave to cool and set (24-48 hours). All that's left is to enjoy your yummy scrummy jam.

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