Strawberry preserves

Every year, for many families, when the season of sun, sea, and relaxation arrives, another season also arrives – the season of preserves.

A year ago we came across the fact that there are a lot of recipes of varying complexity on the Internet, and each one is written in its own way. We came up with the idea to save all the recipes that were successful or that aroused some interest, so that in the future, if necessary, we could refer to them. I hope our recipes will be useful to those who suddenly find them on our website. 🙂

First of all, I would like to say that these are recipes to a certain extent “for the lazy”. There will be no “brew 5 times, and then insist for 2 weeks”, we want to share recipes that anyone can use, regardless of whether it is the first time they decided to roll something up, or they do it every year. Most of the recipes were taken from my mother, so we can say that they are “time-tested”.

Let’s start, perhaps, with the simplest thing, namely – compote preserve. First of all, you should rinse the bottles well. Here I would like to note that having a balcony will be a big plus. After you wash them (in our case, we used dishwashing powder), they should be dried well. For this we will need a balcony – it is advisable to dry them in the sun, but if you do not have such an opportunity, you can also do it in the kitchen, having previously covered the table with a towel.

The strawberries themselves should be washed thoroughly. I would like to note that they should be washed with the stems (so that water does not get inside and the strawberries do not turn out so watery, we do not need it). After washing, the stems should be separated.

Next, we need to prepare everything we need. In my case, I used 2 pots to heat the water (while one is heating, I pour the second into the jar), one pot to sterilize the lids, and one to sterilize the bottles.

I would like to note that there are several ways to sterilize a bottle – you can do it in the microwave (a little water is first poured into the jar), with steam (as in the photo below), by boiling (the jar is placed in a pan of water and water is poured into it) or in the oven. In my opinion, the easiest way is steam sterilization using a special nozzle, which can be purchased at a hardware store.

Many sites recommend sterilizing for 15 minutes or half an hour. In my case, everything happened “by eye”, because I believe that if the jars are cleanly washed, then there is nothing special to be done in them and therefore they will last for the same year or two in any case (after all, we are not making military reserves :)).

So. Our lids are boiling, the jar is being sterilized, what should we do? We need to measure a little more than three liters of water and put it to boil. Approximately in the middle of the process, when bubbles begin to appear (the water will be close to boiling), we should pour sugar into our water (we are making syrup) and stir. We need one glass of sugar (in any compote that we close, the amount of sugar will always be the same). Has the water boiled? Let’s proceed to the next stage!

How much do you need to pour? Here, how much is not a problem for you, because the saturation of the compote will depend on the amount, but on average it is enough to cover the bottom of the jar with berries. When all the berries are carefully filled (in any way convenient for you) we pour our berries. The water should be approximately up to the bottom of the neck. When the water is poured, we cover the whole thing with a lid.

Already at this stage, our compote will have a light shade. Don’t worry, the color of the compote will appear as it infuses. Now the most important moment. We will need the following tool:

This artifact can also be purchased at a hardware store. These keys come in several types – manual and automatic (maybe there are some more now, but these are the two main ones). The difference is that in the case of a manual one, you will need to twist the handle after each turn of the key, while with an automatic one, all you need to do is turn the handle. Here I would recommend taking an automatic one. To avoid unpleasant situations, you should practice on empty bottles in advance (I assume that during the process you will not feel like practicing;)).

By pressing the knob on top, you start to gradually turn the other knob clockwise. Here again, as far as I remember, there were keys that clicked, in my case the key turned all the way until it stopped. Then we untwist it in the opposite direction. If suddenly an incident occurs that the key jumped off – do not be upset, if the cover itself sits normally, you can go over the same cover with the key again. I rarely encountered marriage with covers, but still sometimes it happens.

Twisted? Great. Turn upside down and wrap in a blanket until completely cool. That’s it, the strawberry compote is closed! 🙂

So, we’ve made the compote, but… it seems like something’s missing? It’s probably jam! Let’s get started! I’ll digress a bit. In the recipes we came across, the jam usually had to be boiled 3-5 times and only then rolled up, but aren’t we lazy? So we called our chief consultant, who clarified that boiling it twice would be enough!

The procedure is the same as with compote. First, we wash our berries well and sort them.

When the work is done, we just need to cover the berries with sugar and let them stand overnight. I will note right away that the sugar should be calculated on average from the proportions of 0.7 kg of sugar per 1 kg of strawberries. Usually the proportions with jam are 1:1, but given that strawberries are a sweet berry, you should not spoil the jam with sugar. So that the strawberries let out juice, sprinkle them with sugar quite lightly (in our case, “slightly” amounted to two glasses for approximately 2.5-3 kg of strawberries). To avoid misunderstandings, I would like to ask you to pay attention that these 0.5 kg are included in the general calculation of the amount of sugar – for 3 kg of strawberries we add not 0.5+2.1 kg of sugar, but only 2.1 kg.

If your apartment is as hot as ours at this time of year, you may notice a strawberry smell. Don’t worry, it’s fine! In the morning, put this thing on the stove and pour in the rest of the sugar. You can shake it a little from time to time so that the sugar settles to the bottom, but in general the picture will be something like this:

Gradually (by the way, the fire should be made small, be sure that the strawberries will boil quickly anyway) our strawberry syrup will heat up and the sugar will go down. You can help it melt by stirring slightly, but be very careful here so that the berries do not turn into porridge.

Gradually, when our jam approaches the boiling stage, foam will appear in places. It must be removed. The jam should boil for literally 10 minutes, a maximum of 15. After that, turn it off and put it in a place with room temperature to cool. In order not to give any flies and midges a chance to feast on our jam while it cools (well, unless you originally planned to cover the jam with midges), you should cover it with gauze.

And so a day passed (why a day? For us, the jam cooled down from lunch until the very night, so we decided to continue in the morning). You can sterilize the jars and lids almost immediately after we bring the jam to a boil.

The jam will already have its colour and structure, so all we have to do is boil it until it boils.

When the jam has boiled, remove the sterilized jar and pour our jam into it. It may seem at first that there are not enough berries, and the entire jar is filled with syrup, but when the whole thing cools down, the jam will take on a slightly different appearance. There are no special secrets here, we pour it in the same way as compote, just above the base of the neck.

If you don’t want to try the jam ahead of time, I can advise you to stock up on small jars from all sorts of store-bought jars. We had three containers that held equal amounts of strawberries (1.5, 2.5 and 3 kg), so each quantity yielded, in addition to the half-liter jars, one more piece of about 250 g. Remember how we used to hide our bottles of compote from prying eyes under a warm blanket? We do the same with jam! We wrap the jars upside down and do not touch them until they cool completely.

We’re finally done with the jam. But wait. We still had some strawberries left, which were a little squashed or spoiled. Should we eat them? You can, maybe! But if you’ve already had your fill of them, there’s something else you can do.

This recipe inspired me to think that everything can be done much easier, even if not with whole berries. The essence is simple. We select everything that is good left from the strawberries (green, crushed, etc.), naturally we cut out everything that was rotten or spoiled. To make it all have some general appearance, we pass it through a meat grinder. Someone will ask “why not a blender?”, but my opinion is that after the blender the strawberries will be somehow different. Already completely liquid.

Then, when finished, we take this whole thing and pour it into a saucepan. You should add sugar there in approximately the same amount as with jam, i.e. 0.7 kg of sugar per 1 kg of strawberries. We cook this thing until…whoever wants it. I read that it should be cooked for 40 minutes. As my mother say, it turned out that 40 minutes will already make jam, and just boil it so that it is like fresh, 15 minutes would be enough.

It is poured into jars in the same way as regular jam, the whole procedure is exactly the same. This product in a jar will look something like the photo below. We had 800 grams of strawberries “extra”, so it was closed more for a test, in order to know in the future whether it is worth it, although…I think it is probably worth it, taking into account that you need to mess with it much less than with regular jam.

So, today we have considered three very unusual recipes for making various delicious strawberry treats. I hope these recipes will be useful to at least someone because they are without frills, but at the same time extremely simple. By the way, I forgot to specify from the “secrets” of working with strawberries – if you want to get the most whole berries, then you should pay attention to green strawberries. They are also sweet, but due to the fact that the berries are not overripe, they will look more beautiful in the jar.

In order not to search through the entire text, I will give a summary:
For the compote:
3 liters of water;
strawberries (by eye, so that the bottom is completely covered);
1 cup of sugar.

For jam:
1 kg of strawberries;
0.7 kg of sugar.

For “liquid” jam:
1 kg of strawberries;
0.7 kg of sugar.