Food You Can Eat: Strawberry Preserves

First things first:  Our first year of strawberry harvesting turned out pretty well.  I was able to make a couple of small (2 jar) batches of preserves, and we ate a shitload of them fresh because they are out of this world.  Our countermeasures proved to be quite effective against the squirrels and the birds.

A caveat before we get started:  This recipe doesn’t use pectin because that shit is for lazy amateurs.

Here’s what you’ll need:

4 Cups Fresh Strawberries, cored

⅔ Cup Sugar

1 Lemon, zested and juiced

Place a small plate in the freezer for testing purposes.  Slice strawberries so that they are all approximately the same size.  This means some will be whole, some will be halved, etc. 

Place strawberries, lemon zest, lemon juice, and sugar in a medium sauce pan and bring to a boil over medium heat. 

Stir occasionally at first, but as the mixture reduces you will need to stir pretty much constantly over the course of 20-25 minutes.

To test the preserves, take the frozen plate out of the freezer and place a small amount of the preserves on the plate.  Tilt the plate and see if the preserves slowly slide down the plate in a clump, or if they run down the plate with mostly juice leading the way.  The preserves are ready when you get that slow moving clump.

The tools and process for canning are more extensive than I care to repeat here, so just go to an old post on preserving blueberries and follow those instructions for the actual canning part.  Cook the preserves for about 5 minutes before removing from the boiling water.

These are excellent and we will have blown through our supply just in time for the blueberry harvest.