Since I recently went strawberry picking, I put jam on the menu.
The first step is to mash em up; I tried a potato masher and that was a silly mistake since it was wholly unsuited to the job. You can see I didn't bother near the end and threw a bunch of unmashed ones into the pot.
THIS IS FINE. They'll cook down nicely, and having some small chunks for heterogeneity kinda makes it feel more luxurious, tbh. While you're slowly cooking down the strawberrries, you can sterilize your glass jars in boiling water then let them dry in a 150C oven (turn the oven off once it's heated and just leave your jars inside).
I brought the jam to a boil like my recipe said, then lowered to a bubbling simmer while stirring. Here's MY advice: it's more gunky than you expect, so stirring (and basically playing around) means you're going to inevitably splash some jam outside the pot.
Clean it up immediately. That jam congeals fast and it's actually a bit of work having to scrub it off my counter top afterwards (I just used a wet paper towel and elbow grease).
Additions were lemon juice and lemon zest as well as jam setting sugar. From my research, strawberries don't have a lot of pectin (which is needed to set the jam) and because I couldn't find pectin by itself, I had to buy sugar with added pectin.
People tend to recommend a 1:1 ratio of fruit to sugar. I would cut the sugar down by a quarter and add more lemon juice. That's me though, you do you.
Some recipes tell you to put a candy thermometer and check when it reaches the setting temperature at 105C. Okay, so nobody in real life actually has a candy thermometer, and also using my instant read thermometer over the bubbling hot steaming liquid that has BOILING SUGAR in it is terribly unsafe. My thermometer also kept turning itself off and it's wasn't a battery issue; it simply wasn't equipped to handle those temperatures.
So I was frantically stirring with one hand and reading alternate methods to check the stopping point. The reason you can't just keep boiling is because the more you boil, the more you remove the fresh and bright flavours of the fruit.
I stumbled upon an article that said you dollop some of the jam into a plate and wait thirty seconds. Then, push the dollop with your finger. If it wrinkles, then it's at setting temp. This method worked perfectly, and I recommend doing this and getting a feel for it.
My spatula was stained pink during the process. My old iphone XS doesn't do it justice with its shoddy colour correction--the spatula is almost as pink as my tiefling in Baldur's Gate.
They take an extra 24-48 hours to set once they're inside a jar. The photo on the left is fresh from the pot. The photo on the right is after a day in the fridge.
(I actually made 3 jars but didn't take a photo of the last one before I gave it away)
Do they taste better than store bought? I think so. They're not too sweet, and there's some incredible small fruity chunks that pack a fresh punch with each bite. Storebought ones seem to be cooked way too long and has a different hint of sourness.
But is it worth the effort? Probably not...? I was really tired from all the stirring and sterilizing the jars in boiling water feels dangerous without proper tongs/handling equipment. I mostly did this because I had so many strawberries leftover from picking.
I did have fun though! And it's great enjoying what I think is the 'perfect' strawberry jam.