Summer Jam pt1

teaching y'all to make your own jams, starting with strawberry

🎨 by Nick Hensley

Welcome back our beautiful supporters. This week we’re starting a new recipe series here in The Broiler Room, our Summer Jam Sessions. Each week we’re gonna walk you through an easy, small batch jam or preserve recipe that you can tackle without any canning experience. If you can boil noodles, you can make jam, we swear. First let’s learn a little about jam.

Jam and fruit preserves used to be a technique people used preserved summer fruits so they didn’t go to waste and lasted through the winter. Now with global trade and refrigeration, many people have never canned food at home, but our love of jam remains. While store bought jam and preserves are good, there’s nothing like making your own *exactly* how you fucking like it. Plus, fruit and berry jams just taste better when they’re made in small batches and not cooked forever in giant industrial vats. You’ll see. Lots of recipes use equal parts sugar and fruit but we think that shit is entirely too sweet and we’d rather let the fruit shine through. Sugar acts as both preservative and thickener in jam but that doesn’t mean you can play a little with the amount. Make your first batch according to the recipe so you get the hang of thangs but then you can start experimenting with the amounts based on the sweetness of your fruit and how thick you like your final jam.

There are a couple things you need to do before you start jamming out. First, you’re gonna need some glass jars with tight fitting lids. You know the kind and we bet you already have some layin around. And then you need to clean ’em. To do it right, pour boiling water into the jars and into a container with the lids inside. Let them sit for around 10 minutes then pull out the lids and empty out the jars. Stick all of that on a cooling rack (like what you put your cookies on) to dry with jars upside down so all the water drips out. Easy. Next stick a small plate or two in the freezer. You’re gonna use that to check when the jam is done.

The first jam we’re gonna tackle is a classic strawberry jam. We’ll give you some options at the end on how to fuck around with the flavor, but you can never go wrong with a straightforward classic. We love this on sourdough toast, swirled into pancake batter, or dolloped on top of oatmeal or grits. Hell, you can eat it with a spoon if there’s nothing else sweet in the house. Since we’re cooking small batches, we just keep our jam in the fridge where it should be good for a couple months. If you see any mold, toss it. You don’t want a Sqirl situation.

Strawberry Jam

makes about 2 pints/ 2 16 oz jars

2 pounds strawberries (about 2 clamshells)

1 1/2 pounds sugar (about 3 cups)

Juice from one lemon

Cut the green stem off the strawberries and slice them into quarters. You should get about 5 cups. Toss together the sugar and lemon juice in a medium saucepan and cook over low heat for 2-3 minutes so they’re all mixed up and the sugar gets warmed up. Add the strawberries , stir, and gently simmer for 20-30 minutes. At first you’re gonna think there isn’t enough liquid and then boom, there will be plenty. Trust the system. You want the strawberries to release some of their juices and start to break down while the surrounding syrup thickens slightly. Just be patient. When you think it’s lookin good, put a small amount on that frozen plate from the freezer we told you about earlier. If it sets without running all over the place, you’re good to go.

Let the jam cool for a couple minutes then pour it into your prepared jars and set them in the fridge.

Options: If you want to mix up the flavors, try switching out some of the strawberries for other berries. You can also add herbs if you’re into that shit. We love throwing in a couple leaves of rose geranium while the strawberries cook then fishing them out before we put the jam into the jars. It adds a great taste and somehow makes the strawberries taste more… strawberrish? Hard to explain but 10/10 would recommend it if you can find the plant. We bought ours years ago and they’re very hard to kill so grab one if you see them someplace.

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Thanks so much for spending another Sunday morning with us. If you like what you see, tell a friend. We’ll be back next week with some more jam but with a way different flavor profile. See you then.

Michelle and Matt