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Way back in the day, I remember my mom would sometimes make homemade strawberry jam. We would spread it on our week-old bread, crying with happiness as the sweet fruit preserves covered up the normal moldy taste of our bread. An added bonus is that when it’s homemade strawberry jam, you can use organic, local strawberries and also reuse some old glass jars, instead of getting strawberries from who-knows-where and a brand new glass jar.

After much Internet (and soul) searching, I decided to share this secret homemade strawberry jam recipe. Unlike my recipe for homemade protein bars, this actually requires using the stove, so get an adult’s supervision!!!!!

Get a Glass Jar

I was lucky enough to get about 6 glass jars for free off of freecycle. Maybe you have some old pickle or jelly jars sitting around that you could use. If you want to sterilize your glass jars, you can fill them about 3/4 full of water, put the jar in a shallow pan of water, and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.

Get Strawberries

If you get some organic, locally grown strawberries, then congratulations, for you are on your way to becoming an eco hero. Get a quart of strawberries, and rinse them and chop off their leaves.

Get Sugar

Let me take this time to say that this is not a diabetic-safe strawberry jam, no sirree. This recipe calls for a quart of sugar. They recommend that the sugar is warm; I put mine in the oven at a very low temperature for about 5 minutes.

Boil Them Strawberries

Put all the strawberries into a big (10 quart) pan, and begin simmering them. If they seem too dry, mash up a few of them to let their juices out. Once some juice is in the pan, then it’s time to…

Add the Sugar

Pour the warm sugar over the strawberries, and stir the heck out of this sticky mess. Once you get the sugar and strawberries and juice integrated into a homogeneous mixture, cover the pan and let it simmer.

Boil for 15 Minutes

This is a dangerous step in this homemade strawberry jam recipe that has killed dozens, if not hundreds, and it answers the question of why you need such a big pan for such a small amount of strawberries and sugar. I found out the hard way that if you boil strawberry jam, it gets HUGE, and it overflows if you take your eyes off it. I had to lift up the lid and turn down the heat some to control the rising bubbling mixture.

WARNING: Cleaning strawberry jam out of the inside of a stove isn’t as fun as you might think.

Cool it and Plop it in a Jar

Turn off the heat after 15 minutes and let the pan cool on an oven mitt. You can add a tablespoon of lemon juice if you want (it gives it some “kick”, if you will). Hopefully you’ll see it slowly thickening. Once it’s pretty cool, you can put your new homemade strawberry jam into the sterilized glass jars and bah-bam, you are done.

P.S. I used a recipe out of the 1960 version of The Joy of Cooking. Apparently, we know more about germs than they did back then, so the open kettle method of canning is no longer considered safe. This here article explains why in vivid, shocking detail.