Gleadell St Market Strawberry Jam

I came across deep discount, eat immediately strawberries at Gleadell St market this rainy day at the end of Autumn. $5 a tray (18 x 250g punnets). Maybe one or two punnets went straight to the compost, but what was left was excellent, fully ripened fruit.

Hence this jam that I’m pleased to share.

Recipe courtesy of BBC, 0.75 sugar to 1 fruit by weight. This starts with overnight maceration, performed here for more like 24 hours in the fridge. Sadly the tips on skimming, knob of butter, and the lemon juice all ignored, largely due to an incident call-out at the crucial finishing stage when the jam was reaching 105°C. There was is no excuse for omitting the lemon juice though, other than putting it on while getting dinner for kids solo.

After hulling and resectioning there was about 2.4kg fruit left, just over half the starting weight. As a result, 1.8kg of sugar. Final volume of jars approximately 2.6L (fruit was pretty wet and getting to temperature took a fair bit more boiling than called for in the recipe).