Strawberries can be called a unique berry in terms of the amount of nutrients it contains. In addition, even after heat treatment, it retains most of them. This is why strawberry jam is so popular with housewives.
What you need to know
Wild strawberry absorbs a huge amount of vitamins C, B and E. It is incredibly rich in minerals necessary for the body. Garden strawberry varieties are less useful, but much more often used when making jam. This is because this berry is easier to pick, it is larger, and, therefore, the boiling time of such a fragrant dessert is reduced, more vitamins are retained.
The berries harvested for jam must be ripe, without rot. It is advisable to rinse them under cool running water. Be sure to sort them out, removing the leaves, stalks. Of course, the variety of berries should also be suitable: white ("banana") strawberries will not work, jam is much more successful from the usual classic varieties ("Roshchinskaya", "Saxonka", "Koralka", etc.).
Sometimes there is bitterness in strawberries. To get rid of it, at the last stage of cooking (5 minutes before the end), you can add a few drops of lemon juice (1 g per 1 kg of raw berries).
How to make jam
In advance, you need to prepare clean dry cans with a volume of 0.5 liters or 1 liter. In such quantities, strawberry jam will always come in handy. Then you can start preparing the berries themselves. Based on 1 kg of fresh strawberries, one and a half kg of granulated sugar is taken (a little more is possible if the berries are sour). Then berries and sugar are poured into the dishes where the jam will be boiled and left for 5 hours so that the strawberries give juice. The juicy aromatic mass, formed even before the cooking process, will preserve the beneficial properties of strawberries, because will shorten the time for making jam.
When the necessary time has passed, the resulting mass must be put on the fire and brought to a boil, stirring occasionally so that the sugar does not burn, but dissolves well. Also, do not forget to remove the foam in a separate container. When the jam has boiled, it is removed from the heat for 15 minutes, and then brought to a boil in the same way another 4-5 times, depending on the required consistency. The longer it cooks, the more it looks like a fragrant thickening sorbet.
To preserve the desired aroma and rich taste, the jam must be poured into jars while it is still hot. The jars can then be covered briefly, but can be left to cool in a room at room temperature.
It is such a simple recipe, but with some peculiarities and details, that will make it possible to prepare the most useful strawberry jam.
