I cleaned and mashed 3 pounds of strawberries, yielding about 5 1/2 cups of berry goodness. I added 1/4 c of lemon juice (not fresh squeezed). I added pectin (one 2 oz box) and brought to a boil, then added 5 cups of sugar. The recipe called for 8, but I only had 5, and it was plenty sweet with 5. I boiled it all for a few minutes, stirring to make sure the sugar dissolved. Then I decanted into clean canning jars, set the discs and the lids and lowered into a water bath for another 10 minutes. I removed the jars and let them sit for 24 hours. When I opened one, the juice part was still very liquid. The flavour was good, but I wouldn’t want another 3 coups of sugar.
What did I do wrong? Can I correct it? The pectin recipe said I could reboil it, adding more pectin and redo the canning and water bath, but that seems like a lot of work.
Sweetness isn’t the purpose of sugar in making preserves. It’s functional, decreasing the water activity (for preservation) and allowing the pectin to set in conjuction with the acid. http://www.pickyourown.org/pectin.htm
No umlaut for U - So Can I just increase the amount of pectin? I don’t really want it sweeter, it’s already pretty darned sweet. Basically, that’s what reworking per the directions does - adds the extra pectin.
I think your only other option to more pectin is gelatin but either way you’ll have to rework it. Of course if you use gelatin you really don’t have preserves, you have jelly.
Regular pectin still needs the regular amount of sugar to work, adding more pectin won’t help. You need low sugar or no sugar pectin instead. Unless you want to boil down the fruit to thicken it, or add gelatin (as already suggested).
The same thing happened with my rhubarb jam I made earlier this summer. I ended up taking it out of the jars and re-boiling with a bit more pectin. Even then, it took about a week before it set.
Are you married to the idea of straight strawberry preserves?
If not, you can probably get a decent set by adding some apple to the recipe. I don’t have good advice for how much, as I am still pretty new at this game, but it’d be a start. You could also, potentially, add some rather tart apples & increase the sugar by a cup or so. That may help counteract the sweetness and help the added pectin set.
I feel your pain, I also like my jam less sweet than conventional recipes require. What you have now is a refrigerator jam. I will set and spread when very cold, fresh from the fridge. So not a total loss, but without reworking it, no you won’t get a set.
Yep, I’ve done some very nice strawberry jam that way. It’s a softer set than with pectin and has a little bit more of a cooked flavor, still delicious though.
You cook it around 30 minutes though, right? I am planning to do ginger-peach jam, and it says, 30 minutes for no-pectin preserves. OP only boiled it long enough for the sugar to dissolve.
I was under the impression that you can safely re-boil strawberry preserves if it doesn’t set.
Also, strawberry syrup is very tasty. Play it off right, and no one will ever know it didn’t come out as intended. I once had a failed apple jelly experience. I told everyone it was apple-cinanamon pancake syrup and they were like “oooh, you’re so clever in the kitchen, why cant I do these wonderful things??” LOL.
Probably around 30 minutes or so. I don’t really time it, just cook it until it looks right. It’s hard to describe, but the bubbles look different when it’s reached the gelling point. If you’ve got a thermometer, it’s when the jam reaches 8 degrees above the boiling point of water in your area.
I’ve also told people I meant to make syrup when the stuff never set. It was a bit harder to explain the gummi-in-a-jar I made when I overcooked a batch of grape jelly though. You had to cut it with a knife.
My Peach-Ginger no-pectin jam set up lovely, but I cooked it over an hour to get there (I realize now it should have been a brisk boil while stirring continuously, not a simmer while stirring occasionally).