Sunday, June 21, 2009

Preserving Strawberries


In honor of Father's Day, I engaged in a very macho activity: I made homemade strawberry preserves. I know, sooo stereotypical. With so many of the strawberries from yesterday still in the fridge and the rain coming down in buckets, making preserves seemed like a perfect Sunday afternoon activity. I have never actually canned anything before, but you have to start somewhere.

I used 5 cups of crushed strawberries, one box (1.75-oz) pectin, 3 cups sugar, 3 cups brown sugar, 2 Tbsp lemon juice, and 2 cinnamon sticks. I also used this project as an excuse to go out and buy a pressure canner (though I just used it as a hot water bath canner for this project). Tomorrow I will check the seals on the lids and find out if I followed the processing procedure correctly. If I did, we will have 2 and a half pints of strawberry preserves!

I also froze a quart of strawberries. I washed them, trimmed the stems, placed them on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper in the freezer for 4 hours. Now we have just one quart of strawberries left, but maybe we will get more from the CSA on Wednesday.

2 comments:

  1. So, did you do the canning right?
    Don't keep us in suspense! The first time I canned (funny enough, while I lived in Massachussets), even though the seals were all done correctly, I kept not trusting myself, and expected to see a living laboratory each time I opened a new jar of apple conserve in the months following my canning experience.
    I'm enjoying your blog.
    Mercedes

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  2. Yes, so far so good on the canning. The seals look good, but I won't know for sure for at least another month. If I end up in the hospital with botulism poisoning I'll be sure to post about the experience.

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