Strawberry season is in full swing and the smell of freshly made jam is an essential part of summer. However, if you look at the ingredients of common jelly preparations from the store, you will often find artificial preservatives, citric acid made from mold, or an unnecessarily large amount of chemicals. More and more Czech housewives are therefore looking for a way back to nature. Is it possible without purchased chemicals? Absolutely!
Try our proven recipe for honest homemade strawberry jam with fruit pieces, where pure natural pectin plays the main role. The result will be a thick, perfectly fragrant jam with a beautiful color that will easily last all winter.
Fresh strawberries ready to make jam.Fresh strawberries ready to make jam.
Tip for growers: If you haven’t harvested yet and want your beds to literally overflow with fruit, try our proven trick. Give your strawberries this nutrition once a week and they will have a huge harvest. You already have everything you need in your kitchen.
Why strawberries by themselves
don’t want to thicken?
Strawberries are among the fruits with a very low content of natural pectin (a substance that ensures thickening and gelling). Unlike currants, apples or gooseberries, strawberries contain a lot of water and few acids. When you boil them alone with sugar, the result is more of a liquid syrup than a thick jam for pancakes.
Instead of pouring industrial “gelfixes” into the pot, you can harness the natural power of another fruit.
We tested it for you: If you add the squeezed juice of one lemon and a few apple peels to strawberries, the jam will harden naturally and retain its beautiful red color. Apples are a natural pectin bomb, and the lemon juice activates the gelling process without affecting the pure strawberry flavor.
What we will need (Ingredients for about 4–5 smaller glasses)
1 kg of ripe strawberries (ideally freshly picked, firm, not overripe)
600 g of granulated sugar (sugar acts as a natural preservative, we recommend not reducing this ratio when preserving naturally)
Juice of 1 large lemon
Peel and core of
2 organic apples (or one whole green sour apple, finely grated)
Detailed step-by-step procedure
1. Preparing the fruit and secret ingredients
Wash the strawberries thoroughly, remove the stems and let them drain well. If you want beautiful pieces of fruit in the jam, mash half of the strawberries with a potato masher or pulse briefly and cut the other half into quarters. Do you have a lot of strawberries and do you have the prettiest pieces left? While the jam is cooking, there will be time for a quick dessert for your afternoon coffee – try this fluffy strawberry fudge with whipped cream that melts on your tongue.
Peel the apples. Don’t throw away the peels and cores (which contain the most pectin) – tie them in a clean piece of gauze or bandage so that you can easily remove them from the pot later. If you don’t have gauze, grate one peeled apple on the finest grater right next to the strawberries – it will cook completely in the finished jam and no one will recognize it.
2. Maturing (The key to perfect taste)
Put the mashed and chopped strawberries in
a wide pot, sprinkle with sugar and add lemon juice. Mix everything and leave to stand in the fridge for at least 2 hours (even overnight). The strawberries will release a lot of juice and the sugar will partially dissolve, which will shorten the cooking time and leave more vitamins in the fruit.
3. Short and intense cooking
Add gauze with apple peels and cores to the pot with the strawberries. Place the pot over a high heat. It is best to cook strawberry jam in a wider pot in smaller batches (maximum 1-2 kg of fruit at a time) so that the water evaporates as quickly as possible.
Bring the mixture to a boil and cook, stirring constantly, for about 15 to 20 minutes. Skim off any foam that forms during cooking – this will keep the jam beautifully clear and reduce the risk of it spoiling.
Cooking strawberry jam on the stove.
Tip: from our kitchen: Don’t throw away the collected strawberry mousse! Put it in your children’s yogurt or on their morning porridge, it’s the greatest treat.
4. How to tell if
that the jam is gelling properly?
Before the end of cooking, remove the cheesecloth with the apple peels from the pot and squeeze it well back into the jam. Now do a simple plate test:
