Strawberry Basil Jam

My Past Attempts at Strawberry Jam

In the past, I have been an epic failure at strawberry jam. At some point before I moved to Texas, I attempted a recipe for strawberry jam from Epicurious. I’ve seemed to have lost the recipe, but I think it only required strawberries, sugar and lemon. Regardless of the exact ingredients, it was an extremely simple recipe: boil everything together and store in the refrigerator. The strawberries magically made syrup when heated together with the sugar. The jam was fantastic when it cooled to room temperature – I remember eating way too much of it! – but when I refrigerated it, it hardened into a solid block of strawberry sugar. (Kind of like when you make simple syrup, but boil it for too long and it hardens instead of staying liquid in the refrigerator.) I couldn’t do anything with it! So it ended up being a casualty when I cleaned out my refrigerator.

When I saw that Butter & Scotch had a very simple recipe for Strawberry-Basil Jam, which was conducive to water process canning, I decided to attempt to redeem myself. Even though I had missed strawberry season at the local orchard, California strawberries were on sale at my local supermarket.

The Ingredients

The list of ingredients for the recipe was intriguing. As expected, there were fresh strawberries and about a cup of sugar for every pound of strawberries. And thinly sliced basil leaves, as I suspected from the title. Then there was the green apple, which I assume was to add some pectin to the recipe. The lemon zest and juice was probably to raise the acidity level. There was also a significant amount of “high quality balsamic vinegar;” I used my 18-year traditional balsamic vinegar from Bella Gusta rather than the supermarket stuff. Then there was the vanilla bean and a scant amount ground black pepper, which I hardly ever see together in a recipe!

The ingredient list for the recipe is also curious in its quantities. It calls for exactly 1/3 cup of finely grated peeled green apple, which was ¾ of a Granny Smith orchard apple. Yet, it nebulously calls for the zest and juice of one lemon. Lemons vary greatly in size, so the amount of zest and juice will vary greatly across attempts. But that was just a curiosity to me. I forgot to buy a lemon for this recipe. Since the only lemons that I had were Meyer lemons – and all of those were allocated to different recipes already – I had to get a little creative. I used one tablespoon dried orange peel and two tablespoons bottled lemon juice. The one tablespoon of dried orange peel was just a guess, but I felt comfortable with the two tablespoons of lemon juice because that is roughly how much juice was expressed by cutting up a pound of Meyer lemons. I also substituted one tablespoon of vanilla bean paste for the vanilla bean, because I had a jar of vanilla bean paste on hand and the amount for substitution was written on the label. The rest of the ingredients didn’t give me any second thoughts.

The Recipe Steps

The recipe started out simple enough: stir everything in a large pot and set aside. Because my house was hot, I decided to exercise the option to let the mixture stand overnight and then finish the recipe in the morning when the kitchen was cooler. In the morning, the strawberries floating in juice! Again the act of mixing strawberries with sugar worked its magic!

In the morning, I proceeded with the rest of the recipe, which had really descriptive instructions. The mixture was supposed to be boiled “until foam appears then dissipates on the surface of the jam (this should take 15 to 20 minutes).” Well, after 20 minutes, I still had foam on my jam, and I was very nervous about another strawberry sugar block fiasco. So I broke out the candy thermometer – and literally dropped it in the jam! Once I fished out the thermometer and attached it to the side of the pot, I checked the reading: 220F, which is usually the temperature that jams are cooked to. So I did the cold plate test described in the recipe, and my syrup wrinkled as it was supposed to (even though I still had foam). I immediately pulled the jam off the heat and began water process canning. I was able to fill six four-ounce jars with jam.

The Feedback

I gave a jar of this jam to a good friend who fixed my front door for me. She was a bit apprehensive when I told her about the odd ingredients, but she accepted it anyway. I’ve yet to hear what she and her crew think of it.

I also served a jar of this jam with buttermilk biscuits at my Ladies' Brunch. It was very well received – so well received that the other jars of homemade jams and jellies weren’t opened! I tried it myself the next morning on a leftover buttermilk biscuit and it was awesome. There was definitely a black pepper aftertaste, but it was subtle enough to be the perfect foil for the sweetness of the jam.

Between how easily this jam came together and how good it tasted, I would definitely make my adaptation of this recipe again! Especially while strawberries are on sale at the supermarket…