Making jam is easier than you may think

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I learned how to make jam online. Really, it’s that easy.

I don’t come from a long tradition of cooks: My grandmother can mix a fabulous pisco sour, but a boiled egg might be a challenge. When I was growing up in Florida, I could see Miami’s downtown skyline from across the bay, but not a hint of farmland outside my bedroom window.

The afternoon I learned how to make jam I was bored at work in front of the computer. I flipped through some recipes online, decided on strawberry and rushed home.

Of course, the strawberries went wild, boiled over and rendered one of the burners on my long-suffering gas stove permanently disabled. That said, my first batch of jam wasn’t all that bad. It was runny and way too sweet, but you can’t really go all that wrong cooking strawberries with sugar.

My second batch was a step up, and the next one was even better. Now, homemade strawberry jam is one of my favorite things to make. It’s a crowd-pleaser. It goes great with peanut butter. And strawberries are abundant and cheap. At this time of year, at the peak of California’s strawberry season, plants are harvested up to three times a week to pump out 7 million flats.

Plus, it’s incredibly easy to make, perfect for beginning jam makers – nothing more than a mix of strawberries, sugar and lemon juice.

The first step in making a great pot of jam is picking out great berries. Don’t discriminate by size or variety. A single plant will grow monster strawberries at the beginning of the season, but the fruit will shrink in size as the season goes on. The big growers market their own proprietary varieties, while smaller Northern California farmers grow a mix that includes Albions, Chandlers and Seascapes.

Buy a berry that smells fabulous and looks just as good – one with lots of shine, red shoulders, no bruises and whose green caps are fresh and vivid. A strawberry won’t ripen after it’s harvested, so whatever you’ve tasted and sampled, that’s as good as it’s going to get. Skip the moldy and bruised ones. Bad flavor is still bad, even after it’s been cooked into jam.

Once home, refrigerate the strawberries you’ll use for making jam. Store-bought berries will last between five and seven days. Anything that’s been sitting out in the heat (like farmers’ market strawberries) won’t last quite as long.

After that, you’ll need some canning jars, a decent-size pot, sugar and lemon juice. That’s it. Wash and sterilize the jars (see accompanying instructions), cook the strawberries with some sugar and lemon juice until it gets good and thick, pour the jam into the jars, seal them and sterilize it one last time in a boiling water bath.

Worst-case scenario: The jam doesn’t turn out quite how you want, it doesn’t set up or it’s too sweet. Just call it a sauce and serve it over a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

For a video on making strawberry jam, see the link with this story at www.sfgate.com/food.

Editor’s note: As summer fruit season shifts into high gear, The Chronicle begins a four-part series today on easy ways to preserve the harvest. It’s written by jam expert Carolina Braunschweig, founder of the award-winning CMB Sweets. Each column will feature two recipes – one for making preserves and a second for using those preserves in a delicious new way. Look for the column to appear three more times as summer segues into fall.

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