As you know, I have been experimenting with specialty jam recipes in order to write the second Nano-Canning book. The great thing about Nano-Canning is that it takes so little time. About 12:30 CDT Sunday I decided to make the strawberry & black pepper jam while timing myself. I waited until exactly 12:30 to get up from the chair and had not prepared the fruit or pulled out the tools needed when I walked into the kitchen. At 1:29PM I pulled the jars out of the water-bath to cool. Can you believe it? 2 beautiful jars of jam in 1 hour from start to finish.
Isn’t it beautiful? I’m not the best at taking pictures but I took this pedestal my husband has in his man cave that is supposed to be used in bars to light up bottles of liquor and put the jam on it so the bottom would be lit up well. I was happy with the results! Can you see the little flecks of fresh ground pepper throughout the jar? For those of you who have not heard of Strawberry, Balsamic Vinegar & Black Pepper jam, it is pretty much a West Coast thing I guess. The first time I heard about it, I turned my nose up because that just sounded awful to me. However, curiosity got the best of me and I finally made some. It must sit on the shelf for a month in order for the flavors to mellow. After a month, I research what recipes I could use it with. At first, my husband did not want to even open the jar but I convinced him to try it just once. When we started using it, we used it on nearly everything. Some of it tasted great and some of it didn’t. Here’s a partial list of the things we did: lamb chops, chicken, turkey breasts, ribs, and even breakfast sausages. In each case it is used as a glaze. So, here’s the regular sized recipe:
6 Cups strawberries – trimmed, hulled, and mashed with a potato masher
1 box Pectin
4 ½ Cups sugar
¼ Cup Balsamic Vinegar
1 Teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Put all ingredients except for sugar into canning pot. Stir continuously until it reaches a rolling boil.
Immediately add all sugar. Continue to stir until jam reaches a rolling boil once again. Let jam continue boiling at this rate while stirring constantly for 1 minute.
Take off stove and ladle into jars. Place flats on jars and screw lids on. Set jars in gently boiling water bath with 1 inch water over jar tops for 10 minutes.
Using jar lifter, pull jars out of water bath and place on towel away from drafts and allow to cool for 24 hours.
**This jam must sit for 1 month while flavors mellow**
See those beautiful black flecks of pepper? It IS strawberry season or will be soon where you live!
