Summer.
The strawberry season has come again.
It is difficult to find a person who does not like this berry.
Such delicacies can be waived only by those to whom it is absolutely contraindicated, because it causes allergies.
The healthy part of the population of the planet is fed up and stocked. Strawberries are even credited with magical properties!
Anything can happen.
It is really very useful, but even if you eat a whole bucket during a season, then this supply of vitamins and minerals will not be enough even until the end of summer, not to mention winter. But you want to enjoy this aroma, looking out of the window at the snow-covered roofs of the city!
Therefore, we again do an audit in the storerooms, prepare containers, tools, compare recipes on culinary portals and get down to business.
Strawberries with sugar - the basic technological principles
For the preparation does not require anything supernatural. The special smell of strawberries is quite self-sufficient. If you really want something very unusual, you can experiment.
But now we are talking only about strawberries with sugar. Recipes, or rather - different ways of its preparation below are attached in several versions. Only first, a few words about what berries are suitable for canning. Yes, repetition is the key to preserving the harvest.
The most tedious process is picking and sorting berries, but it is precisely this stage that you need to pay special attention and have patience.
The best jam is obtained from berries that fall into the jars directly from the garden, without being damaged by their long transportation and storage in the refrigerator or in the sun. Under these conditions, the delicate strawberry berries become depressing, and few of them manage to be preserved according to the intended recipe. If, nevertheless, in the absence of a dacha, you have to buy strawberries on the market, then choose slightly unripe berries. Such a defect in the berries is easy to fix: even a green berry can be turned into a ripe one if you spread it on a sheet of foil, cover it with a second sheet and firmly pinch the edges to isolate the berries from the air. In this case, the berries should not touch each other. After 5-6 hours, open it and turn it over. Cover with foil again, and you can start preparing the dishes and containers. For summer residents, there are no problems with buying berries, but such a technique can be useful, especially in rainy summer.
If you want the berries in the bank to be large and beautiful, sort the strawberries. When cooking, it is greatly reduced in size and this should not be forgotten.
To jam it did not look like a compote, throw the whole berry in the ready-made thick syrup. At the same time, the berries themselves will not have to be boiled for a long time, which will keep their size, density and flavor.
1. Strawberries with sugar: a recipe for dry strawberry jam
Ingredients:
Sugar 3.0 kg
Strawberry 3 kg
Sugar powder 0.5 kg
Water 1.5 l
Cooking:
Boil water in a saucepan (10 l) with a thick bottom and put sugar in it. Cook a thick syrup. Prepared berries, with dense flesh and without damage, put in boiling syrup and cook for 5-7 minutes. Turn off the fire. Collect the foam. After cooling, boil the jam again. Make sure that the berries do not boil over and do not boil soft. Repeat this operation at least five times.
Place the grate (or sieve) on a tray and pour jam on it. Gently, in order not to damage the berries, spread them across the surface of the grate in a thin layer and let the syrup drain. If the house has a convection oven, then you can use its fan to speed up the drying of berries. In this case, return the drained syrup to the pan, boil it and cork in bottles with dark glass, after sterilizing them. This syrup can be used to make desserts in the winter.
Pour the dried berries with powder and place in a dry, tightly closed container. You can store this jam for up to a year in a dry and dark place.
1. Strawberries with sugar: a recipe for French jam
Ingredients:
Fresh strawberries 2.0 kg
Lemons 400 g
Sugar 1.5 kg
Cooking:
Enumerate the berries: medium or large berries of the same size, with no signs of damage, are suitable for jam. Strawberries should be thick, not overripe. Wash berries and dry. If the berries are not too sweet, then the amount of sugar for jam should be increased. Place berries in a clean and dry enameled bowl, sprinkling each layer with sugar. Leave them in a cool place to wait for the selection of juice.
Remove the zest from the lemons and squeeze the juice. Add them to the strawberry juice. Put the pot on a low fire and cook for five minutes from the moment of boiling. Allow the jam to cool slightly and pour the syrup into another dish and cook it until the sample is “on a thin string”. Put the berries in syrup again and boil for another 5 minutes.
For winter storage, place hot jam in hot sterile and dry jars. Cover tightly with sterile caps. Do not turn over. Cover with warm material and, after cooling naturally at room temperature, transfer to a dark and cool place.
2. Strawberries with sugar: a recipe for quick jam
Ingredients:
Berries 1.0 kg
Strawberries 0.7 kg
Agar 20g
Sugar 1.7 kg
Cooking:
If you have already harvested dry or French jam, which is preferably cooked from selected, large berries, then it's time to recycle the remaining, shallow strawberries. Especially in combination with smaller and fragrant strawberries, garden berries will have a more expressive taste.
After sifting through the strawberries, wash them and let them drip off the water, spread out in a thin layer on a wire rack or linen cloth. Treat the strawberries in the same way, but put it separately for now.
Crush strawberries with a wooden pestle in an enamel or stainless dish to make juice. Stir the berry with sugar and set to minimum heat. Make sure that it does not burn and bring to a boil. Remove the foam and add whole and dense strawberries. In boiling water (50-100 ml), dissolve the agar and pour into a bowl of jam. Remove the jam from the stove after 10 minutes and pack in hot and dry sterile jars. Immediately seal and cover with a blanket. This jam can be stored at room temperature until a new harvest. It has a thick texture and is very useful for making cakes or pies. In addition, it has a very rich and natural taste and aroma of fresh berries.
3. Strawberries with sugar: a recipe for jam on the fire.
Ingredients:
Berries of technical ripeness (dense),
slightly overripe strawberries,
sugar:
all components - in equal parts
Cooking:
Nothing complicated in cooking technology! Here the main thing - the ability to kindle a fire.
Any jam cooked on a fire has a special smell and taste. This method of harvesting strawberries for the winter is ideal for summer residents, since in a city life there is no question of making a campfire.
The ideal material for a fire is a log of fruit trees: cherries, pears, plums, and apple trees. You need to wait until the logs are burned out and enough heat gathers to maintain the temperature for 1.5-2 hours. Prepare a large basin with water, in which you need to quickly cool 2-3 times, taken from the fire, a cauldron with jam.
If you want to add some special flavor, besides a light smell of smoke in strawberries with sugar, the recipe is this: prepare citrus peels, mint grass or lemon balm - choose what you like and throw it into the fire with a strawberry.
Strawberries need, as usual, to sort out, remove the stalk and damaged berries. Choose large, whole and not overripe fruits. It is better if they fall into the cauldron directly from the country garden bed.
Where to put the small and slightly crumpled berries? Wipe it through a sieve, and then boil syrup from the prepared juice. Pour the juice into the cauldron, bring to a boil and dissolve the sugar in it. Boil the syrup for about 20 minutes until thick. Then put the whole berries, let them boil in the syrup and put the cauldron in a basin with cold water. To the jam quickly cooled and you can continue cooking, mix it gently with a wooden spatula. Berries in syrup should remain intact. After cooling down, transfer the cauldron to the fire again and bring the jam to a boil. At this point, you can add fragrant herbs to the fire. Repeat this procedure twice and immediately pour the hot strawberries in strawberry syrup into prepared jars. When they cool down, transfer to the basement. Can be stored on the shelves indoors, at room temperature. Only banks should be tightly sealed.
4. Strawberries in sugar: a recipe for dry freezing
Ingredients:
Strawberry 500g
Icing sugar 200 g
Cooking:
Containers with a vacuum cover will be needed. They can be replaced by similar packages. Vacuum packaging in itself allows you to store food for a long time without freezing. When freezing strawberries in a vacuum, its shelf life increases significantly. At the same time, not only is its appearance preserved, but also its valuable vitamin composition.
Wash and dry selected berries to remove water. Separate the stalk. Lay the strawberries on a wide and flat dish or tray. Transfer the prepared berries to the freezer and hold them at -12C until fully cured. It is not worth lowering the freezing temperature and increasing the length of time for freezing the berries in the open form: we remember the preservation of vitamins.
Then pour the powder into a tight vacuum bag, transfer the frozen berries into it and quickly return the strawberries to the shelf in the freezer. Powder can not add. But when defrosting berries, it will absorb the juice on the surface of the berries, help to preserve their shape. It is enough to hold such a strawberry in the microwave for a minute in the microwave - and the dessert is ready!
Strawberries with sugar - tricks and useful tips
- In vacuum bags, you can keep fresh strawberries rubbed with sugar in the freezer until the next harvest.
- Citric acid, crystalline powder or natural juice is not added to strawberry jam in order to make the berry more acidic. Acid helps preserve the density of berries. But it is also necessary to increase the sugar content in the jam, in order to adjust the taste.
- When cooking jam, juice is extracted from the berries, which automatically reduces them in volume and increases the content of liquid syrup. In order to achieve the desired thickness, you can boil down the syrup, but at the same time the natural taste of berries and vitamins will be lost. By adding pectin or agar to jam, you can shorten the cooking process as much as possible, while retaining a significant portion of the vitamins, the taste of berry jam will be close to natural, and the consistency, depending on the amount of natural thickener added, may be dense and even marmalade. This quality of strawberry jam significantly expands the possibilities of using strawberries with sugar. The recipe for this jam is indispensable for home baking lovers, because agar and pectin are additives that, when reheated, do not lose their main gelling properties.
