In a moment of absolute madness I offered to make my sister 90 bottles of jam to use as bombonieres for her wedding in December. Archer’s naps had just started getting better and longer and I thought that learning to make jam would be a good way to fill some time. As I know now, you can never ever rely on a baby to nap consistently haha. Anyway I was determined to make these bloody jams and as quickly as possible.
Firstly, I tried to make jam in the traditional way on the stove top, this took way too much time and also we had an incident with some overspill and burnt jam being stuck all over my stove top. Next I decided to try and make jam in the microwave. This was actually not to bad, but I couldn’t make it in large enough quantities using the recipe.
Finally, I started to trial slow cooker jam recipes. BINGO!! While it tool a while to perfect by the end I could make decent sized batches and it wasn’t overly intensive. I used this as my base recipe but below is the final recipe I used that I personally think ended up making a pretty damn good jam.
Ingredients
- 500g of strawberries, hulled and chopped in half
- Juice of half a lemon or juice of a whole lime
- 1 cup of sugar (caster sugar is best)
- 1/4 cup of basil roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons of whiskey or bourbon (optional)
- 1/4 cup of chia seeds
Method
- Place all of the ingredients except the chia seeds in the slow cooker on low for two hours
- After two hours remove lid. Jizz with a stick beater. And add chia seeds.
- Cook for an additional three hours. DO NOT replace the lid.
- When jam is ready place jars in 160 degree oven for 10 minutes to sterilise. Pour jam into jars while both are still hot, the jam will continue to thicken in jars.
Note – I doubled the recipe on occasion to get more done but if you do this you need to cook for longer at step 3, 4-6 hours. The recipe works best if you do not double it.
I used these jam jars from Kmart – 3 for $3.
Photos by Mark Quade
a DOSE OF THE GOOD LIFE 