Indulge in the irresistible taste of Strawberry Freezer Jam, a delicious preserve highlighting the vibrant flavor of ripe, juicy strawberries. Its silky texture effortlessly spreads on toast or complements your favorite desserts. With an easy and straightforward process, requiring no boiling water bath, you can capture the essence of fresh strawberries in a jar, ready to enjoy year-round. You can have this recipe ready to store in just 15 minutes!
With the busy schedules we all lead, making a quick and easy jam that looks beautiful and tastes just as good is a no-brainer! Treat yourself with frequent small batches of homemade strawberry freezer jam or make a big stash for summer flavor even in the middle of winter! This jam can be enjoyed on bread, crackers, used as a glaze, or added to tea-time pastries…the options are endless! Consider using this strawberry freezer jam recipe in place of the pie filling in these Strawberry Bars. If you love jams and spreads, be sure to check out my Balsamic Peppercorn Fig Jam, Crockpot Strawberry Raspberry Jam, or Lemon Curd.
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🍓 Ingredients:
- Strawberries – Use fresh strawberries crushed by a potato masher. Sweet, vine-ripe fruit during strawberry season will make the best jam, with great strawberry flavor. You can make decent freezer jam with frozen or off-season strawberries, but that full-bodied strawberry flavor really shines with those local strawberries from the farm stand!
- Granulated sugar – It’s important to measure the exact amount of sugar when making this strawberry freezer jam recipe. The sugar sweetens the jam, but it also interacts with the pectin for proper gelling. If you want to reduce the amount of sugar, you will need to use specialty reduced-sugar pectin as well.
- Fruit Pectin – This is a thickening agent for easy strawberry freezer jam. I used Sure Jell, but you can use another box of pectin. If available, use an instant pectin or freezer jam pectin (aff)- these are specially formulated for an even better set and consistency. However, I’ve used regular pectin with this method and it works great; they don’t sell the specialty pectin in my grocery store, though it is available online.
- Water – we boil the pectin in the water before adding to the crushed fruit and sugar.
For a full list of ingredients and their measurements, 📋 please view my printable recipe card at the bottom of the post.
Equipment Needed:
With this simple recipe, you don’t need anything but a pot to cook your jam in. If you don’t have mason jars on hand, you can simply scoop the cooked jam into any freezer safe container! Other basic cooking tools like a large mixing bowl, clean jar or other sterilized freezer-safe containers, a potato masher or food processor if you want no chunks in the strawberry mixture, a small saucepan, and a ladle or canning funnel can be helpful.
Substitutions and Variations
- Reduce the sugar in this delicious strawberry jam using low-sugar or zero-sugar Sure-Jell pectin.
- If it’s not strawberry season, use frozen strawberries instead. Obviously, you won’t get as fresh a strawberry flavor as ripe strawberries.
- Other fresh berries can also be used, such as raspberries, for raspberry freezer jam.
- Consider adding a squeeze of lemon juice to the jam if the flavors need more balance. A bit of lemon zest or orange zest would complement the strawberry jam really well.
🔪 Instructions:
PREP: Sterilize glass jars and lids in boiling water or by running them through a dishwasher cycle.
Step 1: Wash and remove the stems from the strawberries and mash them with a potato masher. Add them to a large bowl.
Step 2: Combine the crushed strawberries with the exact measurements of sugar called for in the recipe. Set aside.
Step 3: In a saucepan, combine the pectin and water.
Step 4: Bring the pectin and water to a boil over medium-high heat, constantly stirring, for 1 minute.
Step 5: Pour the boiling pectin mixture into the crushed strawberries and stir until all of the sugar has dissolved.
Step 6: Ladle the freshly made strawberry freezer jam into clean glass jars. Seal the jars and allow the jam to cool to room temperature. You can then tighten the lids completely and store the jam in the fridge or freezer.
SERVE: Serve this delicious homemade jam with English muffins, pour it over a serving of vanilla ice cream, or make a classic peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich! Freezer jam will last in the refrigerator for 1-2 weeks and in the freezer for up to 12 months.
- When making any jam, it’s vitally important to measure all the ingredients as precisely as possible. If you alter any of the amounts in a recipe then you risk compromising the consistency of the jam. In some instances, this can result in your jam not setting properly.
- This recipe doesn’t instruct you to cook the fruit and pectin together. If you want to cook them together, you’ll need double the amount of fruit and sugar (while keeping the quantity of pectin the same). You’ll end up with a larger quantity of freezer jam, so keep that in mind as well for when you clean and sterilize jars.
- Remember, it’s not necessary to process jars in a boiling water bath when making freezer jam since freezer jam is intended to be stored in the refrigerator or the freezer. If you want to store your jam at room temperature, you MUST sterilize the jars beforehand and process the jars after filling to prevent any growth of bacteria.
- Do allow the jam to cool to room temperature before putting in the refrigerator or freezer.
- Most packages of pectin have extensive recipes and instructions included in the packaging – I’ve never been steered wrong using those – if you’re unsure about ingredient quantities when varying this recipe, you can always refer to the package.
Yes, it is! You’ll notice when making freezer jam that you aren’t required to simmer the sugar with the fruit till you end up with a smooth consistency like you would when making traditional jam. In fact, this recipe doesn’t involve any cooking of the strawberries whatsoever!
Instead, this Strawberry Freezer Jam offers delicious chunks of strawberry that retain brightness in color and fruity flavor much better than the traditionally cooked jam does.
While this quick and easy freezer jam is chunky, it does have a thinner consistency compared to cooked jam which is perfectly normal. With that said, your freezer jam will thicken up when stored in the refrigerator
If you’re unfamiliar with “pectin,” it’s a component in fruit that has natural congealing properties – meaning that it helps the gelling process required for jams and jellies to set. Since different fruits have different pectin levels, the ability to isolate pectin and add it to jams with naturally low-pectin fruits (such as strawberries) is just brilliant!
Sure – you could opt to cook your strawberry jam with higher pectin fruit (like apples) instead of adding in pectin, but you’ll need to cook it for much longer to get it to start gelling, in some cases 30 minutes or longer while attentively checking the temperature of the jam mixture. What’s more, if you’re making freezer jam, you can eliminate processing of the jam jars, which brings the total time for this easy recipe down to just 15 minutes.
It’s a must to sterilize jars or containers that are going to be storing jam at room temperature to reduce the possibility of bacteria growing in the jam. It’s not, however, an absolute necessity if you are making freezer jam that you intend to store in the refrigerator or freezer.
This jam can be refrigerated for up to 2 weeks or stored in the freezer for up to an entire year.
Normally, freezer jam that hasn’t included the sterilization of jars (i.e. the jars are clean but haven’t been sterilized with a boiling water bath procedure) should NOT be stored at room temperature for any length of time. If you did opt to sterilize your jars and process in a boiling water bath after filling, then this jam can in fact be stored at room temperature for as long as 1-2 years. Keep free from direct contact with sunlight and do not expose to humid and/or hot conditions.
Any good quality sealable glass jar, like mason jars, can be used for storing this freezer jam. When using jars, make sure to leave a small amount of space (about ½ inch) at the top of your jar to allow for expansion when freezing.
Of course, you could also use plastic containers that have good sealable lids and are appropriate for freezer storage.
If you intend making this beautiful Strawberry Freezer Jam as a gift, then consider using a pretty decorative jar. There are tons of jars on offer online or in-store to choose from such as:
Diamond Design Mason Jars;
Ball Collection Elite Jam Jars;
Bormioli Rocco Quattro Stagioni Glass Mason Jars.
That’s a great question! It’s important to note that you can’t simply reduce the sugar called for in this recipe to make a low-sugar freezer jam as it will affect the outcome of your jam.
My suggestion is to opt for a no-sugar or a low-sugar box of fruit pectin such as Ball Real Fruit Pectin, which can easily be used in place of Sure-Jell without any impact on the outcome of your jam.
More Strawberry-Inspired Recipes
If you tried this Strawberry Freezer Jam or any other recipe on my website, please please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how you liked it in the 📝 comments below.
Strawberry Freezer Jam
Ingredients
- 2 cups crushed fresh strawberries about 1 quart, measure after crushing
- 4 cups granulated sugar
- 1.75 oz. box of fruit pectin I used Sure-Jell
- ¾ cup water
Instructions
- Prepare mason jars and lids by washing and sterilizing in boiling water or running through the sterilization cycle on the dishwasher.
- Rinse and remove stems from strawberries. Slice into halves or quarters if desired (this makes crushing them a bit easier).
- Use a potato masher to crush the strawberries into very small pieces (do not puree unless you want no pieces in the jam).
- Measure precisely 2 cups of the crushed strawberries (and juices) and place in a large mixing bowl.
- Mix precisely 4 cups of granulated sugar into the strawberries and set aside.
- In a small saucepan, stir together the full package of fruit pectin and the water.
- Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. Continue stirring and boil for 1 minute.
- Pour the boiling pectin mixture into the strawberry/sugar mixture and stir until all the sugar is dissolved. Only a few sugar granules should remain.
- Ladle the mixture into the prepared jelly jars, secure the lids, and leave the jars to set for 24 hours.
- After 24 hours, tighten the lids completely and store in the refrigerator or freezer.
Notes
- When making any jam, it’s vitally important to measure all the ingredients as precisely as possible. If you alter any of the amounts in a recipe then you risk compromising the consistency of the jam. In some instances, this can result in your jam not setting properly.
- This recipe doesn’t instruct you to cook the fruit and pectin together. If you want to cook them together, you’ll need double the amount of fruit and sugar (while keeping the quantity of pectin the same). You’ll end up with a larger quantity of freezer jam, so keep that in mind as well for when you clean and sterilize jars.
- Remember, it’s not necessary to process jars in a boiling water bath when making freezer jam since freezer jam is intended to be stored in the refrigerator or the freezer. If you want to store your jam at room temperature, you MUST sterilize the jars beforehand and process the jars after filling to prevent any growth of bacteria.
- Do allow the jam to cool to room temperature before putting in the refrigerator or freezer.
- Most packages of pectin have extensive recipes and instructions included in the packaging – I’ve never been steered wrong using those – if you’re unsure about ingredient quantities when varying this recipe, you can always refer to the package.
Nutrition
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