Strawberry Freezer Jam

If you want to make homemade berry jam but don’t want to deal with boiling water baths and special lids, strawberry freezer jam is the answer. Made with fresh berries, lemon juice, sugar and pectin—which causes the jam to gel—this recipe takes 30 minutes or less to complete. You don’t even cook the berries! Just blitz them in a food processor, then add sugar and liquified pectin.

Store the jam in freezer-safe containers, and enjoy it months after the summer strawberry harvest. Use freezer strawberry jam anywhere you’d use store-bought or homemade jams and jellies, including in sandwiches, on pancakes and as a dessert drizzle. This recipe makes 8 cups of jam (aka eight half-pints).

Ingredients for Strawberry Freezer Jam

• Fresh strawberries: Since you won’t be cooking the fruit, make sure you use ruby red, juicy berries with a delicious flavor. They’ll be the main thing you taste in the finished jam. Here are three of our favorite ways to hull strawberries.
• Sugar: This recipe uses a good amount of granulated sugar to achieve a jammy texture without cooking the berries.
• Lemon juice: The strawberry freezer jam recipe calls for lemon juice to balance out the sweetness. For the best results, squeeze the lemon yourself rather than using bottled juice, just as you would if you were making lemonade. Don’t hesitate to zest the lemon before giving it a squeeze and then adding the zest to the mix.
• Powdered pectin: Pectin, which occurs naturally in many fruits and vegetables, is a type of fiber that turns to a gel when heated with sugar and acidic ingredients. The gel traps liquid to create the lovely, jammy texture we know and love.

Directions

Step 1: Puree the berries

In a food processor, process the strawberries in batches until finely chopped.

Transfer to a large bowl. Stir in the sugar and lemon juice. Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Step 2: Activate the pectin

In a small saucepan, combine the fruit pectin powder and water. Bring it to a boil and cook, stirring for one minute.

Add the pectin mixture to the fruit mixture and stir constantly until the sugar is dissolved, four to five minutes.

Step 3: Pack and store

Pour the jam into jars or freezer containers, leaving 1/2-inch of headspace. Cover and let stand overnight or until set, but not longer than 24 hours. Then, refrigerate the jam for up to three weeks or freeze it for up to 12 months.

Editor’s Tip: A special funnel is one of the canning supplies that’s a big help when transferring hot, sticky fruits to jars. Also, because fruit jam contains a lot of water, leaving the recommended amount of headspace is super important: The jam will expand as it freezes, and you want to leave it a place to go.

How to Use Strawberry Freezer Jam

• Mix it into yogurt: Freezer strawberry jam is great stirred into a smoothie bowl or just dolloped onto yogurt.
• Top frozen desserts: When strawberries aren’t in season, you can always use strawberry jam as an ice cream topping. It would be great with homemade vanilla ice cream, chocolate ice cream or lemon ice cream. It could also go on fro-yo.
• Spread on bread: Whether you have a crisp piece of toast or are making a sandwich, use this freezer jam as a spread. You can even use a small amount on meat sandwiches: Think smoked turkey with lettuce, Brie and a tiny bit of fruity, sweet jam.
• Combine with cream cheese: Whip a heaping spoonful of strawberry jam into a package of cream cheese for a delicious fruity bagel schmear or to use as a topping for your best brownies.
• Use it on pancakes: Roll jam up in a crêpe, smear it on pancakes or use it to fill cheese blintzes.
• Add it to shortcake: You can combine the jam with fresh strawberries or use it by itself as a strawberry shortcake filling.

Strawberry Freezer Jam Variations

• Use other fruit: You can use this same recipe with raspberries, blackberries, peaches or other fruits you’re excited about. Because you’re not heating the fruit itself, you’ll need to use store-bought pectin—even if the fruit you’re using has a naturally high pectin content—since pectin is activated by heat.
• Change the acidic ingredient: Instead of lemon juice, try using the juice from other citrus fruits. Yuzu, used in Japanese and Korean cooking, is just slightly lower in acidity than lemon, but if you juice limes, oranges, blood oranges or tangerines, you may want to add some lemon for extra zip. You could also use wine.
• Spice things up: Spices such as allspice, clove, cinnamon, ginger and cardamom mesh well with strawberries, so don’t hesitate to add some extra flavor. A pinch or two of salt can be nice too.

How to Store Strawberry Freezer Jam

This freezer strawberry jam will look lovely in glass jars with screw-top lids, such as the kind you’d use for canning. You can also put it into freezer-safe bags. In either case, leave room for some expansion as the jam freezes.

How long does strawberry freezer jam last?

You can refrigerate the strawberry freezer jam for up to three weeks or keep it in the freezer for up to a year.

Strawberry Freezer Jam Tips

Why is my strawberry freezer jam runny?

Because you’re not simmering the fruit with the sugar and lemon, you need pectin for this no-cook strawberry freezer jam recipe. If you skip it, you’ll end up with strawberry sauce rather than strawberry jam, which is a perfectly nice thing in and of itself. If the jam is too runny after adding the pectin, the fruit could’ve been overripe (overripe strawberries contain less pectin in general). You can try adding more pectin to the jam, or even cook the jam on the stove with extra pectin and sugar to get it to gel more. Cooked jam can also be stored in the freezer.