Comparing two great strawberry rhubarb jam recipes

A pile of fresh strawberries, a pile of fresh rhubarb.  I had enough raw ingredients for not one, but two batches of delicious strawberry rhubarb jam.

Strawberry rhubarb jam is very simple affair consisting of sliced fruit, sugar and lemon juice.  That’s it.

I wanted to see how the recipe in our cookbook Tart & Sweet stacks up to that in another great canning cookbook, Canning for a New Generation by Lianna Krissoff.

The recipes are very similar, comprised of the four primary ingredients.

The only difference was in the cook time.   In the Liana Krissoff book, she calls for straining the fruit about 15-20 minutes into the cook time and simmering the juice separately — rhubarbs and strawberries produce a lot of natural juice — until its reduced  to a cup and a half.  Then the fruit is added back to the pot with the reduced juice and cooked together until the mixture has reached a nice jammy consistency with lots of chunky fruit bits, another 20 minutes or so.

Our recipe calls for cooking both fruits together without any straining. This saves a step and means not having to wash an extra bowl and colander, but the cook time is considerably longer; mine took more than an hour. It also meant that the fruit was quite a bit more broken down than in the Krissoff book, producing a smoother texture.

In the end, it was a case of six of one, half dozen of the other — one recipe was a bit quicker and chunkier, the other took a little longer to achieve a smoother texture.  But both recipes produced a tasty jam.

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam from Tart & Sweet

4 quarts strawberries, hulled and quartered

3 1/2 pounds rhubarb, sliced 1/4 inch thick

3 cups sugar

Juice of 2 lemons

Place the strawberries, rhubarb, sugar and lemon juice in an wide-bottomed 8-quart pot over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to medium and simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching. Reduce heat as necessary. Skim off any foam.  Once the jam thickens into a nice jammy consistency, cut the heat.  (The mixture will continue to thicken as it cools  so the jam can be a little loose when it’s ladle into the jars.)

Ladle mixture into 5 or 6 hot, sterilized pint jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Check for air bubbles, wipe rims and seal.  Boil jars in a pot of boiling water for 10 minutes if your elevation is at or around sea level, 15-20 minutes if your elevation is over 6,000 feet.

Tagged as: canning for a new generation, canning jam, strawberry rhubarb jam, tart + sweet