I’ll admit until I went on my low-carb diet a few months back, I couldn’t stand cottage cheese. It was something they served in hospitals for sick people and I was not sick. Even the name sucks: Cottage cheese. Whenever I think of cottages I can’t help but think of those shitty paintings by Thomas Kinkaid. “Painter of light” my ass. You paint ugly pictures of imaginary places for old women.

But then I went on my low-carb diet and found that there isn’t a damn thing to snack on! So I settled on cottage cheese a couple of times and found that the stuff is pretty tasty.

I thought I’d take a shot at making it myself and I must say there is nothing as luxurious as homemade cottage cheese. It’s got a super fresh taste that can’t be matched by anything at the supermarket.

*A side note: While it tastes amazing, making cottage cheese at home is a lot of work. It take a long time and it’s more expensive than buying it from the store. So if you’re cheap, lazy and generally busy, you should buy your cottage cheese.

Homemade Cottage Cheese

1/4 Tablet Junket Rennet
1/2 Cup Water
1 Gallon Skim Milk
1/4 Cup Buttermilk
1 teaspoon Salt
1/3 Cup Heavy Whipping Cream

 
1. Crush Your Junk(et) – Rennet is a enzyme found in the stomach of calves that enables them to break down the milk from their mother. We’re gonna use it to do the same thing here. Adding this to our milk is going to separate the curds from the whey.

Take one tablet out of the package and cut it in half. And cut it in half again. With your 1/4 of a tablet, take the back of a spoon and crush it in a small bowl. Then add the 1/2 Cup of water to dissolve the rennet. Set aside.

2. Pump and Dump – In a stainless steel stockpot big enough to hold a gallon of milk, add your gallon of skim milk. Turn your stovetop onto medium heat and stir the milk. We need to get the milk to 70° and we need to know when it gets there so using a thermometer is crucial. I use a probe thermometer with a pot clip to ensure the temperature is just right. Stirring will prevent scorching on the bottom.

Once you’ve hit 70°, stir in the 1/4 of Buttermilk and your Rennet mix from earlier. The live cultures in the buttermilk will help to flavor the cheese, but it and the rennet need some time to work. Take your pot off of the stove, cover with a towel and let sit at room temperature for 12 – 24 hours.

3. Little Miss Muffet was a Trollip – With any luck you should now be left with something that look like a big jello blob in clear liquid. That my friends is curds and whey. You can ensure you’re reached proper curds by using a knife to make a slice in it, if the line you make stays visible, you’re good to go.

We want to have multiple curds and not just one big one, so we’re going to have to do some slicing. Get out your longest, thinnest knife for this task, it will make things a lot easier. Starting on one side, slowly slide your long knife in to the soft warm curd until you hit the bottom. Then, keeping your knife on the bottom, run your knife all the way across the pot. Take out your knife and do this same motion every half inch until you get to the other side of the pot.

Once you finish one direction, turn the pot 90 degrees and do the same thing this direction. You should have a cross-hatch pattern on top of the curd, but don’t worry if it’s not perfect, your cottage cheese will turn out just fine.

4. Catcher – We’re soon going to be separating the curds from the whey, so get a strainer with some cheesecloth in it setup over the top of a bowl. Leave this for a minute while we heat the curds.

5. It’s Gettin Hot in Here – Turn on your stove to medium and put your curds back on the burner. You’ll need a thermometer again here as we need to get the mixture to a temperature of 110° and keep it there for 20 – 30 minutes.

Prior to heating, if you pick up one of the curds it will practically disappear in your hand and it’s easily crushed into oblivion. That’s because the curd has not yet set. The process of heating for 20-30 minutes at 110° will set, or cook, the curds, firming them up so our cottage cheese has the delicious texture we know and love.

Heat the mixture to 110° and stir gently to distribute the heat evenly. Be very gentle though or you will demolish all your curds.

After 20 minutes you’ll see that when you stir your curds have real body now. This is what we’re looking for. If your curds haven’t firmed up, keep the heat on for a few more minutes and things will come together.

6. Splashdown – Pour your curds and whey into the cheesecloth lined colander, lifting the colander once you’ve poured it all in. Save the whey if you’d like, but otherwise pour it off and fill the bowl with ice cold water. Put ice in, if you have it.

7. Teabagging – I don’t know why, but this picture always reminds me of this. This should take all of your fraternity guys right back to college.

Grab all four sides of the cheesecloth and pull them together at the top. Now take your curd sack and dunk it repeatedly in the ice cold water. The goal here is to cool the curds down to 40° or so. If you’ve got to stick your hand in there to stir them up a bit, that’s fine, just make sure all of the curds are cool before moving on to the next step.

8. Creamin – You can keep your cottage cheese as it stands now, but you’re probably used to a much creamier version. That’s because commercial cottage cheese has cream or half and half added. I like using cream, because seriously, if you took two days to make cottage cheese that shit better be the most luxurious damn cottage cheese ever made.

Add your salt and cream to the cottage cheese curds, stirring to combine.

That’s it, you did it. You made homemade cottage cheese from scratch. That’s quite the accomplishment. Now mind you, none of your friends or family will give a shit when you tell them, but you’ll know how awesome you are. And that’s what really matters.

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Nobody bakes bread anymore. Well, maybe a couple of blue-haired old ladies do, but that’s just because they don’t have jobs and must do something to justify their existence. 

People think that making bread to laborious and time consuming, but that’s not the truth at all.  Bread making is not only easy (especially with the help of a food processor or mixer), but it also produces some kick-ass product that you can’t buy at the grocery store. Filling your house with the aroma of baking bread isn’t a horrible thing either.

This is a fantastically simple recipe from Mark Bittman. There’s only 5 minutes of real work on your part, the rest of the time lively little yeasts are doing the heavy lifting for you. And your work consists of turning the knob on a food processor and rolling a doughball, so quit being a lazy S.O.B. and get to making bread.

Easy Homemade Bread Recipe

3 1/2 Cups Bread Flour (or All-Purpose)
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons of Instant Yeast
1 Cup of Warm water

1. Mix the dry ingredients – Put all of the dry ingredients into your food processor and pulse a few times to combine them.
 
2. Warm and add the water – Take your cup of water and put it in the microwave for 40 seconds. You want it warm, but not hot. This will help to wake up those yeasts that have been sleeping off their bender, if it’s too hot though, it will kill them off. Turn your food processor on and slowly pour your water through the fill tube. 

As the water is added, the flour will begin to clump and form a dough. Once all the water is added the dough will clump into a ball and begin dancing around the sides of your processor bowl. Let it dance for a minute or two (you might have to hold onto it) and then turn off your processor.
  

3. A Little R&R – It’s time for your dough to rest. Do this for at least one hour at room temperature, if you can hold out for a few hours though you’ll get a much better tasting finished product.

4. Shape your dough – Pre heat your oven to 375° and lightly flour a flat service to work the dough. Take your out of the bowl in which it rose and knead it a few times on the counter to get it back cohesive again.

Using your hands, form your dough into a ball. Pull the sides to the bottom to create a taught surface on the outside of the loaf and let it rise again. Cover it with a towel while it rises for 30 minutes. I like letting the dough rise on the pan I’m going to cook it on, that way you don’t lose any of those precious air bubbles trying to transfer it from one surface to another.

If you’d like to, you can slash the top of your loaf of bread a few times, it’s a purely cosmetic maneuver, but a nice addition.

5. Shake and Bake – Place your bread into the oven and cook until golden brown on the outside. The internal temperature should be 210°. A loaf this size should take about 45 minutes to cook, but everyone’s oven is different so using a thermometer is important.

Another nice thing you can do tell help get an even crispier outside on your loaf is to throw a cup of water on the bottom of your oven when you put the bread in. Not only does it make a totally kick-ass noise, but more importantly it produces a ton of steam. This steam sticks to the outside of the loaf, gelatinizing the very outer layer, that when cooked gets extra crispy. It’s a great technique and it makes you look like a true baking mastermind.

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The picture above is 1 cup of absolutely delicious homemade gravy. Guess how long it took me to make it? 5 minutes. It’s so easy to make homemade gravy with this recipe that you will never, ever buy gravy again. Ever!

Easy Homemade Gravy Recipe

2 Tablespoons Butter
2 Tablespoons Flour
1 Cup Stock (chicken or beef)
Salt
Pepper

1. Have your ingredients ready – This recipe moves quick, so make sure you have all 3 ingredients measured and ready to go.

2. Melt the Butter – Over medium-high heat, melt the two tablespoons of butter in a pan. The butter should be completely melted before proceeding.

3. Stir in Flour – Sprinkle the flour evenly over the melted butter and with a non-stick spatula, stir to combine the two. You should eventually get something that looks kinda like oatmeal. Keep letting it cook, this gets rid of that raw flour taste. It should soon begin to darken slightly and separate a bit.

4. Pour in Stock – Turn the heat down to low. Slowly pour the stock in slowly and continually stir breaking up any lumps you see. You should now see what looks a lot like gravy. If it’s still too loose, you can increase the heat and cook of a bit more of the liquid, but remember it will thicken as it stands.

5. Bask in your Gravy Greatness – Add salt and pepper to taste, then you’re finished. You’ve now got a fantastic homemade gravy to enjoy over chicken or chicken. If you need to make more than 1 cup, the recipe easily doubles.

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I told you earlier this week about my new-found love of French Press coffee, here’s how you use one to make the best coffee you’ve ever had:

The Coffee – Obviously the most important part of the equation. Buy a good quality coffee bean and grind it very coarsely at home. Don’t have a coffee grinder at home? Most places that sell coffee beans either have one available for you to use or do it for you. The most important thing to remember is a coarse grind, that’s best for a French Press. (Fear not if you don’t have coarse ground coffee though, I’ve tested it with all different grinds and while coarse is the best, the others all work too.)

The Water – If you think the water from your tap is drinkable, use that. If not, I’d use bottled water. Some people recommend using bottled water no matter what, but I can’t tell the difference with my water.

How to Use a Coffee Press

1. Measure and Heat the Water: Yes, that says measure. You need to know how much coffee you want to make going in, so measure it out with a measuring cup. Then put it on high heat until it boils.
2. Measure Coffee and Fill Press: The coffee press comes with a handy scoop to use, but a tablespoon works just as well. The ratio you want to aim for is 4:1, so for every 4oz. of water, you’ll want 1 tablespoon of coffee. 16 oz. of coffee is 4 tablespoons, and that’s what I’ve got in the picture above.
3. Chill the Water and Pour into Press: Your water should be at a boil now, but that’s too hot for the perfect cup of coffee. What you need to do is take your water off of the burner, wait 10 seconds and then fill your press. This 10 seconds is just enough time to get your water to the perfect temperature of somewhere between 195°and 200°.
 4. Stir the Brew: When you pour the water in, your coffee will immediately clump and float to the top. It helps the flavor to develop if that clump is broken up, so give it a good stir with something non-metal (that can cause microfractures in the glass), I like to use a wooden chopstick.
 5. Wait: The coffee needs time to “bloom” and release all of it’s flavor. Once I’ve finished stirring, I give mine 3:30. That makes for a 4 minute brew time total which is just right.

6. Take the Plunge: Affix the lid on your press and start the plunger down. Go slowly with this. I’ve read that doing this too fast can cause pressure to build up and cause the top to go flying off. I actually think this is bullshit though, when doing this I’ve never felt any considerable pressure. Once your plunger is down as far as it can go, you’re all set.
7. Pour Yourself the Most Delicious Coffee You’ve Ever Had: All that’s left to do is to pour the coffee into your favorite mug and enjoy.

That’s all there is to it. It’s an easy process that only takes a few minutes and it produces such a great cup of coffee you’ll never go back to those drip makers.

The Coffee Press I used in this post is a Bodum French Coffee Press and it is available on Amazon for only $20.

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Candied Lemon Slices Recipe

3 Lemons (cleaned very well)
Water for boiling
Bowl of ice water
2 C Sugar
2 C Water

1. Put a pot of water (doesn’t matter how much) on the stove on high. That will come to boil while you are slicing the lemons very thinly. Slice all three lemons.

2. In a separate pot, combine the 2 cups of water and the 2 cups of sugar and place on medium-high heat.
3. Place all of the sliced lemons in the pot of boiling water, turn down the heat a bit and let the lemons simmer in the water for a minute or two. This process softens the toughness of the peel and removes some of the bitterness.

4. Remove the lemon slices and place them in the bowl of ice water to cool down.

5. Once your sugar/water pot comes to a simmer, add the lemons. Do not boil this mixture! Keep it at a low simmer for 1 hour and 20 minutes. This amount of time will allow the sugar/water mixture to permeate the lemons and candy them.

6. Before you take your lemons out of the solution, setup a few baking racks. Place your lemons on the racks and let dry. Drying can take up to 24 hours and even then they may remain a bit sticky.

Once you’ve got your candied lemon pieces there are a number of things you can do with them. You can get them dry and crispy by putting them in a low oven for a few hours. You can coat them in sugar or if you’re really looking for something tasty, you can dip them in dark chocolate.

Whatever you decide to do, store your candied lemon in an airtight container for best shelf life.

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Crispy crunchy little bits of spicy pork. Life doesn’t get much better than that. Now traditionally pork carnitas is made by cooking pieces of pork butt or ham in copious amounts of it’s own fat for hours until the meat is perfectly tender. Then, the meat is removed and the temperature of the oil is turned up so it gets smoking hot and the meat is returned. This gives the meat a luscious inside and a crispy exterior that is nothing short of magical.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a kitchen in my house capable of handling the heating of numerous pounds of lard. Nor do I want to deal with the hassle of messing with gallons of hot lard. You have to pick your battles people! Using this recipe can get you pretty close to traditional carnitas with minimal effort and trouble.

Carnitas Recipe

5 lbs. Pork Shoulder – cut into pieces
1 Medium Onion – cut into chunks
2 Limes – quartered
1 Jalepino – sliced
4 Ancho chilies – sliced, seeds and tops removed
3/4 T salt
2 T cumin

1. Preheat your oven to 300°. Place all of the meat into a large dutch oven. If you don’t have a dutch oven, use your heaviest oven-proof pad with a lid.

2. Get all of your other ingredients chopped, sliced and so forth.

3. Add your vegetables and spices to the meat and give it all a good stir to mix things. Don’t worry if it’s not perfectly mixed, it will all work itself out during it’s time in the oven.

4. Put the lid on and cook in the 300° oven for 4 hours. Stir everything about every hour or so. Yeah, that’s right, 4 hours. After about an hour in the oven the fat will begin to melt out of the pork and all of the vegetables will give up their water, essentially creating a braising liquid for the meat. I told you this was easy, that meat is just about cooking itself.

5. Take the meat out of the oven and let it rest for 20 minutes with the lid on. That dutch oven is blazing hot and you don’t want anything to do with it right now.

6. Using a slotted spoon, remove all of the meat to a bowl. You can discard any of the miscellaneous peppers or limes you may find along the way. You should now be left with quite a bit of liquid in your pot. Carefully, pour that off into a bowl. Cover each bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge overnight.

7. The next day, preheat your oven to 425°. Take all of our meat and lay it out on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Now, lets take a look at that liquid we saved. It should have separated and congealed. We don’t need all the grease in there, so scrape that all of the top and discard it. (Or you can use it make the best eggs you’ve ever had!)

8. With that rather unappetizing pork jello you have remaining, spread it over the pork on the cookie sheet. During cooking, this will melt down and provide a lip-smacking glaze for the meat. Put the meat in the oven for 15 – 20. Just keep an eye on it, so that it doesn’t burn.

There you have it, easy oven pork carnitas. The exterior of the meat is nice and crispy; the inside is moist and succulent.  Those perfect little bits of pork are perfect for nachos or tacos, and they make an excellent filling for a Mexican omelet.

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Easy Guacamole Dip Recipe

makes about 2 cups

2 Ripe Avocados, peeled and chopped
1Tbsp Jalapeño, minced
2 Cloves Garlic, minced
2Tbsp Onion, minced
1 Lime, juiced
Salt
Pepper

 
1. Mince your onion, garlic and jalapeño, then put it in a bowl.

2. Scoop your avocados out of their shells and remove the pits. Coarsely chop the avocado, don’t worry about getting it perfect. Place that into the bowl.

3. Cut your lime in half, squeeze all of the juice into the bowl with the avocados and the other ingredients.

4. Get out your potato masher and put a hurt on all of those ingredients. You may need to scrape down the bowl midway through, but mash until it reaches an consistency you like.

5. Taste it. Need salt or pepper? If so, add as much as needed.

That’s it. 5 minutes and you’ve got yourself some of the best guacamole you’ll ever have.

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The Stadium mustard is a lock and I can pick a good beer, but I must say store bought sauerkraut really sucks. It’s either too tangy, not tangy enough, mushy or even downright odd tasting. That’s because “Big Food” does god only knows what to that poor cabbage to get it in that jar, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Making your own homemade sauerkraut is easy, delicious and hell, it’s even kinda fun.

You only need a few simple tools, fresh cabbage and some time to allow the magical powers of fermentation to do their thing.

What You’ll Need
 

Cabbage – Fresh heads of cabbage, washed and trimmed of any nasty pieces.  You’ll want about 10-15 pounds worth of heads.

5 Gallon Food-Grade Plastic Bucket with Lid – Sure you could use a stone or ceramic crock, but you could also wash all of your clothes in a river, so lets stick with the 21st Century here and use plastic.  Make sure you get a food-grade plastic bucket, the one I’m using is not food-grade, but the bright orange bucket makes for excellent contrast against the light colored cabbage so it works well for pictures. You can usually get free buckets from grocery store bakeries, they use them all the time.

Another Lid that Fits inside the Bucket – This is going to keep your cabbage submerged during fermentation. It doesn’t have to fit tightly from side to side, but the closer the better.

Something Heavy – Can be anything clean, some people recommend rocks, but I’ve never seen a clean rock in my life, so I opted for a zipper-top bag filled with water and a mason jar filled with water. This will be used to keep the interior lid down below the surface of the brine.

Pickling Salt – Make sure you buy pickling salt and don’t try to wing it with regular table salt.  Pickling salt is cheap as hell and it doesn’t contain any agents to prevent it from clumping like table salt does.  The problem is that those non-caking chemicals make for a very cloudy brine.

Long Knife, Food Processor or Grater – You’re going to need to slice/grate the cabbage, so whatever you’re comfortable using is fine.

Scale – This kraut thing is done by the pound, so a scale is helpful in knowing how much cabbage you have when it comes time to salt it.

Homemade Sauerkraut Recipe

12 Pounds Shredded Cabbage
8 T. Pickling Salt


1. Slice the Cabbage – Slice the cabbage how ever you find the easiest.  I prefer to use a long serrated knife which allows me to go all the way through a head in one cut. Working with a head of cabbage can be difficult so here is how I make it easy to take one apart:

• Place the head on it’s core and cut it in half.
• Lay half on it’s cut side and cut it in half so that you now have a quarter.
• Using an angled cut, cut the core out of the quarter and discard the core.
• Slice the cabbage to a thickness of 1/8 inch.
• Repeat with the other 3 quarters.

Now the thickness of the cut is completely up to you.  I like a nice hearty piece of sauerkraut, so I keep it kind of thick:

If you prefer a finer sauerkraut, you can shred it more or dice it.  It’s totally up to you, at this point the major goal is breaking down all of the cabbage.

I like cutting one head at a time and salting because it allows you to ensure that the salt is well mixed with the cabbage, something that is crucial to this whole process.
 
2. Weigh & Salt the Cabbage – A head of cabbage, once the core is removed, weighs in at about 3 pounds.  This is perfect. Using the ratio of salt to cabbage above you’ll notice that for every 3 pounds of cabbage we’ll need 2 tablespoons of salt.  Weight out 3 pounds of cabbage and place it into your fermenting bucket.
 
To ensure that all of the cabbage gets covered with salt, I use one hand to stir the cabbage and the other to sprinkle the salt.  Make sure to stir well and get as much salt as possible in contact with the cabbage.

Repeat this process until all of your cabbage has been salted in the bucket.
 
4. Preparation for Fermentation – Now that everyone is in the pool, take your interior lid and place it on top of the cabbage.  Make sure to get as much as possible underneath it and push down to crush the cabbage as tight as it will go.

Place this bucket in a room somewhere in the 75° range and let it sit for 24 hours.

Once 24 hours has elapsed check on your cabbage to ensure that enough moisture has been drawn out of the cabbage to cover all of it with water.  You may need to push down on your lid again to get the water to come up over it.  If enough liquid has been produced, move onto step 5. 

If your cabbage still looks a little dry, you’ll need to give it a helping hand.  Mix up a batch of brine using 1 quart of water and 2 Tablespoons of salt, making sure that that salt is dissolved. Pour this over your cabbage and push the lid down until the water comes over it.

5. Fermentation – This is the big waiting game.  Get your heavy object and put it on top of the lid to keep it and the cabbage submerged in the salty brine. Store your bucket somewhere in your house where the temperature remains around 75° for the best fermentation possible.

Keep in mind that while fermentation occurs your cabbage with transform into sauerkraut and they don’t sell any sauerkraut scented air fresheners, so make sure you don’t place this somewhere where you’ll have to smell it all the time. An extra bedroom or closet is best, but if you have to have it in a room that you spend some time in, after the first few days you can cover the top of the bucket with a loosely placed lid or plastic-wrap.

Fermentation can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 5 depending on temperature, but I suggest monitoring your sauerkraut every few days to be sure that there is no mold growing on top of the liquid. If there is, just skim it off, wash off the interior lid and whatever you have weighing it down before you place them back in the bucket.

6. Sauerkrautification – How do you know your sauerkraut is done?  Only one way: taste it.  Try the cabbage once a week to see if it meets your tanginess requirements.  The longer it ferments the more tangy it will become, but whenever it gets to where you like it, you can put the breaks on fermentation.

You can stop fermentation a number of ways:

• Fridge – Place your bucket in the fridge and it should drastically slow down the fermentation process, but it won’t last forever this way, so either it all or preserve it.
• Freezer – You can freeze sauerkraut, but you’ll need to put it in a zip-top bag making sure to get all of the air out. That being said, freezing is not a long term solution as it can greatly affect the quality of the sauerkraut.
• Canning – Canning is my method of choice for long-term sauerkraut storage. It’s easy to do, takes about a half an hour and will allow your sauerkraut to outlive you.  Ok, maybe only if you’re really old.

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It’s impossible to beat the sweetness of a freshly picked strawberry, but you can preserve most of it with a bit of culinary magic by making strawberry jam.  In this tutorial I’ll not only provide you with an easy strawberry jam recipe, but also show you step by step how to can it so you can enjoy that strawberry flavor throughout the year.

Strawberry Jam Recipe

3 3/4 C Crushed Strawberries
1/4 C Lemon Juice (Freshly Squeezed)
7 C Sugar
1 Package Liquid Pectin
1 Tablespoon Butter (optional)

1. Wash and Hull the Strawberries
Strawberries are generally pretty dirty little bastards, so make sure to give them a good washing.  This is also a great time to get rid of any questionable strawberries as well as cutting off any parts that you wouldn’t want to be eating.  Any piece of rotten strawberry getting into your jam can easily spoil an entire batch of jam.

Once clean, hull your strawberries making sure to remove any pieces of white.  If you’re strawberries are large, you can cut them in half at this point.

2. Smash the crap out of those berries
Now’s the time to get out your pent up frustrations because you need to smash your berries so that you have a good mix of berry chunks and juice.  While you could use a food processor, blender or food mill, I prefer my good old potato masher so that there are still some considerable chunks left.

3. Add the berries, lemon juice and sugar to a pot.  Stir to combine.

 
4. Gently heat up the berry mix.
Put the pot with your mixture on medium heat and stir to incorporate everything. You can add, if you’re so inclined, the butter here to reduce foaming later in the process.

5. Get set for canning
While the strawberry mix is heating up, get things set for canning.  Get your largest pot of water boiling and put in your cleaned jars. This allows them to heat up so that when you put in the hot strawberry jam they don’t explode.  So yeah, don’t forget this part.  Also too, take your lids and put them into a small pot with water on medium heat.

I also like to take this as an opportunity to make sure I’ve got everything I need for canning, because once things get going, a missing component could be a disaster. So get out your funnel, bands and canning tongs.

6. Get the strawberry mixture boiling.
Turn up the heat on the strawberry mixture to high so that it comes to a boil.  Be careful here as this can pop and splatter, and it’s hotter than hell.  It could make for a cool body modification, but I’d prefer a tattoo.

Stir continually to prevent burning.  You’ll know when it’s reached the right point when stirring no longer dissipates a boil.

7. Pour in the liquid pectin.
The strawberry mixture should be at a roaring boil and now it’s time to put in the pectin.  Make sure you get it all out of the package, and stir it in.  Now let this mixture continue to boil for one minute.

8. Take the strawberry jam mix off of the heat.

9. Take your jars out of the canner and set them aside to drain.

10. Start filling your jars.
I use a big funnel for this because I like my counter tops, but I know a lot of folks who just pour it in and wipe off the rims later.  Fill up each jar all the way to 1/4 from the top. Do this for each jar until you’re out of your jam mixture.

11.Seal the jars. 
Once all of your jars are filled, wipe off any jam that you may have gotten on the rims.  One by one, take the lids out of the hot water with tongs and set them on top of the jars.  Either using tongs or a towel to protect your hand, fasten the band on the jar.

12. Can those suckers.
Carefully place your jars in boiling water.  They’ll need to take a bath for 10 minutes before they are ready. Once you’ve hit the 10 minute mark, remove them from the water and place them on a towel.

13. Bask in your jammy awesomeness.
You’re done.  You just have to wait 12 – 24 hours before your jam sets up, but don’t fret, it will be about that long before these damn things are cool enough to handle again. You’ll notice that one of these things in the picture does not belong.  That little guy on the right with the plastic wrap on it was my left over jam and since I will be eating it within the next few days, there was no need to can it.  Stored in the fridge it will last at least a month.

You strawberry jam will last canned for a least a year, but I’ve kept some jars much longer with no issues.  There are a couple of things to make sure of though to prevent yourself from dying from tainted jam. Never store the jars with the bands on because if the lid were to pop off (a good sign the stuff is spoiled) you’d never know.  Also, be sure to keep these in a dark, cool area as light can effect the product. 

One note of caution: Beware of sharing your supply with friends and family as once they know you make strawberry jam from scratch, they’ll be asking for it every year.

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