hey guys I am hosting welcome back to my channel today's recipe is fresh and delicious homemade strawberry jam without any color preservatives or artificial flavoring agents commercial jams contain a lot of sugar most of which is in the form of high-fructose corn syrup which is not too good for us along with that it also contains preservatives colors and flavoring substances some of them have almost 60 to 65% sugar homemade recipe is also called for an equal fruit to sugar ratio or around 60 to 65% of sugar now this much sugar is needed in these recipes for two main reasons one to reduce the cost of the jam which is of course not our primary requirement if we are making jam at home we wanted to be more healthy and more flavorful and the second is because the jam is thickened with a chemical reaction between sugar lemon juice and a chemical called pectin which is released when the fruit is boiled now pectin requires this large quantity of sugar to set and gel which makes the jam thick but I am eliminating that in this recipe so that the sugar quantity can be reduced you will see just how I'm doing that very shortly so let's begin with the recipe I had recently gone to the town of Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra which is super famous for its strawberries and picked up this gorgeous organic bounty of strawberries from there now I'm just washing them under running water very gently because you don't want to damage the strawberries fun fact strawberries are called strawberries because legend says that farmers used to pick them with the help of straws instead of hands because they didn't want to damage these beautiful delicate berries so be careful you guys drain it carefully like so and just clean it using a clean kitchen towel wipe them using these gentle dabbing motions but don't use it a lot of pressure and then let them air dry for some time now I will remove the stem of the strawberry like this and inspector thoroughly you don't want any parts that have gone bad or mushy to go into your jam like this cut here so I'm just going to remove it and then proceed to chopping my bodies into medium sized chunks all the remaining berries like that and just look how gorgeous they are you actually need more color for this jam because the berries released such a nice color on their own to this I'm adding 350 grams of regular granulated sugar and just thoroughly mixing it through but this stuff will do is that the sugar will draw out a lot of water from the strawberries and the sugar will melt in the water that is released by the strawberries themselves so after an hour or so most of the sugar will get dissolved and this will help you in cooking the jam faster mix it thoroughly also notice that I am using only 350 grams of sugar versus 750 grams of fluid which is almost half so this recipe can be called a reduced sugar jam recipe now I will just throw all this together into a pan I am using a heavy bottomed steel pan you need the pan to be a little thick bottom or heavy bottom because you don't want the jam to stick to the bottom of the pan let it melt very low heat let all the sugar melt on very low heat and don't stir too frequently just once or thrice and once you find that all the sugar has dissolved like here the fruit is just suspended in some sugar liquid you can increase the flame to medium high and let this Jam boil away again don't stir too much because that will agitate the jam and may result in crystallization or that means that sugar crystals may form in your jam that you don't want in between keep cleaning all the scum or the film that is collected on the top of the jam with the help of a spoon and let this boil away for another 15 to 20 minutes stir only once or twice in between keep the flame on medium not too low and not too high now comes the secret ingredients I am using carrageenan powder and agar agar powder which are very common vegetarian gelling agents used to make gelatin free desserts they are derived from seaweed and a hundred percent natural I am just taking 1 TSP of each and hydrating them with some water they will become gelatinous like this and then you can just add them to the jam stir well and boil for another 10 to 12 minutes in between the boiling once again remove the scum that forms on the top of the jam as you can see this Jam is going to be a very pulpy Jam it's not going to be like a jelly and it's not going to be like a crush it's going to have whole fruit pieces in between now to test the doneness of the jam I am using a plate that I have chilled in the freezer for 15 to 20 minutes taking a sample of the jam onto the plate I'm just walking it through in order to cool it down completely now once the temperature of the jam has cooled down you will see that the fruit and the sugar have mixed together and the fruit is suspended in the jam it's not running away that is when you know your jam is done cool this completely and bottle it into these cube charts let this chill in the freezer for at least 8 to 12 hours before using it this will thicken further as it cools down this term is nice and spreadable and not to go P you can enjoy it with toast bread or Piratas it keeps in the refrigerator for 5 to 6 months so the shelf life is really good so guys I hope you try this recipe if you like this video don't forget to hit the thumbs up button like this video share it and subscribe to my channel if you want the detailed written recipe you can go to my website and I will see you next time with another interesting recipe till then happy cooking bye