Saturday, June 27, 2009

Strawberry Syrup

This morning I made and canned a batch of strawberry syrup using a recipe that I found on one of the canning boards I visit. I had been looking for a strawberry syrup recipe for some time before finding this one - notice it contains no corn syrup? All of the strawberry syrup recipes I kept finding contained corn syrup and I've recently found out that light corn syrup now contains high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) (I guess it didn't used to have HFCS in it), which I did not want to use in my preservation efforts since that is something I'm really trying to limit and get away from. I tasted this syrup as I was filling the jars and it is yummy! Can't wait to have it on pancakes or waffles or some homemade vanilla ice cream! It was very easy to make and went very quickly once I got all the berries hulled and chopped.

Strawberry Syrup

Juice:
3 quarts strawberries
1 cup water

Syrup:
4 cups strawberry juice
4 cups sugar
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

Juice: Mash berries and crush them one layer at a time. In 8 quart pan, mix berries with water and put on med-high heat. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Remove pan from heat and take cover off and skim foam. Let it cool for 15 minutes.

Sieve over a bowl or pan to strain out the pulp. Discard the pulp and rinse the sieve. (I did not discard the pulp, but froze it in cubes to throw into fruit smoothies.) Measure 4 cups of juice.

To make syrup: In medium saucepan, mix juice, sugar and lemon juice. Over med-low heat, stir it constantly and heat till sugar is ALL dissolved. Increase heat to med-hi and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer syrup for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and skim off any foam.

Ladle hot syrup into hot jars, leave 1/4 inch space. Wipe jar rims and threads with damp clean cloth, apply lids and rings. Process half pints in boiling water bath (BWB) for 10 minutes, pints for 15 minutes.

Makes 6 half-pints or 3 pints

(I used about three and a three-quarters quarts berries and got five cups of juice and 7 half-pints of syrup.)

3 comments:

The Voogts said...

Oooh, this sounds good!!! You'll be wanting pancakes and waffles all the time now :P

Sara said...

I know! I was actually thinking about maybe doing pancakes one night this week for Carson and me, but decided I'd wait for Kevin to be home to do that since he's anxious to try this syrup, too. We've loved the blueberry syrup that I made last year, so I'm sure we'll love this stuff, too!

Shannon said...

Thank you for finding and posting! Strawberries are here in NC and I want to make my own syrup, but like you all I could find were recipes with corn syrup. I didn't know that it now has a percentage of HFCS, but it's not surprising.