Strawberry and red currant jam

Make homemade red currant jam with vanilla bean and strawberries for a sour-sweet jam with no pectin added, yet is till quite thick and sets firm. This strawberry and red currant jam is a fun twist on the classic jam.

After going berry picking, sometimes the best course of action is to make jam. Jam is a great way of preserving big batches of berries for long term storage. And if you use a home canning kit to properly seal the jars, you can store them for a long time in a cool dry place. 

One thing to remember when making jam is that the riper the fruit, the lower the pectin, in many cases. Strawberries are a prime example of a fruit that, when ripe, they have less pectin than the unripe berries. Stone fruit too suffer from this problem. So jams made with some of these fruit can end up a little on the soft, runny side of set, especially if you haven't boiled them long enough to achieve the jam setting point. 

Combining fruits in a batch of jam can have some benefits, especially when you are trying to make a jam with a fruit that is lower in pectin. Blueberries and red currants are great berries to throw into a batch of summer jam because these berries are higher in pectin and so they can help jams with other fruit achieve a better set, without having to resort to commercial pectin.

I did a little strawberry jam experiment to see this in action: I used extremely ripe, freshly picked strawberries to make three batches of homemade jam. To this end, I made:

1. plain strawberry jam to see how the set when strawberries alone are used and these aren't very high in natural pectin, especially when they are at their peak, flavour-wise
2. strawberry rhubarb jam to see what happens when you add a low pectin fruit like rhubarb
3. strawberry red currant jam to see what happens when you incorporate a high pectin fruit like red currants

Interestingly, what I found was that the strawberry jam made with red currants set so fast, I barely had to boil it. It gelled almost immediately, so fast that I wasn't sure what to do because I almost didn't made it to the jam setting point (above 215 ºF). 

On the other hand, adding rhubarb when making a batch of strawberry jam led to a more complex sour-sweet flavour, but it also led to the softest set. Not surprising since rhubarb isn't known for its pectin content. That's why this rhubarb jam recipe without pectin is so special: it takes a certain technique to achieve a good set with such a low pectin fruit.

Feel free to play with the ratio of strawberries to red currants in this recipe, but remember, more red currants may lead to a firmer set! And for more currant inspiration, check out this roundup of red currant recipes, which includes red currant muffins! Later in the season, you can make this black currant cake (when the red currants are no longer available).