Quick and Easy Homemade Strawberry Jam

Jim and I are buying more fresh fruit these days, but with all the traveling I have been doing Jim hasn't been able to eat the amount of fruit in the house. We had almost an entire pint of fresh strawberries that needed to be eaten or thrown out. Instead of tossing the fruit, I made a quick and simple Homemade Strawberry Jam.

Start by rinsing the fruit and then cutting the tops off each.

Blend all the strawberries either by pulsing in the cuisinart or place them on a sheet pan and squash with a potato masher. Blend until you have your desired consistency.

I don't exactly care for chunky jelly, so I blended this pretty good.

Add to a saucepan and place over medium heat.

Add about a teaspoon or so of lemon juice.

Add 1/2 cup of sugar. More or less to taste.

Stir to combine. The mixture will begin to boil at this point, continue to stir constantly.

A secret I learned from PW is to put a half pat of butter to the mixture to reduce the "foam" that builds on top.

Stir for an additional 10 minutes as the jelly bubbles violently.

Until it has thickened.

I poured this into a clean mason jar.

And let this sit on the counter until it had cooled to room temperature.

Mmmm... this is sweet and tart, and lovely spread on top of toast in the morning.

I've got in the habit of labeling everything in the fridge because all tupperware containers look the same after a week and it also wards off the "what's this?" question that I hear so often from the kitchen.

There are a lot of jelly recipes online, most using gelatin or pectin so that you can store the jam for a long time. But if you plan on using this up within a week or so, make it the easy way. Be a hero.