Strawberry Syrup

The heat broke Tuesday and a cooler stretch settled in for the rest of the week — high seventies days, low fifties nights, the kind of perfect August weather that makes you forget the previous week ever happened. The garden responded to the cooler nights with a visible push — the tomatoes ripening in earnest now, the beans setting heavily, the corn nearing maturity. I did the first major canning operation of the year Saturday — fourteen quarts of tomato sauce, the tomatoes the slightly-imperfect ones from the row, peeled and chopped and cooked down for four hours with onion and garlic and basil, then ladled hot into the quart jars and processed in the boiling-water canner for forty-five minutes. The fourteen quarts will give me sauce through the winter for pasta and lasagna and chili and the dozen other things that benefit from a quart of homemade sauce.

The canning operation took most of Saturday — six in the morning to four in the afternoon, with breaks for coffee and a sandwich — and is the kind of single-day project that I am beginning to find more demanding than I used to. The lifting of the canner full of water was easier ten years ago than it is now. The standing at the stove for hours was easier. The bending down to retrieve the jars from the lower cabinet was easier. The work itself is the same but the body executing the work is not, and I notice the difference in a way that is not yet a problem but is a fact, and the noticing is part of being seventy-two and is one of the small ongoing reckonings of late life.

The blog post on the canning was straightforward — the recipe, the method, the importance of the proper boiling-water bath time, the safety considerations that home canners should not forget — and was directed at the readers who have been canning for years and who appreciate the precision of a good technical post. The comments included the usual mix of questions and refinements and one comment from a man in Maine who said his wife had died last year and he had inherited her canning equipment and had no idea what to do with any of it, and would I consider writing a beginner's post on canning. I considered the request seriously. I told him I would think about it. The blog has gradually expanded into a teaching tool for widowed men who are learning their way around their late wives' kitchens, and the request was the kind of request I have come to take seriously.

Lucy called Sunday from Portland. She has been accepted into the nurse-midwife training program at the University of Pennsylvania and will start in September. The acceptance had been pending for some weeks and I had not been told the timeline, the way grandparents are sometimes told things on the same schedule as the rest of the family. She was excited in the steady understated way Lucy is excited about things that matter to her, and Sarah was on the line too — they had called together — and I told Lucy that nurses and midwives are the most useful people in any community and that she would be very good at it. Lucy said: thank you, grampy. Sarah said: he means that as a compliment. Lucy said: I know. We talked for half an hour. After they hung up I sat on the porch for a long time. The granddaughter who was born in 2017 and who I held when she was an hour old is going to start a graduate program in nurse-midwifery in September, which is the kind of fact that does not so much surprise me as confirm me, the line of the family extending forward in the way I have always known it would and that is still, when it happens, a small private wonder.

The tomato sauce was the heavy lift of the weekend, but it put me in the frame of mind that only a long day at the canner can produce — that particular satisfaction of knowing the pantry shelves are a little more honest than they were the morning before. On days like that, I find myself thinking about the simpler preservation projects, the ones that don’t demand six hours on your feet but reward the same kind of patience. This strawberry syrup is one I return to every summer: it is not complicated work, it is forgiving work, and when it is done the jars have that same sealed-lid certainty that makes everything you put up feel worthwhile.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 45 minutes | Servings: 4 half-pint jars

Ingredients

4 cups fresh strawberries, hulled and crushed (about 2 lbs whole berries)
2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup bottled lemon juice
1/2 cup water
1/4 teaspoon unsalted butter (optional, to reduce foaming)

Instructions

Prepare your equipment. Wash four half-pint canning jars, lids, and bands in hot soapy water. Keep jars warm in a low oven or in the canner water while you work. Fill your boiling-water canner and bring it to a simmer.
Cook the berries. Combine the crushed strawberries and water in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a gentle boil, stirring occasionally, and cook for 5 minutes until the berries have released their juice and softened fully.
Strain the fruit. Pour the cooked berry mixture through a fine-mesh strainer or dampened cheesecloth set over a bowl. Press gently with the back of a spoon to extract the juice without forcing pulp through. Discard solids. You should have approximately 2 cups of juice.
Make the syrup. Return the strained juice to the saucepan. Add the sugar and lemon juice and stir to combine. Add the butter if using. Bring to a full rolling boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, and boil hard for 1 minute. Skim any foam from the surface.
Fill the jars. Ladle the hot syrup into the warm jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe jar rims with a clean damp cloth. Apply lids and bands to fingertip-tight.
Process in the canner. Lower jars into the boiling-water canner, ensuring they are covered by at least 1 inch of water. Bring to a full boil and process for 10 minutes (adjust for altitude if above 1,000 feet). Turn off heat, remove the lid, and let jars rest in the canner for 5 minutes before lifting out.
Cool and check seals. Set jars upright on a folded towel and allow to cool undisturbed for 12 to 24 hours. Check seals by pressing the center of each lid — it should not flex. Refrigerate any jars that did not seal and use within three weeks. Store sealed jars in a cool, dark place for up to one year.

Nutrition (per serving)

Strawberry Syrup — Another Summer’s Worth of Work Put Up in Jars