Strawberry tree fruit jam, great way to savor its colorful berries!

A delicious recipe for Fall, this jam prepared from Strawberry tree fruits – Arbutus unedo – is a concentrate of Vitamin C that will truly come in handy in Winter!

• Growing the strawberry tree

More breakfast treats:

• killer orange marmalade and golden melon jam

Ingredients for 6 jars

• 4½ pounds or 70 ounces (2 kg) of ripe, red strawberry tree fruits
• 2 lemons
• 1 teaspoon (about 5 g) powdered ginger
• 35 oz (1 kg) sugar
• 1 cup of water

Recipe for Arbutus strawberry jam

Strawberry tree fruit jam is different from other recipes because it’s cooked faster than usual to preserve as much vitamin C content as possible. This makes it even easier to prepare.

• First, remove stems and leaves if there are still some on the fruits.
• Rinse the fruits well in lots of water.
• No need to dry them out afterwards. Cooking requires water so a few more drops clinging to the berries won’t matter.

Prepare strawberry tree fruits for jam

• Dump the berries in a large cauldron, pot, or jam pan.
• With the stove on low, simmer to slowly cook the berries until it forms a smooth, uniform liquid. The berries will dissolve and won’t form lumps in the mix anymore.
• Stir regularly
• If it gets too thick at this stage, add a little water. The goal of this first stage isn’t yet to reduce the mixture.

Run it through a food mill or sieve

Once the berries have dissolved to mush, run the mix through a sieve or a food mill to remove as many seeds as you can. Some smaller seeds may still filter through, that’s ok.

From the initial 4½ pounds (2kg), we got about 3⅓ pounds (50 ounces or 1.5 kg) seedless juice.

Cooking the strawberry tree fruit jam

• Pour the resulting juice back in the jam pan or stock pot.
• Add the sugar and simmer on low for 20 minutes, all the while stirring often with a wooden ladle.
• Add about 1 teaspoon of powdered ginger.
• Lastly, add the juice of the two lemons and turn the stove off right after stirring it in.
• Pour the strawberry tree fruit jam in the pots, close the lid immediately, and flip the pot upside-down to create a sterile vacuum.

Once it has cooled down, you can store it right-side up. Best savored on a slice of toasted bread!

The strawberry tree, a beautiful shrubby tree

The strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo), one of the distinct symbols of the Mediterranean region, is called so because the berries truly look like round, wild strawberries. Harvests are often abundant. This tree’s fruits have unusually high levels of vitamin C, and while they’re rather bland when eaten raw, they’re excellent when cooked to make jam.