If you get the chance to do any berry picking this spring/summer it’s possible you may have TOO MANY berries. It’s exciting and very easy to be overzealous with your picking. I am guilty of this and thus, I make jam!
Most of the jam recipes I found required a LOT of sugar and that’s not really my thing. I searched for recipes that used agar agar and found that most used a fraction of the amount of sweetener. I went with honey has my sweetener but you can still use sugar or agave.
The amount of strawberries left were enough jam to fill a little more than one jar. I only had a pints worth of overripe strawberries.
Sampling the jam on a gingersnap cookie shaped like the state of Texas 
Ingredients
1 pint overripe strawberries (1 FULL cup sliced/hulled)
1 large lemon (juiced and zested)
H20 to cover berries (1/2 – 1 cup)
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup chopped mint (or more-whatever you’d like)
2 1/2 teaspoons agar (let this bloom like you would gelatin)
Add all your ingredients except the agar into a pot and bring to a boil. Let the mixture boil uncovered and reduce for 10-15 mins or until your strawberries have begun to break down. Add the agar, stir it in well and let boil for another 2-3 minutes stirring occasionally.
You can ladle this into sterilized jars or unsterilized ones (these wont last as long but i doubt you’ll have the jam around too long anyway). So far I’ve had this with cookies, in oatmeal, on vanilla ice cream…. I enjoy the tang of lemon and the sweet of the berry in the recipe. Feel free to make changes and let me know if you like it!
Teddy
