Using Cooking Light's Fresh Strawberry Jam recipe as a guide, I created a version suiting us with lower sugar and a hint of vanilla. Our fresh, ripe berries brought lots of sweetness on their own, however your strawberries might require a bit more sugar depending on the time of year. Adjust to your taste!
Note this jam does not set up as much as one with added pectin and would also work wonderfully as a sauce over vanilla ice cream.
3/4 cup granulated sugar
Lemon juice squeezed from 1/2 of a small lemon
beans scraped from 1 vanilla bean
Wash and chop strawberries and add to a pot over medium-high heat on the stove. Add the sugar and stir often until the mixture comes to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer lightly until the mixture thickens, ours too just under an hour.
Remove from heat and stir in the seeds scraped from your vanilla bean and lemon juice. Leave jam chunky if that is your preference, or mix with a stick blender before adding to a jar to cool. When the jam is cool, cover and store in the refrigerator for up to three weeks.
Liv Life Note: Our vanilla bean seeds sort of stuck together as I stirred the into the pot, a few whisks with a whisk helped spread them more evenly.
