Today started out innocently enough.  I had bought a few pounds of strawberries  with the idea of making strawberry jam.  I’ve tried my hand a few times at canning with mixed success.  So I decided to use the VERY FIRST recipe in my Ball “Complete Book of Home Preserving”.  Its the first recipe in the chapter called “getting started”.  As in, if you can’t get this down, please put down your canning pot and step away from the kitchen.  Well, I was feeling pretty good about myself.  I’m no beginner, I’ve done this whole canning thing at least 4 times.  And I have all of these strawberries…so I’ll double the recipe   No problem.  My husband goes through lots of strawberry jam, so I thought it was a fabulous idea.  Less work, more jam…right?

I was wrong.  Very, very wrong.  Tragically wrong.

First things first.  When canning, cleanliness is probably the most important thing.  I always wash my new (or previously used) canning jars, lids and rings in hot soapy water before use.  Get this done first thing and just set the jars aside to dry on a clean drying towel.  Don’t take the time to dry them because you’ll just be putting them in the canning pot to heat before use anyway.

Cleaning the Gear

Here’s the ultra simple (single) recipe from the Ball Home Preserving book:

7 cups granulated sugar
8 cups whole strawberries (5 cups crushed)
4 Tbsp lemon juice
1 package (1.75 oz) regular powdered fruit pectin

Next, I started preparing the strawberries. Wash under running water, remove leaves, stems and hulls, and them chop them and half and put them in a pie dish.  Crush with a potato masher, then transfer the mashed strawberries to a liquid measuring cup.  Measure out 5 cups into a LARGE stainless steel pan.  And on this point, I am more serious than I have ever been.  You want to only fill the pot about half way max, including the volume of the sugar which you have yet to add.  Don’t push it, or you’ll be sorry.

Once you have all of the strawberries in the pot, add the lemon juice (its OK to use bottled) and the package of powdered pectin.  Now a note on the pectin.  I’ve never used it before, so the experience was new to me.  I ended up having major issues with something burning to the bottom of the pan.  I’m thinking that the pectin was to blame for this.  It formed a solid black layer on the bottom of the pan that my poor husband later spent about 45 minutes cleaning with S.O.S. pads.  I don’t know if the use of liquid pectin would solve this issue.  I’d be happy to hear suggestions/tips on this issue.

Bring this mixture to a boil, then add the sugar.  You knew that jam was sugary right?  Like, mostly sugar.

Sugar Added

And here’s where it all went down hill.  The directions were deceptively simple.  “Stir in the sugar and bring the mixture to a boil.  Boil for 1 minute, then remove from the heat and skim the foam off the top.”  Straight forward, no problem.

Well, what the directions don’t mention is that once the sugar is integrated and the mixture starts to boil, the volume expands immensely and QUICKLY.  It all happened before I knew it. Here’s a play by play of the 30 seconds that ruined our morning.  My poor husband (who is plagued by the moment with terrible allergies) was relaxing on the couch watching TV.

Me: Greg? I think I need some…OH GOD!

Greg: What, what’s happening??

Me: OH MY GOD…OH MY GOD!!! GET IN HERE, NOW! (its rare that I need to use caps lock and bold all at once)

Greg scampers into the kitchen as I am lifting the pot with about 20 pounds of boiling over, molten jam from the stove to the sink.  The boiling jam of course runs all over my hands during the transfer and slops a good portion of it onto our floor, rug and cabinets.  I apologize profusely for not having more photos of this disaster, but as you can imagine, taking photos was not really on the forefront of my mind at this point.  Here’s the floor between the stove and sink.

At this point, I took about 4 seconds to evaluate the damage and come up with a new plan of action.  I shoved my poor husband (in shock at this point) aside and grabbed my next largest sauce pan (and another little sauce pan to use as a ladle) from the cabinet.  I transferred a sensible volume of the boiling jam from the boiled over pot to the new pot and put it back on the stove.  I may have destroyed our kitchen and a $200 pot, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste the jam too. And here is the aforementioned black crap stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Poor Greg was literally sweating by the time he finished cleaning this pot to a gleaming shine.

I proceeded to boil the jam and can it as if the rest of our kitchen wasn’t on fire.  Once the first small batch was done, I poured the second batch into the sauce pan, boiled that and canned it too.  So in the end, I got 8 pints of preserved strawberry jam

Strawberry Jam

The strawberry solids appear to have settled to the top, so when they are first opened to use, a good stir should fix that problem.  The jam did set though, whatever pectin didn’t burn to the bottom of our pan seems to have done its job.

Greg is pretty much done with my canning hobby at this point.  But I’m not.  Every time I can something, I learn something, so I can only assume it will get easier at some point!

Lessons learned today:

• Do not double canning recipes, especially jams, unless you have a sauce pan the size of a kiddie pool.
• Once sugar is added to something, boiling it causes the volume to increase by leaps and bounds.
• Powdered pectin very well may burn to the bottom of your pan. I need to read up on how to fix this issue.

And here is my disclaimer on canning: If you want to preserve food, please get yourself a good cookbook dedicated to canning, I really like the Ball book mentioned above, and follow the directions carefully.  Obviously preserving food can be frought with issues and you must pay attention to cleanliness, acidity of the food, altitude and many other issues.  Read up on it!

I read a comment on another blog’s comment thread that prompted me to think about blogging my mistakes as well as my successes.  This could mean a less-than-tasty pasta dish, an undercooked roasted chicken (which I am an expert at making, by the way) or any number of ways to mess up perfectly well-meaning baked goods.  But, I realized it can also mean those disasters which set of fire alarms, ruin cookware, and cause you to have to replace the vent filter over your cook-top.

To sum it up, over-boiling Balsamic vinegar will cause you to (a) set off fire alarms, (b) ruin cookware, and (c) cause you to have to replace the vent filter over your cook-top.  It will also leave a stench in your home, the likes of which you will not soon forget.

It was the 4th of July last year, and we had recently moved into our new (and first) home.  We were absolutely so excited to entertain since we finally had a nice home and furniture consisting of more than a futon and an old crate.  We invited my brother and sister-in-law over for some roasted vegetables and good steaks.  I had big plans to make a fancy topping for the steaks by reducing some Balsamic Vinegar.  So I poured a bunch of vinegar in a sauce pan…and then the door-bell rang.  I got lost in the fun of showing my family around our lovely home and completely forgot about the ticking time-bomb on the stove until the stinking smoke came billowing up the stairs.

Oh shit.

What I found on the stove defied logic.  The seemingly innocent vinegar had turned into a solid, porous structure, very closely resembling pumice rock, except much blacker, stinkier and more menacing.

Pumice...or is it???

After I got over the initial shock of it, I ran the pan outside and dumped the vinegar stone onto our back patio.  There it remained for weeks, slowly being whittled down by the Summer rains.

I will say that on the up side, this gave my husband ammunition for making fun of me for months.  Lets be honest, he will probably be bringing this one up at our 50th Anniversary.  My brother also viewed the episode as Christmas-in-July as far as getting to poke fun at my stupidity.

This episode qualifies as my most costly kitchen disaster, because not only did I waste food (which I hate) but as I mentioned before, we actually had to replace the entire filter that is installed in the microwave vent hood over the cook-top.  I was told this ran upwards of $30 and had to be special ordered.  The pan was salvaged, but I am weary of using it to this day, because sometimes when I wash it, I still get a brownish film off of it.  Burnt vinegar, the gift that keeps on giving.

I would love to hear that I’m not alone in my catastrophic idiocy in the kitchen.  Any funny stories?