No Way?!!??

Interesting concept..cubed strawberries...

terri, what is HFCS?
and i can't imagine what you mean by cubed strawberries. isn't your jam in a jar? so how is it coming out cubed? (or am i slow today)

maryanne

What a terrible thing to do to an innocent strawberry. What's wrong with its natural shape? I always read the back of jam/preserves labels to make sure they are made with good old fashioned sugar instead of corn syrup.

To my canning friends, yes, I do by some jams to make Christmas cookies. I don't make strawberry, raspberry or apricot and I use then in cookies.

HFCS - high fructose corn syrup?

A brand I like is Hero, made in Switzerland. I just looked at the ingredients for a jar of Blueberry:

'blueberries,sugar,glucose syrup,fruit pectin,citric acid'

My aunt in Virginia gave me some jars of McCutcheon's. Here's whats in the Raspberry Preserves:

'Red raspberries(seedless)sugar,fruit acid(citric)and fruit pectin.'

It is called "Preserves" but it is actually a jelly, smooth, jelled and no chunks of fruit. I prefer chunky though my son likes to put this kind on sandwiches. He always adds something sweet to any sandwich, cold cuts, chicken, turkey...his theory is that a sandwich must be 'built' in layers with something savory on one slice of bread and sweet on the other. Go know!

The strawberries were not cubed, they were cut into cubes, about 1/3x1/3 inch and fairly firm. I always look at the ingredient list and usually keep a jar or two ahead but I didn't keep close enough watch so now I have a 20 oz jar of this. I look closely at strawberry jam as I've been told some canners use figs mixed in with strawberries, now they call this preserves. There are people who get paid good money to outsmart us, don't you think?

I still don't get this picture... the strawberries were cubed inside the jam, or was the jam itself cubed?

mimsic: I think I like what your son does. Starbucks makes a sandwich on a baget with one side smeared with fancy mustard and the other a dried ?cherry chutney, then ham on the mustard side and brie on the chutney side, all folded together so when you take a bite it is of all four flavors. Delicious! (Especially if it's heated a bit to soften the brie.)

Westelle, when 'my son the sandwich builder' uses toasted bread he places it on a rack NOT on a plate so the toast stays crisp and doesn't steam. Its mind boggling the lengths he will go in constructing a perfect sandwich.

I believe the pieces of strawberry were cut into little cubes.

btw, my mother in law worked in a jam making factory once, being cut into cubes is really minor in comparison with commercial jam atrocities. Those innocent little strawberries were often also bleached white before being dyed the correct shade of red. To me many commercial strawberry jams taste like "red" not like strawberry. I think the bleach etc could explain that.

As for the seedless raspberry jam not having any solids, it can't to be seedless. I make a seedless raspberry myself and to get the seeds out it has to go through a sieve of some kind. So this breaks the solids into small pieces. I love chutney or jam on some sandwiches.

-Robin

mimsic: it sounds as tho' you have a Dagwood in the making. ;-)

Ah yes, and he's stick thin too.

I suspected coloring might be added to jam but I didn't know about the bleaching; AWWWWWHHH!! I think next year I should be able to handle a small batch of jam making for myself. In the past I've made so much I gave a lot of it away. Only one of my kids likes to preserve but lives in the city so it's a big deal of preplanning to get it done with her work schedule and product available. And, Westelle, the jam was in a regular glass jam jar; couldn't tell it was in cubes until the jam was on my knife. I usually don't buy weird things or packages as I really distrust packaged foods. DH was just happy he could put strawberry jam on his toast again. He could not have cared less.