Making strawberry freezer jam

[RNMOM]

Hi all you experts out there! I just finished putting up about 30 pints of freezer jam. I use the recipe in the surejel box. My question is has anyone ever used "clearjel" for making freezer jam? I bought some from a food co-op years ago and tried to use it in measure like surejel. It turned into a congealed mass of yuck. I did an internet search and found it is for thickening gravy and pies.

Anyone ever tried it for freezer jams?

[Shamrock1121]

Just as you said, Clear jel is a thickener - a modified waxy maize (corn) food starch. Clear jel is used in instant puddings, gravies, and pie fillings, and can be used to replace corn starch, flour, or tapioca as a thickener.

Sure-jel is a natural fruit pectin used in making jams and jellies that allows you to use approximately one-quarter less sugar than you normally would, and still produce a jam that sets up nicely.

If you make jam/jelly without the additional pectin, it takes more sugar. You should choose fruits that naturally have a lot of pectin. That's the reason some fruit mixes were common pre-pectin days. It took a fruit that had a lot of pectin to help thicken the low-pectin fruit. Strawberries don't contain a lot of pectin.

Another little piece of advise... You shouldn't interchange liquid pectin with powdered pectin - use the type of pectin that is called for in the recipe.

-Karen