I’ve always enjoyed cooking. I’ve always thought it should be considered the Sixth Love Language, for those of you familiar with the insightful book, The 5 Love Languages. I said in my retirement, I would spend even more time cooking and making homemade food. So far, I’ve been doing just that. Comfort food is one of my specialities as you can tell from this Election Day post on my social media sites.
A new kitchen gadget
Since we love going to thrift stores, I’m always on the lookout for unused or barely used kitchen gadgets. I prefer to not pay full price for something I’m not sure I’ll consistently use. That’s one reason I was excited when I found this Ball Fresh Tech Automatic Jam and Jelly Maker at a Goodwill thrift store recently. I made homemade jelly once before and it was relatively easy so having a machine must make it a cinch.
Balllin on a Budget
Another Balllin on a Budget deal! My apologies for the blurry picture. I was in such a rush to wash and use the machine; I didn’t realize the picture was blurry.
You can make out $19.99. However, if I recall correctly, I only paid $10 because the tag color was on sale that day. The machine came with the original manual which made it another great thrift store find!
Ready to go!
So, I was ready to try out my new machine. Here’s a video I made the morning I was trying it out.
I reviewed the recipe. Don’t worry, I’ll provide the affiliate links to the products you need below to make it easy in case you want to try.
Here’s what I did step by step.
I gathered everything I would need and got started.
Wash the strawberries.
Weigh the strawberries
Hull the strawberries. If you’ve never hulled strawberries before, here’s a video on how to do it.
Here’s a time elapsed video of the rest of the process of hulling the strawberries.
I use the scraps for chicken treats. I save them and give them to my girls (chickens) who they love them!
Meet Chatty Cathy
Speaking of my girls, meet Chatty Cathy, the ringleader of the crew. See how she’s in the middle of the group, eating? That’s her, pretty much all of the time. In the middle of stuff.
Why do I call her Chatty Cathy? Because, she’s always the first one to come up to me when I’m in the garden, happily clucking away. I’m pretty sure she’s spilling the latest tea from the coop and that I’ve caught the other chickens rolling their eyes at her when she’s talking to me.
Now back to the strawberries. Here’s the final product.
Now it’s time to mash the strawberries. Putting them into a food processor isn’t recommended. It has something to do with them getting overprocessed in a food processor. Whatever the case, I followed the recipe.
Don’t laugh, but I considered this a little bit of an arm workout, lol. Watch.
Measure the mashed strawberries. In the video, you’ll hear me talk about this measuring cup I like so much.
Measure the pectin.
Sprinkle pectin over the bottom.
Add the strawberries.
The recipe recommends adding ½ teaspoon of butter to prevent foaming.
Plug it in and press the Jam button.
Watch it start.
Once you turn it on, you need to stay nearby to listen for the beeps after about 4 minutes. That signals you to add the sugar. Watch and you’ll see me add it.
About 20 minutes later after the timer went off and it was time to taste the jelly!
More Ballin on a Budget good fortune!
In another stroke of Ballin on a Budget luck, I found these dissolvable jelly jar labels on clearance at Walmart. They’re great because they dissolve in water so no more wasting time trying to scrape off the old label. I just popped the container with the label, in the dishwasher and the jar was clean with no label residue.
A word about pectin
I originally used dry pectin, like you saw in the video. However, the second time I made it, I inadvertently ordered the liquid pectin in an Instacart order. I’m happy to report both batches turned out the same.
Final list of products you’ll need
Ball Fresh Tech Automatic Jam and Jelly Maker
Dry pectin or
So that’s it. I hope you found this helpful. In full disclosure, the links are affiliate links which means I get a commission from products you buy. This doesn’t cost you any additional money, it just helps me out.
If you have the Ball Fresh Tech Automatic Jam and Jelly Maker, or another similar machine and have made jam or jelly in it, let me know how it turned out. Have you made any different types of jams or jelly? If so, share your recipe. I made a lemon jelly that I absolutely love for which I’ll share the recipe soon.
I’ll be adding more cooking videos as I can so let me know if you’d be interested in seeing a specific topic. Comment below to let me know what you thought of this post.
