What are these white lumps in my strawberry jam?

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AbbyJones

Assistant Cook
Joined
Oct 17, 2015
Messages
6
Location
Southampton
Hello all,I have just made my second ever batch of strawberry jam and it has white pieces in it, can someone please tell me what they are? I used 1kg strawberries washed dried and stalks removed, 750g sugar (half golden granulated sugar and half white granulated) and a tablespoon of lemon juice. The pieces portions of a skin of some kind, very odd and not very appetising.
 
Just a guess, but it may be the rind that's showing up as white? I have some old stored in the fridge factory made marmalade that all of a sudden has a lot of white specks in it. I think I need to buy new marmalade.
 
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Were some of the strawberries not quite ripe? Sometimes underripe berries have white sections.
 
Maybe its the foam then, I skimmed off what i could and added a bit of butter tho. It can't be rind cos used strawberries and they were all nice and ripe. If i squash the white lumps they disappear, does that sound like foam? If so what can i do to get rid of it, maybe boil it all up again and try to skim off all the foam?
 

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You would think so. I've never used butter in my jam though.

Maybe your best course would be to recook the jam and reskim.
 
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Ok thanks everyone for your help :) I only used the butter as in the recipe I was using it said to use a little butter to dissolve any scum that got left behind after skimming. If I re cook to try and dissolve it do I need to bring back to 105c? I found it quite difficult to skim the foam with a spoon, Is there a better way to do it?
 
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Well I ruined it :( Must have overboiled as I now have 2 jars instead of 4, it's a horrible brownish colour and it's almost solid!!
 
I'm looking at the photos you posted on the first page and all I see that look white are strawberry seeds.

It could also just be blobs of pectin that weren't stirred in completely.
 
I didn't use Pectin and they were big blobs, hard to photograph but definitely visible in both photos. I'm pretty sure it was the foam that I hadn't skimmed off properly...Ah well, I know for next time.
 
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