Strawberry Pie Filling

14-15 pounds of cleaned, sliced strawberries 

6 cups Sugar 

2 &1/4 cups Clear Jel

7 cups water 

1/2 cup Bottled Lemon Juice 

1. Prepare your water bath canner 
2. Hull Strawberries and slice them. I try to leave them a little on the bigger side so they can shrink during canning and I can still get the desired size! 
3. Bring a few quarts of water to a boil on the stove and blanch the strawberries for 30 seconds to 1 minutes. Until they are heated through. Work in batches and remove with a slotted spoon and keep them warm while making the clear gel mixture. 
4. Combine sugar and clear gel in a large pot, making sure it is big enough to fit the fruit inside too. Add cold water to the pot and whisk to dissolve the clear gel completely. 
5. Turn on heat to medium-high heat and whisk continuously until the mixture begins to bubble and thicken. As soon as it bubbles, add lemon juice and cook for another minutes. 
6. Turn off heat and add in the strawberries 
7. Immediately fill the canning jars with the mixture. Make sure you remove bubbles during this time! 
8. Place lid on jars and can for 30 minutes for any jar size you have used. Once the time is completed, let the jars sit in the water bath canner for another 10 minutes with the heat turned off. 
9. Remove jars from the canner and let it rest on your counter for 24 hours. 

So let me be completely honest, I completely skipped the 3rd step. I did not take the time to blanch my fruit and it still turned out just fine. So if you skip that step, you’re really going to be ok. 

Now for this recipe, I canned this because I wanted to be able to do the standard pie, obviously, but I also love being able to top desserts with fruit and pie filling is a great option. For example, topping iced cookies, cheesecakes, making dessert parfaits and so on. So this recipe will be what I use to do such desserts without having to purchase the pre-made pie filling from the store. 

I do plan to try out and write the recipe for making Pie Crust using sourdough discard. I have a decent chunk of discard available and think this will be a great way to use it up too. Im the person that loves having pie crust on hand because I randomly will use it for so many different desserts. So why not keep it on hand. I also need to make some to have prepared for some Shoefly Pies for my father in law. The man loves a good Shoefly pie, we gotta make it fully from scratch next time though! That’s my goal. 

Any who, this recipe, I actually ended up with 8 quarts personally. I will say I didn’t have the full amount of strawberries though. I was about 4 pounds short on my measurements. So you may actually get about 10 quarts or more of the filling! But for this recipe, I may next time also put these into pints instead. I think I like the smaller size for the desserts I plan to just top with the Strawberry Pie Filling. But quarts will be nice for the actual pie size. So I recommend doing both quart and pints or at least taking the time to think through what would work better for you!