The best Strawberry jam from Tuscany: healthy and easy

The best strawberry jam is always what your grandmother made to you. Well, this recipe comes right from her.

Among the things that I am delighting to do and cook during this COVID quarantine could not miss the strawberry jam. Right now in Tuscany strawberries are sweet, red, and juicy and I am using them to prepare the most disparate things from salads to cupcakes to stuffed cakes.

This Tuscan strawberry jam lends itself to multiple uses:

you can also use it to make the delicious Italian Crostata (tart);  to decorate your dishes, as a sauce for Panna cotta and a very interesting aspect of strawberry jam is to accompany cheeses deliciously, at the end of the meal.

You can spread it on a slice of bread and be directly in paradise maybe adding a little bit of butter. Well, this is what you can find here in Tuscany at my b&b near Lucca:  dolce vita in Tuscany.

Anyway, I am not the only one to say that this is the best strawberry jam you can eat. In fact, many chefs and restaurateurs have asked me for the recipe and obviously, I did not hesitate to pass it on because good things must be handed down, as my granny often said.

This jam brings to my memory the stories of my grandmother.

Traditions of walks in the fields to pick the strawberries of the Maremma land. From Spring to late Summer the women who lived in the countryside gathered in the farmyard and prepared the most varied jams. They had at their disposal ripe fruit directly from the trees. At that time, preparing a jam, was an opportunity to meet and laugh together. Large pots steaming with ripe and sugary fruit were in the center of the farmyard;  the perfume (told me my grandmother) spread throughout the surrounding area.

However, although this was already the best strawberry jam, I wanted to add my touch to the recipe. My variant for this jam is the use of vanilla bean which in my opinion gives a unique and enhancing flavor and aroma.

The secret of the goodness of this recipe:

is to use a fairly large pot (I use a large pan) because in this way cooking will be fast and not only the flavor but also the color of the jam will be exceptional.