Just a couple of ingredients and a little time is required for canning strawberries. Making it perfect for preserving your summertime berry harvest.

We love strawberries around here. Probably our favorite fruit, and while we make our fair share of strawberry jam and strawberry fruit leather, there’s something about canning strawberries for use on ice cream, tarts, on top of my favorite no-bake strawberry cheesecake, or in pies.

We grow a lot of strawberries since planting a large bed of bare-root strawberry plants a few years ago. We have a lot of strawberry recipes for eating them fresh and preserving them. We make jam, eat a ton of them fresh, freeze fresh strawberries, and even dehydrate strawberry slices but we still have an abundance of strawberries to preserve.

Thankfully, canning strawberries in strawberry juice is super easy and a great way to preserve them in large quantities at one time without having the dehydrator going all day.

Canning Strawberries in Syrup

This is a really easy recipe and you’ll only need two ingredients. Some fresh whole strawberries and sugar. We use organic cane sugar for this recipe.

You’ll dust the strawberries in sugar and let them sit for six hours while the juice is extracted from them. Just like when canning blackberries, the fruit is best when you can pack it in its own juice, otherwise, the flavor of the strawberries will be leached out and they’ll be bland.

Like when canning peaches, you’ll want to use the hot pack method for the best results. While you can technically raw pack strawberries, it’s not recommended because, again, the fruit will wind up bland.

How to Can Strawberries

The process is really easy, though it will take a little time as you need to extract some of the juice from the berries for the best flavor.

You’ll need approximately 2 to 3 pounds of strawberries for each quart jar or 1 to 1 1/2 pounds of strawberries for each pint jar, depending on the size of the berries. This will be equal to four cups prepared for quarts and 2 cups for pints.

Prepare the strawberries. The first step is to hull the fresh strawberries, then wash them in cool water and drain. Place the whole berries in a large pot and pour a couple of cups of sugar overtop of them. Using a wooden spoon, gently stir and mix everything around to ensure that the strawberries are covered with sugar.

Put a lid on the saucepan and leave it sit at room temperature for 6 hours.

Prepare the canner and jars. After 6 hours, wash the jars and lids in hot, soapy water. Fill all of the jars with water and fill a water bath canner with water. Place it on the stove and begin heating everything to 180°F over medium-high heat.

Warm the berries and syrup. Place the saucepan on the stove and heat over medium heat, gently stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon until the sugar dissolves and the contents are heated. While warming, go ahead and put a cup of water or two on to boil in case you need to top off the jars.

Pack the jars. Carefully ladle the hot strawberries into the jars, using a jar funnel to make things easier, and top with the hot strawberry juice into the hot jars, leaving half inch headspace adding boiling water if needed. Really pack the strawberries in tightly if you want full jars, as they will shrink during the canning process.

Remove air bubbles and adjust for proper headspace, if necessary. Wipe the rim. Center the lid on the top of the jar and tighten the screw band to fingertip tight.

Process the jars. Put the jars in the hot water of the waiting water bath canner, making sure they are covered by at least an inch of water. Place the lid on the boiling water canner and bring the contents to a rolling boil. Process pint jars for 10 minutes and quart jars for 15 minutes, adjusting processing time for altitude if necessary.

After the canning process, turn off the heat and remove the lid from the canner. Allow the jars to sit in the canner for 5 minutes before using a jar lifter to carefully remove them to a towel-lined counter. Leave the jars undisturbed for 12 to 24 hours before checking for proper seals.

Store properly sealed jars in a cool place with the screw bands removed for up to 18 months.

Canning Strawberries without Added Sugar

Strawberries are perfectly safe to can in just boiling water. However, they’ll lose their flavor really quickly. That doesn’t mean you can’t can them without sugar. The best way to can strawberries without added sugar is to extract the sugar from the berries like you would when canning blackberries.

To do this, take about two cups of strawberries and mash them in a pan. Add three tablespoons of water, cover the pan with a lid and bring everything to a simmer. Continue simmering about two minutes until everything is soft.

Place the soft berries in a dampened jelly bag over a bowl to collect the strawberry juice. Use this juice to pack the strawberries in, warming them in it with a cup of water and packing into jars as above.