Grape jelly

A few years ago, I found out that a farm not too terribly far from here grows Concord grapes. I hadn’t really even thought of that as a possibility, that you could grow non-wine grapes around here, but apparently, the Concord grape actually comes from Concord, Mass., so it’s a hardy Northeastern grape. It’s also the type of grape used to make juice and pretty much everything that’s grape-flavored — the flavor of them is so strong that it’s almost unreal, almost fake-tasting.

Of course, when presented with the possibility of making something with these things, fresh off the vine, I couldn’t resist. My calendar, however, could resist, and so it’s taken me until now, two years later, to actually go get some grapes and try making some homemade grape jelly. Here’s how it went:

Step 1: Drive about an hour each way to the farm, then get grapes. We drove out into the field and parked near the vines, then walked the rows, clippers in hand. But where were the grapes? Oh, there’s a bunch, on the other side... but on the other side, we couldn’t reach it from there.

After some consternation, we figured out these tricky vines: They were hiding their bounty, forming a canopy so that you had to actually climb inside the plants to find the bunches of grapes. We clipped and bagged, clipped and bagged and YIPE, ANTS! Yep, the ants like grapes as much as we do. I swear, I probably dropped as many grapes on the ground as I did into my bag, startled by going in for a handful of fruit and coming back with a handful of creepy-crawly bugs.

An hour later, we finally had enough grapes: I knew I needed at least five pounds, and there was no way we were gonna drive back and do this again, so we made sure to get plenty. We ended up with closer to 10 pounds, which is great, ‘cause that means I can make two batches of jelly.

Step 2: Rinse and de-stem all of the grapes. ALL of the grapes. SO MANY GRAPES. Oh, and did I mention that I decided to do this on the day before we went away on a big trip? Yeah, dumb idea, but I wasn’t sure how long grape season would be, so I was antsy to get some before I missed the season yet again. So I stood there over the sink for practically forever, picking out all of the bad-looking grapes and piling the rest in my largest bowl, filling it just about full.

Step 3: Dump a bunch of the grapes into a big saucepan/skillet with a little bit of water and cook them a bit, mashing them up with a potato masher until they’re all soft and mushed up.

Step 4: Strain the grapes... somehow. The standard methodology said to dump the mixture into a double-layer of damp cheesecloth; I placed the cheesecloth inside a sieve. I also thought I’d pull out my new food mill and place that on top — surely, anything that helps get more of the pulp/skins/seeds out is a good thing, right?

In the end, I wasn’t so sure about that. I may have gotten more juice out of the grapes I put through the food mill, but the resulting mix really, really didn’t want to go through the cheesecloth. I moved it around with a spoon, I transfered the goop to a new piece of cheesecloth (a messy proposition for sure), I picked up the cheesecloth by the corners and squeezed it (even messier)... it was incredibly frustrating. I gave up on the food mill, and eventually, I managed to get all, or at least most, of the juice to pass through the cheesecloth. At this point, it was really late, and I was really tired, and there was still half a bowl of grapes on the counter mocking me. And then, I realized that there’s no reason why you can’t freeze grapes, if you’re just going to juice them later. I should have thought of that hours before. The grapes went into a freezer bag; the juice went into a couple of canning jars with plastic wrap on top and into the fridge, where they sat while I went away on vacation.

Step 5: Return to your grape juice and panic, ‘cause there’s something sludgy in the bottom of the jars. Oh no, more pulp, seriously? I consulted Google, and the answer was an interesting surprise: That wasn’t pulp, it was tartrate, an acidic compound found naturally in grapes that crystallizes when you let the juice sit for a while. It’s also the stuff they make cream of tartar from, apparently. And you actually want to let your juice sit so the crystals form and then strain them out (oh no, more straining??), or else you’ll have cloudy, acidic jelly.

Thankfully, this wasn’t as difficult as the last round of straining. I tried running it through a coffee filter at first, which didn’t work at all (the crystals just clogged up the filter), but I discovered that the sieve by itself was enough to catch the crystals, if I just stopped to rinse it off now and then. Mission accomplished.

Step 6: This is actually the easy part, by comparison. Pour 5 cups of juice into a big saucepan/skillet, whisk in a box of pectin and bring the juice to a boil. Dump in 6 cups of sugar, mix thoroughly and continue to stir as you bring it back to a hard boil, the kind you can’t stir down. Boil hard for 1 minute, skim off the foam, then fill your canning jars (leave a quarter-inch of headspace) and process them.

The result? Delicious homemade jelly — and this stuff is a little softer than the store-bought stuff, just soft enough that you can actually spread it easily onto your peanut butter-covered bread.



Grape Jelly
From the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

5 c grape juice
1 package powdered fruit pectin
6 c sugar

1. In a large saucepan, pour in the juice and whisk in the pectin until dissolved. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently.
2. Add the sugar all at once, stir it in and bring the mix to a full, rolling boil, the kind you can't stir down. Boil hard for 1 minute.
3. Pull the pan from the heat and skim off the foam on top.
4. Fill your canning jars, leaving a quarter-inch of headspace. Process for 10 minutes, then remove the canner lid and let the jars sit for 5 minutes before removing them to a stable, undisturbed place to cool.

Applesauce

It's the day after Thanksgiving, and everyone's thoughts have now turned to leftovers. Well, that and holiday shopping, of course. But food is my focus, most of the time, and now that it's late November, we've got lots of leftover turkey and stuffing and whatnot to deal with... not to mention the remnants of the fall harvest.

Did anyone else buy waaaaay too many apples this fall? *raises hand* Yes, definitely. But fret not, 'cause those leftovers can be turned into something yummy, too, no matter how bad they're starting to look -- not rotten, mind you, but the bruised ones are just fine here, the ugly ones, the ones that look like they really need to be used up right now, today, before it's too late, before they go bad.

Applesauce is the perfect fix for this situation. It's delicious, it's really simple to make, and you can can it, which means that you can taste September even in January or May.

Applesauce
Loosely adapted from "The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving"

Apples, peeled and cut up, enough to fill a large saucepan (this will depend on the size of your apples, obviously)
Water, just a splash
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 1/2 c sugar (but feel free to use a lot less if you're using sweeter apples -- I only used 2/3 c or so in mine)

1. Splash a little bit of water into the pan containing the cut-up apples. Bring to a boil over high heat, then turn down the heat and boil gently for 5 to 20 minutes, until the apples are tender.
2. Mash up the apples with a potato masher until of the right consistency (if you like it chunky, leave chunks; if you like it super-smooth, hit it with a stick blender or put it through a food mill).
3. Add the lemon juice and sugar and bring to a boil to dissolve the sugar.
4. Pour into sterilized canning jars, leaving a half-inch of headspace. Add lids and rings, screwed on fingertip-tight.
5. Process jars in a large, covered pot of boiling water for 20 minutes. Remove the pot's lid and wait 5 minutes, then remove the jars of applesauce and place them somewhere out of the way to cool, making sure not to tilt them.

Strawberry jam

When you've got a bunch of these, in season and fresh from the berry patch, how can you not want to preserve them any way you can? The season's so short, after all, the time for perfectly ripe, sweet, delicious berries so fleeting, and the berries themselves are so perishable and disappear so quickly once you start eating them. Sure, one can freeze them (and I certainly did freeze some), but I was looking to try something new, and so, I made my first jam -- nine pints of it, in fact (well, more like nine and a half, but I didn't have any half-pint jars, so that bit went to waste).

This came out pretty good, though I think I'd dial back the sugar a bit, 'cause the fresh berries really didn't need quite so much help. Still, the result was certainly jam in consistency and compared well to store-bought jam in flavor -- though mine smelled and tasted more like fresh berries and less like corn syrup and preservatives.



Strawberry Jam
From the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

2-3 quarts strawberries
7 c sugar
4 tbsp lemon juice
1.75 ounces powdered fruit pectin

1. In a large pot (or a canner if you've got one), place your empty canning jars. Fill the jars and the pot with water. Cover and bring to a simmer.
2. In another, smaller pot, place the lids for the jars (not the screw bands, just the lids) and water to cover. Bring to a simmer.
3. Measure the sugar into a bowl and set aside.
4. Wash and hull the berries, then crush them with a potato masher a bit at a time, until you have 5 cups of crushed berries. Place them in a large pan.
5. Add the lemon juice, then whisk in the pectin until dissolved.
6. Bring to a full rolling boil, stirring frequently. Add in the sugar all at once and return to a boil while stirring. Boil hard for 1 minute.
7. Remove from the heat and skim off the foam on top.
8. Remove one jar at a time from the canner or pot, dump out the water inside into the pot, place on the counter next to your pan and fill using a canning funnel, leaving a quarter-inch of space at the top and avoiding leaving any air bubbles in the jar (slide a nonmetal utensil in to release them if they form). Wipe the rim of the jar with a damp cloth if necessary. Then, using a magnetic or nonmetalic utensil, remove a lid from their water bath and center it on the jar. Place a screw band on the jar and screw it down until fingertip-tight -- do NOT overtighten. Repeat with more jars until you can't fill another full jar. (Do NOT can less than a full jar -- it won't be safe to eat.)
9. Once all of the jars are filled, lower them into the canner or pot, making sure that they are covered by at least an inch of hot water. Cover the pot and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes. Turn the heat off, wait 5 minutes, then remove the jars, keeping them upright. Place them on a towel in a draft-free place and let cool undisturbed for 24 hours.
10. Remove the screw bands and test the seals. If you press down on a center of a lid and it moves, it didn't process properly and must be either refrigerated for immediate use or reprocessed.