Grape To Meet You - Part 1

My husband brought me home some wild grapes that grow near his work.  These luscious orbs are his contribution to my blog. 

He asked me if I would like to make grape jam.  How could I refuse?  Making jam from scratch was a lot of work, but it was also fun. It was especially fun because we made the jam together.

 Now the big question - What is Jam? Yes, there is a difference between jam and jelly.  Jam contains both fruit juice and pieces of the fruit's (or vegetable's) flesh.  Jelly is a clear fruit spread consisting of set, sweetened fruit (or vegetable) juice

So, how do you make grape jam? 

• Wash and sterilize all jars, lid tops, and ladles.
• To do: bring boiling water in a caning pot, half full with water, to simmer. Wash jars and screw bands in hot soapy water; rinse with warm water. Put jars in boiling water in canner to sterilize. Pour boiling water over flat lids in a saucepan off the heat. Let stand in hot water until ready to use. When you are ready to fill the jars, pull from boiling water and drain well before filling.
• Always measure exactly as this will ensure success.  This is especially important for jam.

The recipe ingredients:

• 6 cups prepared fruit [about 4 lbs. ripe grapes]

• 1 box powdered fruit pectin

• 7 ½ cups [3 ¼ lbs] sugar

• Prepare the fruit. You do this by holding the ripe grape between the index finger and the thumb and squeeze the grape. This will cause the pulp to pop out and you will have the skin of the grape in your fingers. 

• Put the pulp in one pan and the skins in another. The pan you are using for the cooking of the jam should be of steel rather than aluminum and large enough to let the jam cook and boil up without spilling out.

 • Once you have separated the pulp from the skins, you are going to add one cup of water to the pulp that is in the larger pan. Bring to a boil; cover and simmer 5 minutes. 

• Press through a sieve or food mill to remove the seeds.  I used my Kitchenaid with it’s amazing attachments to do this step.

• I then put the skins into a blender and puree them. 

• Now add the pureed skins to the pulp you have. 

• Measure six [6] cups of your pulp and skins mixture and put into a very large saucepan. Remember you want the pan to be big enough to be able to bring the mixture to a boil and not have it boil over the sides.

• Now comes the part where you are making the jam. Add powdered pectin to fruit in saucepan and mix well. Bring to a hard boil over high heat, stirring constantly. Stir in sugar all at once. Bring to a full rolling boil and boil hard for one minute, stirring constantly.

• Remove the pan from heat and skim off foam with metal spoon. Then alternately stir and skim for about 5 minutes to cool slightly and to prevent floating fruit. Ladle quickly into glasses. Cover jam with sterilized lids.

• I then put the closed jars into a boiling water bath for about 12 minutes to finish the process. 

• This recipe will make approximately six or seven pints.  I got 11 jelly jars out of this batch.

Side note – Anywhere that the grape juice, skins, pulp touched I got a lacy red rash w/ welts here and there and it itched (OMG DID IT ITCH!!) with a buzzing, zinging kind of itch.  We used wild grapes so I don’t think it was pesticide causing the itch. 

Concord grapes do have a type of histamine in them that you may cause an allergy - even if you were never allergic before.  Once the grapes are processed, there shouldn’t be a problem.