Guess what I did today?? I canned for the very first time!! One of the things I've always wanted to learn is to put up food properly especially via canning. So far, I'm fabulous with freezing, which I have to say is still my favorite way to put up food. Right now, I have two giant bags of Chinese long beans, a bag of rapini, tomato sauce, cherry tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, a Swiss chard/mustard green stir fry mix, and basil all packed in my freezer for the winter. I love freezing but it was time to venture into hot process canning. I just didn't think I would be making concord grape jelly.
Why you ask?? Cuz I hate grape jelly!! Especially concord grape jelly. I've always disliked grape juice, grape jelly and anything flavored with grape flavoring ever since I was a kid. It literally makes me wretch, but it just happened that my mother decided to go to some orchard and brought me back 3.5 lbs of concord grapes. My favorite. Yay. So I decided it was a good way to learn how to make my own jelly.
I spent the afternoon picking the grapes off the stems and washing the grapes, then cooking them down, straining the pulp, burning myself a couple of times and almost vomiting from the smell of the grapes to make 5 cups of juice. Yes, 5 cups of juice. I proceeded to use the Sure.Jell brand pectin recipe for grape jelly.
Hot processed it using a Ball brand canning kit that I had bought last year at the end of the season for $2.48!!
I need a larger pot with a proper lid though. Through the burning and wretching from the smell of concord grapes, I got 3 pints of jelly plus a little extra that I'll just put in the fridge. The boy will eat it.
And there you have it! Concord grape jelly!
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