Jelly Juggling

I have a small kitchen. There's about enough counter space available to make a cup of coffee. That's it. When I arrived at the house, the thoughtful last owners/occupants left me a few things, one of them being element covers for the stove that look like this:

It's not that I don't like basil, mushrooms, olives or tomatoes; it's just that the covers are not exactly my style. But after a few days with them I discovered their secret: they add a remarkable amount of extra counter space to the kitchen. In fact, they pretty much double it. Now I'm quite enamoured with them.

I have a friend whose father makes jam every year. He's kind of the jam king. I've enjoyed his jams throughout the years, and his zest for making them has always given me the impression that, while it takes some know-how, it's really not so hard to do and may even be fun.

What with my bumper crop of grapes and this idyllic picture of fruit preservation in my head, I set out yesterday to make grape jelly. "It's easy!" boasted the lady on YouTube who makes it from frozen grape juice and posted an impossibly clean rendition of jelly-making - I swear it was doctored! Well "Ha!" to you, lady! Grape jelly making is not for the faint of heart, at least not when your kitchen counter space is limited and you need several large pots to create it.
However, in I plunged, ready to savour the fruits of my labour.

Tip #1: Choose ONE jelly recipe and ONE method of jelly-production. Do not excitedly flit back and forth between recipes on the internet, losing track of which one you are trying to follow. Do not begin to follow the instructions online, only to get side-tracked and turn to the ever-helpful instructions inside the pectin box (they explain how to make 11 types of cooked jam, 12 types of cooked jelly, and 5 types of freezer jam). Stick to basics: ONE recipe, ONE focus point (in one small kitchen). Just trust me on this.

Tip #2: If you are the type of person who is a MacGyver and can rig up gadgets using odds and sods from around the house to solve any challenge, by all means, don't invest in specialized preserving tools. I felt rather decadent when I purchased my jar tongs and jam funnel and jelly bag and lid lifter and bubble-popper/jelly level measurer a few weeks back, but really, they ARE necessary. Gather your tools before you begin, find a place for each, and remember that your canning pot will need to be in use throughout the process, so make sure you have another big pot to cook the jam in. What I did not get was a gadget to hang the jelly bag from and, because I am not a MacGyver, I probably spent about half an hour trying to find a way to suspend said jelly bag so that it could merrily drain juice for two hours. (I'll share the photo a little later).

I'm including the link to the website that I (mostly) followed to create my batch of grape jelly. It's quite helpful: How to Make Homemade Grape Jelly. Still, I'm going to include my photos here so you can see just how much juggling was going on.

First I needed to harvest my grapes. I soon discovered that ten cups amounted to merely a tiny dent from the vineyard. I could barely see that any grapes had been removed from the arbour. I picked a big collander full of them and washed them up (there were a lot of spiders that emerged in the process!).



Once washed and stemmed, they filled a big bowl and looked suspiciously like blueberries.


Once mashed, they released a lot of juice.


Then came the fun boiling part, where I got to watch the true grape colour emerge. I know it sounds silly, but I was so pleased with just how purple grape juice truly is! Here is the pre-sieved mash releasing the colour (sorry it's poorly lit).


Now this is where I encountered my MacGyver moment. I had the jelly bag, but nothing to suspend it from, and I needed to drain the hot grape mash. After first ladling the mixture into the jelly bag, just holding it over a bowl to catch the juice, I finally rigged up a blender and dry and wet measuring cups so that I could drain it further. It was remarkably challenging to find something of the right diameter for suspending the jelly bag and of the right height! FYI, ten cups of grapes ended up yielding almost five cups of drained juice, though you can't see much of it here.


Truth be told, I'm actually going a little out of order here. I sanitized the jam jars before I drained the juice. I didn't have a real canning pot, and instead used my pasta pot which has a collander thing that sits in it. It could only hold five jars at a time, so I had to do the boiling in two batches.


I'm missing photos of the really fun parts that come next because they required that both my hands be fully occupied. I boiled the juice and pectin, again marvelling at the colour, then added the sugar and boiled away. This is where my next tip comes in...

Tip #3: I may have said this earlier, but make sure you have two big pots. You'll need one as your canning pot, but another one to boil the jelly in. I made the mistake of using a smaller pot and needed to decant half the mixture so that there was room to boil it without it boiling over. Actually, it did boil over a bit, and this is where you can imagine a lot of juggling going on! The stove was full, the counters were full, the sink was full. There's a pot full of boiling, syrupy, grape jelly burping away in front of me, and I'm trying to count out one full minute of rolling boil while stirring and blowing on the pot, (neither of which helped), praying that it won't boil over and that lifting it occasionally from the element wouldn't interrupt the jelling process. It was stressful! Then I found myself juggling hot pots as I tried to remove the sterilized jars and ready them for filling. At least the jar tongs really were great! Finally, after two rounds of boiling and filling, I had 7 jars of jelly that were ready for heat processing and one half jar that I decided to throw into the freezer and would be the first jar to taste.

Here are the jars boiling with their lids on. (See glazed purple pot in background and imagine sticky mess to the right).


There was what I believed to be a disconcerting popping noise I could hear as I removed the jars from the water and I wondered if the seals hadn't worked, but it turns out that's what's supposed to happen. Ah, the things you learn! I'm pleased to say that today I have seven jars of sealed jelly (you can test by pressing the lid - you shouldn't be able to pop it down). I haven't tasted it yet, but I'm heading to the market this morning to get some fresh bread so I can try out that half jar.

Will it taste good enough to be worth the day of labour I put in...?