Grape Jelly, Apple Butter
This week, we learned that grape jelly was a staple for the 1950s "PB&J" lunch, even more so when grape jelly became increasingly available and consistent when it was a product you could buy off the shelf at your local supermarket, rather than having to make it from scratch all by yourself. Now, I appreciate that for many, making jam at home is a pretty substantial undertaking - possibly a bit too much for us (and yes, I include myself in that number!) However, I offer you this recipe, dear reader: if not for you to actually try in your own kitchen, then to appreciate just how much work women in the early 1950s and before put into household and resource management, economy, and food preservation before we could all bring home those shiny, mass-produced, predictable jars of grape jelly from the supermarket. So one way or another, I hope you enjoy perusing the ins and outs of this recipe, dear reader - whether you actually take on the task of making the grape jelly or not!
Ingredients
4 lbs ripe Concord grapes (I’m afraid you do have to use Concord grapes here - other types of grapes don’t have the same flavour or pectin content.)
1/2 cup water
5 cups granulated sugar
1 box (approx. 2 oz) powdered pectin (e.g., Sure-Jell or Certo, or whatever brand is your preference)
Instructions
Stem and wash the grapes. Crush them in a large preserving kettle with the water. Bring to a boil, then simmer covered for 10 minutes.
Pour the hot pulp into a jelly bag suspended over a large bowl. Let it drip undisturbed for several hours or overnight. Do not squeeze the bag, or the jelly will be cloudy.
Measure exactly 3 cups of the strained juice into the kettle. Stir in the powdered pectin. Bring to a "rolling boil" (one that cannot be stirred down) over high heat.
Quickly stir in all the sugar at once. Bring back to a full rolling boil and boil hard for exactly 1 minute, stirring constantly. A small tip from the 1950s: to make the jelly even clearer, many women would add a small pat of butter (about ½ tsp) to the fruit and sugar mixture while it boiled. This reduced the amount of foam that formed, resulting in a sparkling, transparent jelly.
Remove from heat. Use a metal spoon to skim off any "foam" (the cloudy bubbles on top). Pour into hot, sterilized jars and seal immediately in sterile jars with air-tight seals.
It’s quite a labour of love, isn’t it, dear reader? I admit that yearly jelly making is not likely to be in my future, but I will also say that I find myself appreciating jam and jelly from the store quite a bit more, and even turning my hand to apple butter, a comparatively simple recipe which follows below. This one is particulaly good in my part of the world because we are inundated with apples at the moment, and it turns a truly astonishing quantity of fruit into a manageable amount of delicious, spicy-sweet spread that is delicious on toast, oatmeal, yogurt, and in baked goods, but also makes a good gift.
Apple Butter: Ingredients
6 ½ lbs apples - Golden Delicious, McIntosh, or Fuji, cored and sliced (you can peel them or not, to your preference)
1 c granulated sugar
1 c light brown sugar lightly packed
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
¼ tsp salt
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
Instructions
Place the apples in a slow cooker. In a medium bowl, combine sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg cloves and salt. Pour the mixture over the apples and mix well.
Cook in slow cooker on low for about 10 hours, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is thickened and dark brown. If you do not have a slow cooker, you can do this in a large pot on the stove over low heat for the same length of time, but you will need to check on it frequently - do not leave it alone for the full ten hours!
Uncover, stir in vanilla and continue cooking uncovered on low for about 2 hours.
Use an immersion blender to puree the apple butter until smooth. If you don’t have an immersion blender, then simply transferring the apple mixture into a regular blender works well too.
Spoon the mixture into sterile containers, cover and refrigerate for up to two weeks or freeze for up to several months.
Serve on breads, muffins, with pork chops, mix it into baked goods like muffins or quick breads, give it to your friends, or just eat it with a spoon. Enjoy!
Jennifer