We planted our grapevines about 5 years ago &, though they have produced fairly well, we've never harvested a single grape! Until this year. Ever year we would see the grape bunches ripening & be ready to harvest in a few days, only to find that the neighborhood squirrels took every last grape by the next day. At this point you would most likely hear Barna mutter, "Little fricking bastards," as he looks at the empty grapevines in our front yard - of course in a lovely Hungarian accent it doesn't sound quite so harsh.
But this year, man, do we have grapes! Thanks to this year's presence of our Great Pyrenneese, Makwa. Little do the squirrels know, though, Makwa really only wants them to come down out of the trees & play with him. He'd probably let them have as many grapes as they want if they just spent some time rolling around the yard with him!
With the intent of not wasting a single part of the harvest, as you make any of these recipes, don't throw out any drained juice or pulp. Keep it & I'll show you ways to use it all.
First, I had so many grapes that I realized I would have more jelly than I could ever use, so I came up with a way to use lots of them with a quick & easy grape juice:
SIMPLE GRAPE JUICE
1 ½ Cups grapes (use wild or homegrown grapes - commercial
grapes are so sweet you'll only need to add ½ cup sugar
rather than ¾ cup. You can also use green grapes)
¾ Cup sugar
Fill with boiling water.
Stir the jars to mix in the sugar slightly, or it will clump on the bottom in the water bath. -------------------------------------------->Lid & place in a boiling water bath for 25 min.
To use: pour through a strainer into a pitcher to remove grapes & seeds. This is suppose to be a concentrate so more water might be necessary.
I made 9 quarts of this & still had about 1000 pounds
of grapes left, so on I went with the grape jelly.
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JIM & MYLISSA'S SPICED
WILD GRAPE JELLY
This recipe is named for two old farmer friends I met at a yard sale. Jim & Mylissa asked me to help pick their wild grapes one year &, in exchange for making them some jelly, they gave me all of the grapes. That grape harvest was full of stories & laughs, a great time of fellowship I will never forget. So, though both Jim & Mylissa have moved on to God's house, I think of them each time I make their jelly.4 ½ cups grape juice - this takes about 5 lb. grapes
(wild or homegrown - commercial grapes are too sweet for this recipe)
8 cups sugar
1 tsp. Cinnamon
1 tsp. Allspice
1 tsp. Nutmeg
3 oz. (one packet) liquid Pectin
(simple instructions in bold print)
(more detailed instructions in plain print)
1.) Heat grapes & extract juice using a stainer.
Place the grapes in a large pot over medium heat. Bring to a boil, stirring often. Simmer until most of the grapes have burst open, about 20 minutes.
Pour grapes into a strainer, over a large bowl to reserve the juice. Stir the pulp, scraping the bottom of the strainer to allow the juice to fall through. Press the pulp with a potato masher to release any un-burst grapes, & stir in strainer again to allow as much remaining juice to fall through as possible. Don't discard the pulp - feed it to the chickens OR use it to make the Grape Butter recipe below. If you prefer your jelly very clear, strain the juice a second time, but with a jelly bag or cheesecloth laid in the strainer & hang the bag until all of the juice has passed through.
2.) Mix measured juice, sugar & spices, bring to a hard boil. Stir in pectin, bring to a boil &
A hard boil is a boil that, when stirred, continues to boil. Once the sugar has dissolved, you can bring the heat up to med/high to really get the boil going. When you're letting it hard boil for 1 minute, don't stir it, just let it boil. If it looks like it might boil over the edge of the pot, stir it a little to bring it down, or pull it carefully off of the heat for a few seconds if necessary.
3.) Can & water bath for 10 minutes.
Pour the jelly into sterilized canning jars, put the lids & rings on them & place the jars in a boiling water bath for 10 min.
This should make about 4 1/2 pints of jelly.
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For any grape juice you have left over, if not enough to make another batch of jelly, here are some ideas:
1.) Add some sugar to taste & drink it fresh (waaay better than store-bought grape juice)2.) Pour it over ice & mix half & half with 7-Up or Sprite (still may need a little sugar)
3.) If you don’t think you will drink all of it within a few days, pour it in canning jars, lid it & boil it in the water bath along with the jelly, keeping it in the water bath 5 minutes longer than the jelly (total 15 minutes). Then just put it in the pantry & use it within a year.
4.) Mix it with a little sugar & make old fashionice cube tray pops. Or shmancy it up by mixing
some honey with plain greek yogurt & layer it
in the ice cube trays with the juice mixed with a
little sugar. Yummers!
5.) Or you can just put the left over juice in a Ziploc baggie & freeze it. Then you can add it to the juice you make the next time you’re preparing grape jelly or drink it or add it to some smoothie you're making or use it however you want.
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Ok, now here is a great use for the grape pulp you're left with after straining out all the juice:
GRAPE BUTTER
This recipe is actually intended to be made using apples & grapes, but since I happen to have an overabundance on zucchini, I figured out how to use zucchini in place of the apples. If you remember, I posted a blog for Susanna's Surprise Apple Crisp, who's surprise is that it is made with zucchini. So, I just followed the apple crisp recipe to turn the zucchini into apples, & then just followed my recipe for Grape Butter from there. Voila! Zucchini, Not Apple, Grape Butter . . .
(makes 4 pints)
4 cups purple grape pulp (the left over pulp from making the juice for grape jelly)
4 cups zucchini - peeled, de-seeded & chopped
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. nutmeg
½ cup lemon juice
4 ½ cups sugar - divided
1.) Place the zucchini, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice & 1/2 cup of the sugar in a medium sauce pan & simmer for 20 minutes.
If you're making this with apples you can skip this step - just peel, core & chop the apples, put them in a pot with about a cup of water (instead of the lemon juice), add the spices & move on to the next step.
2.) Place the grape pulp in cheesecloth bag & put it in the pan with the zucchini, adding a little water if needed to nearly cover the zucchini & bag. Bring to a boil, simmer 20 minutes.
You can use piece of thin cloth to bag the grape pulp if you don't have cheesecloth - an old cloth napkin works in a pinch. Just lay the pulp in the center of the cloth, gather up the edges & tie it with a piece of string.
3.) Drain, reserving the liquid.
Pour the contents of the pot (zucchini, juice, bag & all) into a strainer that is in a large bowl. Let it drain for about 15 minutes. I feed the grape pulp to my chickens & use the drained juice for the Grapell Jelly recipe below (that's Grape Apple Jelly, "Grape-le", "Grapell" - except it's made with zucchini that tastes like apple) :)
4.) Blend the zucchini chunks in a blender.
I did it in 2 batches, adding about a ¼ cup of the strained juice to each to help it move in the blender.
5.) Place the resulting zucchini pulp in a saucepan, add remaining 4 cups of sugar and heat to boiling, stirring often. Hard boil for 1 minute & remove from heat.
See the Grape Jelly recipe above (step 2) for an explanation of hard boil.
6.) Pour into clean jars, lid them & place in a water bath for 10 min.
For water bath explanation see Grape Jelly recipe above (step 3).
