Grapes and Elderberries and Jelly, Oh My!

Daughter-in-law Jaime and her two children came to visit this weekend with a goal: learn to make jelly. The grapes were picked and in the cellar, waiting for her. The elderberries hung on the bushes, waiting for her. The kitchen was ready. She brought jars, sugar, pectin and a determination to conquer the mysteries of jelly making. We had a wonderful, sticky, hard-work time.

The photos below are of the elderberry jelly-making process.

Berries in the basket, ready to be washed and stripped from the clusters for cooking.

In the kettle, the berries are brought to a boil and simmered for 10 minutes.

Then strained through the jelly bag. This set-up was my mother's and I wonder how I did without it for so many years. It's very handy little tool and the legs unscrew for easy storage.

Someone's little fingers were in the sugar! It takes a lot of sugar for jelly--3 cups of juice (and a quarter cup of lemon juice) needs 4 1/2 cups of sugar.

The juice goes back into the pot, and the sugar is added after the juice reaches a full rolling boil. Then it's cooked and stirred until it returns to a full boil, and stirred for one more minute at a full boil. Jelly and jams like to boil over at this stage so the cook better be standing there stirring unless she wants to clean up a sticky stove.

After removing from the heat after the one-minute hard boil, the jelly is stirred and skimmed and allowed to cool for 5 minutes before jarring up. We sterilized the jars and lids in boiling water. My mother always said that skimming removes any impurities from the jelly. I'm not sure if that's true; some batches will have a lot of foam on them to be skimmed, other batches will have hardly any. It's a mystery to me how and why this happens--anyone know?

We use a canning funnel and ladle to jar up the jelly. Then we wiped around the rims of each jar to remove and little drips that might cause the jars not to seal, put the lids on, tighten them ,and flip the jars over for about 10 minutes to help them seal. After 10 minutes, we flip them upright, and voila! Jelly!

This is part of what we made this weekend. (That's sugar all over the table--we did make a nice mess in the kitchen!)

We ended up with 20 pints of grape jam, 3 of elderberry. After Jaime left I made some mixed batches of white grape and elderberry, and one of white grape, elderberry and a little orange juice because I didn't have quite enough of the other two for a full batch. This last one is very good-a nice tang to it. I made 8 or 9 pints of the mixed jellies.

Today it is recommended by food experts that jams and jellies be processed in the canner. Refer to a canning guide for recommended times and methods for different types of preserves.