How to make homemade grape jelly

This is kind of a cheater’s version, because it doesn’t involve squeezing the juice out of real grapes. While that sort of method might produce some very tasty jelly, it’s not at all cost-efficient unless you grow your own grapes or have access to free ones somehow.

How cheap your jelly is depends on the price you pay for your ingredients. If you buy grape juice and sugar on sale and you have a coupon for pectin, it will be really, really cheap. Plus, your homemade jelly will have no high fructose corn syrup in it(this is actually the reason I first looked into making my own).

I got this recipe from The Hillbilly Housewife(you can print it from the link there),(and it’s basically the same as the one on the insert from the pectin box) but I thought that some of you might be terrified of making your own jelly and would prefer a pictorial guide. It’s actually really, really easy. I promise.

Homemade Grape Jelly

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 3 cups grape juice (either in a bottle or prepared from concentrate)
• 1 package powdered pectin
• 4 cups sugar
• glass jars that will hold 1.5 quarts of jelly

(they don’t need to be canning jars…glass jars that used to hold fruit or applesauce, or jelly will work fine)

Combine grape juice and pectin in a saucepan(I stir it with a whisk to get rid of the lumps) and bring to a boil. As an aside, do NOT add the sugar before you bring the pectin to a boil. I’ve done this waaaay too many times, and it causes the jelly to not, well, gel.

After the pectin/juice mixture has come to a boil, stir in the sugar. Bring it back up to a full rolling boil that cannot be stirred down, and boil for a full minute.

Remove from the heat. During cooking, some thickened foam will have probably formed on the top of your jelly. I like to skim this off, because it makes the jelly look nicer.

Pour the jelly into your jars and screw the lids on. If you want the jelly to be shelf-stable, you can process the jars in a large pot of boiling water for 10 minutes. I don’t mess with that usually…I store mine in the fridge, and they keep just fine. And actually, most of the time the heat from the jelly is enough to cause the lids on my canning jars to seal all on their own.

Sometimes, my jelly gels right away, but sometimes it takes a while(like 6-8 hours). So, don’t become distressed if at first it seems that all you have produced is some very sweet grape juice. Be patient, and as long as you’ve followed the recipe properly, your grape juice will have turned into jelly.