Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Canning Grape Jelly

This week, I completed my first canning project: grape jelly! It was so much fun, I did it again the next day! I'm pretty excited about this since not only will canning my own fruits, spreads and butters be so much more affordable than buying them at the store, they also taste better and I know what's going into them.

I got my super simple recipe from Hillbilly Housewife. All you need is a box of pectin, 3 cups of grape juice and 4 cups of sugar! So simple!

Here is my workstation ready to go: The grape juice and pectin are on the back left burner, the lids are on the front left and my canner is getting ready on the right.

This is what happens after you bring the juice and sugar to a boil! I thought it was going to boil over! Thankfully, it did not.

After the jelly was ready, I ladeled them into hot, sterilized jars.

Then I wiped the jars clean, put lids on them and placed them in the canner for 10 minutes.

Behold! Jelly!
Here's a price breakdown of how much it costs to make this jelly:

Juice- $2.19 for a bottle from Aldi. I used a little less than half, so we'll go with $1.
Sugar- $2.49 for a 4lb bag from Walgreens on sale. I used $1.10 worth.
Pectin- $2.29 for a box of 2. I used one box, so $1.15.

Total: $3.25 for 6 half-pint jars. Or just 54 cents each!

If you want to include the price of the jars, I paid $5.50 for a dozen half pint jars. So, $2.75 was spent on this batch. So with new jars, the total is just $1 each! Plus, you can reuse the jars over and over.

We love this jelly, and although I figured one jar would last us about a month based on our current consumption of jelly, it's probably only going to last a couple weeks since we are eating it so much!

My next canning project will be apple butter. I'll post pics and a recipe as soon as I finish it!

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