Concord Grape Jam

 

We missed lot of get togethers this year due to Corona.  We missed our family vacation too.  Being home bound needed some sanity and fresh air for everyone.  So a bunch of our friends decided to drive an hour away and visit a vineyard to pick some fresh concord grapes.

The scenic view of acres of vineyards and other fruit orchards were appeasing to our eyes.  The dark bluish purple plump concord grapes studded on every 5 to 10 inches on the vine were so tempting.  

The friendly owners of the vineyard provided clippers and carts to pick the grapes.  Kids went with their cart to one side and adults went into another direction.  Within 30 minutes everyone came back with carts full of grapes.  We were not sure what to do with all these grapes.  We ended up buying 69 lbs of grapes.

On the way back, we enjoyed the aroma of the ripe concord grapes in the car.  There was no space for us to keep all the grapes in the refrigerator.  So we had to keep them in our garage.  Our garage had the sweet aroma of ripe concord grapes for more than a week.  These concord grapes were the sweetest concord grapes I ever had.  Since they were ripened on the grape vine and freshly picked, they were really flavorful and sweet.  These were the sweetest and delicious concord grapes I ever had.   The trip really rejuvenated our spirits.

We enjoyed these sweet grapes in the fresh form.  Since there were a lot and all were ripe, I made jam, grape syrup and wine out of them.  Rest of them were washed and kept in the freezer to make jam once this batch finishes.  The jam came out really delicious and flavorful.  Hope you can give this recipe a try, if you get some concord grapes.

Yields - 1 pint jar

Ingredients

6 cups - Fresh Concord Grapes

3/4 cup - sugar

1 tbsp - lemon juice

1 cup - water

Directions:

• Wash concord grapes thoroughly under running water and separate them from the stem.
• Squish few of them and collect the skin and the white part of the grapes without seeds.  Save up to 1/2 cup.
• Blend rest of the grapes on low speed in a blender.  Strain the pulp with 1 cup of water so that all the juice is strained well. 
• Transfer the juice, the skin and the white pulp that was collected into a sauce pan.
• Add sugar and lemon juice to it and let it come to a boil.
• Lower the flame and let it cook for 20 minutes or till it thickens slightly.
• You can test the consistency by pouring a spoon full of the jam on a cold plate.  Let it cool for a minute.  Run your finger through the middle of the jam on the plate.  The jam should stay separated.
• Turn the flame off and transfer the hot jam into a sterilized bottle.  
• Once the jam cools off completely, you can store it in the refrigerator.
• Enjoy them with bread, waffles, pancakes, yogurt etc.