White Grape Jam

White Grape Jam

In addition to his obsession with Bonsai trees, my dad has taken up gardening (fruits and vegetables) as a new hobby.  Apparently, my dad had an enormous yield of white grapes this year, and he brought 5-6 lbs. over to my house last weekend.  The grapes were delicious and sweet – but had some horrible seeds in the middle!  I’m not one to eat grapes with seeds – it’s just too annoying spitting out seeds.  What was I going to do with all these grapes???  Time to break out the jam making supplies!

My dad's grape garden

The hardest part in making this jam was removing the seeds from the grapes.  While watching TV, I stood over the kitchen counter (for about 3 hours) slicing each grape in half, removing the seed, and squeezing the grape “meat” into a bowl, discarding the skin in the process.  When I was done, my several pounds of grapes turned into about 4 cups of seedless, skinless “grape goo”.  I was too tired to do anything else, so I set aside the grape goo for the next day for jam making.  It would be much easier to make this jam using regular seedless grapes from the market – all you would have to do is just squish the grapes to separate the meat and juice from the skins (which would take minutes instead of hours).  This recipe will make enough jam for 5 half-pint jars.

White Grape Jam:

My dad's homegrown white grapes.

• 4 c. pitted & peeled grapes
• zest of 1 lemon
• 4 T. lemon juice
• 4 T. low sugar pectin
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 c. sugar