Concord Grape Jelly

I came home from the Farmers' Market on Saturday with a punnet of concord grapes. They looked so pretty, and I was sure I'd seen millions of recipes calling for these tiny little fruits around the blogosphere in the last few weeks.

After two days of the grapes sitting on the side in the kitchen, staring at me every time I reached over them to grab a different fruit or vegetable which I knew how to deal with, or could eat without having to spit out a million seeds, it was time to do something with the little monsters.

So I trawled the internet, hunting for all those magical recipes I'd seen that would put these beautiful grapes to good use, and continually drew a blank. Either I would have to spend lots of fiddly hours deseeding them by hand, or I was going to have to puree and strain and puree and strain and strain and then touch the skins to the water and it was going to go on and on and on forever. Until, eventually, I feel upon this page of concord grape recipes, and the steps for a concord grape jelly mentioned in the grilled cheese recipe didn't sound so bad. 

I simply had to lightly purée (thank you blender machine!) 4 cups of grapes (thankfully this was all I had), until the skins had loosened and the seeds had separated. But I had to be sure to stop before it all blended together into a smooth, but bitter, mush. Once pushed through a sieve, this left me with a splattered bowl full of grape juice, and I considered turning it into wine. I decided against it. Maybe another time.

That juice then goes in a pan with 1/2 cup of granulated sugar. Leave it on a low heat, bubbling away very, very gently, for just over an hour, making sure to stir it often.

You'll be left with a super sticky, perfectly sweet grape jam, which just begs to be paired with peanut butter, and probably also a bagel. This is NYC after all.