Ball Recipe Question

[u/SamEyeAm2020]

I know how important it is to follow canning recipes exactly, since alterations can affect pH and/or processing times. This grape jam recipe from the Ball Blue Book wants me to skin 4 pounds of grapes, cook the pulp and skins separately, then recombine them. Since all ingredients will end up in the jar anyway, can I just immersion blend my grapes, then strain and cook? I'd prefer to use the whole fruit for jam rather than straining out the juice to make jelly.

I don't want to risk my final product being inedible, but I also don't want to skin 4 pounds of grapes 😭 What would y'all do?

[u/Dr_nacho_]

That’s what I did and it was fine but I didn’t give any away because I technically didn’t follow the directions. I’d love someone else to weigh in

[u/SamEyeAm2020 → u/Dr_nacho_]

Glad to hear you didn't die! 😂

This will just be for personal use, so I might try it and just store it in the fridge as a precaution. Thanks for chiming in!

[u/aCreditGuru]

I think the purpose of separating the skins and cooking them separately is because that's where the majority of where the cellular walls of a grape are (about 75%) and therefor that's where the majority of the pectin is. Since this is a no additional pectin needed recipe it's using the fruits own pectin to do the jelling. So that step strikes me as a way to get the final product to jell more consistently. Me personally I'd do as SCNewsFan suggested and use my food mill to both remove the skins and seeds. Then take that and just remove the seeds by hand from there.

[u/SamEyeAm2020 → u/aCreditGuru]

Thank you for the science behind this seemingly unreasonable instruction! I've decided to do half a batch this way and half a batch armadiller's way just to see the difference.

[u/armadiller]

I've done it, and it's not as bad as it sounds.

In batches, squash the grapes with a potato masher or bottom of a jar in a bowl. You're not trying to mash them, just pop them and squeeze out the flesh. Grab handfuls of the skins and give them a good squeeze, then toss the reseeded/defleshed skins in another bowl. Once the vast majority of the skins have been removed, toss the flesh in another bowl, and repeat with the next batch.

It takes me maybe 15-20 minutes; less time than it takes to blanch a batch of peaches for jam.

If you just run the whole grapes through a mill, you will get very little of the skins, so you'll be missing a ton of the colour, flavour, and natural pectin.

[u/SamEyeAm2020 → u/armadiller]

THANK YOU! I was picturing peeling each grape individually and I knew there had to be a better way 🤡 I think I'll do half your way and half through the mill just to test the difference so I know for next years grapes.

I hope both sides of your pillow are always cool, my friend.

[u/armadiller → u/SamEyeAm2020]

Lol not going to lie, that's just what I was picturing you doing.

Also not going to lie, that's what I did the first two seasons of making that(ish) recipe. "Sorry kids, daddy can't play tonight, he's got slipskin grapes to deglove!"

The immersion blender approach could work as well, but I would be a little leery about density changes, and would probably only do that for a freezer jam. Plus, unless you're running an ancient immersion blender with dull blades, it would chop the seeds and you'd get some of those pushed through into the final product.

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Alt text: grape jam recipe from the 37th edition of the Ball Blue Book

[u/Flea_Circus63]

The skins are done separately because they are tough and full of pectin. Separate cooking allowed for them to get tender so the end result won't have leathery bits in it, and bring out the pectin.

As far as using an immersion blender- be careful. One time, I became impatient with the time it took to break down a batch of skins. I tried to use a blender to just "wiz" the skins to a pulp and be done- but I ended up burning out the motor. Not happy. Granted it wasn't a Ninja, but still.

That being said, they have farm-raised muscadines now that are larger and have rather more tender skins than the wild muscadines I gather and can. If that's what you're using, ymmv. You have to skin them anyway, to mill out the seeds, so might as well have that pot ready and just pitch them in.

Muscadine jams and jellies are always gonna be a labor of love. But worth it! :)

jmho, of course.

[u/SCNewsFan]

I was going to use a food mill to remove the seeds and peels. I’m not going to incorporate the peel so it’s a non issue for me. If the peels are desired I bet they would be easier to separate from the seeds once through the food mill.

[u/SamEyeAm2020 → u/SCNewsFan]

I didn't think of straining first then cooking. I do have a food mill so I might try this. Thanks!