Friday, October 8, 2010

Holiday Gifts from the Kitchen - Cranberry Port Wine Jelly and Merlot Wine Jelly



Two more easy jellies to make for holiday gifts. These ones are even easier than the Cranberry Hot Pepper Jelly because there is no food processing step. Wine jellies are fabulous with cream cheese and pate. They are also good over lamb and game meats.

Recipes from 'The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving'.

Cranberry Port Wine Jelly

1 cup port wine
1 cup 100% cranberry juice (NOT cocktail and NOT concentrate)
3 1/2 cups white sugar
1 pouch liquid pectin

1. See here for instructions on how to prepare jars for canning and here for how to prepare your boiling-water canner.

2. Place wine, cranberry juice and sugar in a large stainless steel saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly to dissolve sugar. Boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in pectin. Skim off any foam.

3. Ladle mixture into hot 125ml canning jars. Cover with a hot snap lid and secure with a ring. Process jars in a boiling-water canner for 10 minutes (15 minutes if you are above 1000ft elevation). Turn off the heat. Wait 5 minutes before removing jars from water (to stabilize pressure inside jars). Remove jars from water and place them on a towel. Let jars sit, undisturbed, to cool at room temperature overnight. Remove rings, label jars with contents and date, and store jars in a cool, dark place. (If you are giving as gifts, leave rings on, or replace rings just before gifting.)

Yields 4 1/2 cups

Merlot Wine Jelly

You can substitute ANY wine in place of the Merlot.

2 cups Merlot wine
1/4 cup fresh, strained lemon juice (2-3 lemons), or 1/4 cup bottled lemon juice
3 1/2 cups white sugar
1 pouch liquid pectin

1. See here for instructions on how to prepare jars for canning and here for how to prepare your boiling-water canner.

2. Place wine, lemon juice and sugar in a large stainless steel saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly to dissolve sugar. Boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in pectin. Skim off any foam.

3. Ladle mixture into hot 125ml canning jars. Cover with a hot snap lid and secure with a ring. Process jars in a boiling-water canner for 10 minutes (15 minutes if you are above 1000ft elevation). Turn off the heat. Wait 5 minutes before removing jars from water (to stabilize pressure inside jars). Remove jars from water and place them on a towel. Let jars sit, undisturbed, to cool at room temperature overnight. Remove rings and store jars in a cool, dark place. (If you are giving as gifts, leave rings on, or replace rings just before gifting.)

Yields 4 1/2 cups

3 comments:

  1. Jill, what happens if you use lemon juice concentrate when real lemon juice is listed?

    Thank you for your response-
    Cherylsd7

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cheryl,

    I'm not totally sure what you mean by lemon juice concentrate. I'm not familiar with any product like that. I think you mean bottled lemon juice, like Real Lemon and Real Lime? Bottled lemon juice is not concentrated lemon juice, rather it is made from concentrated lemon juice. Sounds picky, but there is a difference. Bottled lemon juice is basically the same as real, fresh lemon juice - except the bottled stuff has nasty sulphates in it. You use fresh and bottled the exact same way and in the same quantities. It won't affect the recipe at all substituting one for the other.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I also just noted an error in the recipe. It should be 1/4 cup bottled or fresh lemon juice, not a 1/4 bottle lemon juice. I've updated the recipe to fix the error.

    ReplyDelete

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