I am not a very good gardener, but I am pretty good with fruits. That is probably because so far, I don’t do much except prune and watch for bugs.
I don’t have enough producing grape vines that I need to know how to can them, but I have high hopes so I wanted to learn how to do it before I needed to know.
In this post I want to show talk about how I go about canning whole grapes. When canning grapes, you need to know that a good estimate is that you will need 14 pounds of grapes to fill a 7 quart canner. If you have a smaller 9 pint canner, you will need 9 pounds of grapes
If at all possible, you want to get slightly unripe grapes. The best about 2 weeks from being at their optimum quality. Also tight skinned green seedless are the best to can, but I have seen people can ripe concord grapes – Go with what you have…
How to Can Grapes Whole
Ingredients:
- Grapes
- Sugar or honey
- Water
Procedure:
- Wash and sanitize jars, lids, and rings
- Fill canner to desired height with fresh water and begin to heat
- Put lids a smaller pot and turn stove eye to boil.
- Heat a medium/large saucepan of water to boiling.
- Wash and de-stem grapes.
- Depending on how strong/sweet you want the syrup in the jar to be, mix the following grape/sweetener mix
- For straight juice: 1 cup grapes, 1/4 cup sugar or 2 Tbsp honey
- To make a concentrated juice: 2 cups grapes, 1/2 to 1 cup sugar, or half that in honey.
- For extra concentrated juice: 4 cups grapes, 1 or more cups sugar, or half that in honey.
- Pour grapes/sweetener mix into jars with canning funnel.
- Fill enough of the jars for one canning load with boiling water to line below jar threads (about 1 inch)
- Wipe rims with towel, add warm lids and rings, tighten to finger-tight.
- Place on rack in canner, cover with lid and turn on high.
- When water in canner boils, time 20 minutes for pints or 25 minute for quart sized jars and keep water boiling for that time.
- Remove jars with lifter, place on towel on counter.
Repeat as needed.
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