Grapefruit Jam

This morning I received an email with a link to Food in Jars' grapefruit jam. Grapefruit jam . . . the thought had never occurred to me! And I have a certain 25' grapefruit tree out in the back yard.

I picked nine fruits because the recipe said eight large and although mine are huge, the fruit inside is considerably smaller. I prepared them using my favorite method, then chopped them finely.

This part sounds weird to me, but the recipe said to save any seeds, tie them in a cloth, and cook them with the fruit because a little pectin will come out of the seeds. Most people don't use leftover fabric from sewing two skorts . . . but I do.

All you use is the fruit and some sugar, so here it all is in the pot ready to cook.

It took a lot longer to come up to 220 degrees than the 20 minutes the recipe indicated. It was more like 45 minutes, but by then it had thickened nicely. From the Food in Jars website I got the idea to use my electric oven probe/thermometer as a candy thermometer and it worked great since my candy thermometer curiously turned up broken awhile ago.

I didn't want to get my canner out for just three little jars, so after ladeling the jam into the jars (three, not four the recipe promised me--maybe I should have gotten ten or twelve grapefruits), I washed the pot out, got the water hot, put the three little jars in, then brought it all up to a boil.

Now I have three beautiful jars sitting on my counter.

It's the first time in twenty years I've made jam without packaged pectin and I'm ready to do it again.

Oh, and I've already heard the tops on all three jars click. They are sealed!