Tuesday, July 04, 2017

Earl Grey Vanilla Rhubarb Jelly


My mom has a prolific rhubarb plant! For years now we've not really known what to successfully make with it! She has tried crisps and other jelly recipes and even ignoring the plant and giving the produce away.

She had set aside two recipes and we combined them to make this jelly!

4 c. rhubarb, chopped into small 1/2" pieces
1 c. Earl Grey tea
1/2 c. water
1 tsp. vanilla
3 1/2 c. sugar
1 pouch liquid pectin
1/2 tsp. butter or margarine


Brew one cup of Earl Grey tea. Pour into a Dutch oven and add 1 tsp. vanilla, 1/2 c. water and the chopped rhubarb.





Bring this mixture to a boil and let cook for about 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Prepare a glass measuring cup or mixing bowl and place a strainer over the top. Lay cheesecloth in the strainer and ladle the hot fruit into the cheesecloth.

Tie the cheesecloth and hang from your cabinets to drip all day. We did up to this point in one session and then refrigerated the juice to resume the next part another day.

You want to have around 1 1/2-1 3/4 c. juice, so measure your juice and add water if needed. We added to 1 3/4 c. and our jelly was pretty runny so would suggest closer to 1 1/2 c. next time.

Pour that juice back into a dutch oven. Add 3 1/2 c. sugar and 1/2 tsp. butter or margarine. Bring to a full rolling boil that cannot be stirred down. Add 1 pouch liquid pectin and remove from heat. Skim off foam and ladle into clean jelly jars.




Process in a water bath canner for ten minutes. Makes about 2 1/2 pints of jelly. The tea and vanilla give such a good flavor! Rhurbarb is naturally extremely tart but we thought this was sweet enough without being overly so and the vanilla is a lovely taste left in your mouth at the end of the bite.

Adapted from this recipe.

1 comment:

Mary Ann said...

This looks yummy! I wish I could grow rhubarb successfully here in the South. Our favorites are rhubarb dumplings with a sweet sauce and strawberry rhubarb pie. Rhubarb is hard to find down here and is usually fairly high-priced when I do find it. But I always buy enough for a recipe or two anyways because we love it so.