Grape Juice

Starting February we see grapes everywhere in Karnataka! And that's when my mom's grape juice season starts. :-) Everybody who comes home during the grapes season asks for her amazing home made grape juice! And she always has a batch of lovely grape juice in her fridge. She makes a fresh batch every 7-8 days. You get to enjoy healthy, yum, thick fresh juice without any preservatives everyday, that's the best part.

Here goes the recipe for my mom's amazing grape juice that you can store in the fridge for 7-8 days:

Ingredients:

1/2 kg black grapes
1/2 kg sugar
vanilla essence

Type of grapes best suited for this juice:

The type of grapes you use to make this juice is important as the taste of the juice depends on the grapes you use.
Black, round grapes with seeds that are sour are best for making this juice.
Seedless grapes have thick skin hence don't make great juice, nor does the big, reddish grapes called as paneer grapes.

Preparation Method:

1. Pluck all the grapes off their stem, soak them in water for 20-30 minutes, then wash them well with a fresh batch of water, repeatedly 5-6 times to get all the dirt off.

2. Bring 4 cups of water to boil, add in washed grapes and continue boiling the water on high heat.

3. After about 5 minutes, the grapes burst out of their skin. Then add 4 cups of sugar and simmer the flame.

4. Let the grapes cook for 5 more minutes, meanwhile stir well using a laddle so that all the sugar dissolves.

5. Close the vessel with a lid, remove off heat once all the grapes are cooked through.

6. Let it cool completely. With the lid on it might take a few hours to cool.

7. Once the grapes in water has cooled completely, blend in the grapes along with the water in which it was cooked in tiny batches, for 2 pulses. Only 2 pulses - it's important as we want only the grapes to get crushed. If you blend for longer the seeds will also get crushed and add a bitter taste to the juice.

8. Strain the juice into a vessel using a strainer. Throw away the seeds, grapes skin that gets strained.

9. Once you have ground all of the cooked grapes, add 2-3 drops of vanilla essence to the grape juice in the vessel and mix well.

10. Let the grape juice in the vessel rest outside at room temperature for half an hour, to prevent any fermentation.

Blending produces some heat in the juice. Allowing it to rest at room temperature, let's the juice cool off and thus prevent any fermentation. There'll also be foam due to blending. We want the foam to die off as much as possible before we bottle up the juice.

11. After half an hour, transfer the juice to a dry bottle or to a air tight, dry container and store it in fridge.

12. You can store this juice for 7-8 days provided you follow these instructions carefully:

a. Handle the concentrated grape with care from the moment you make it. :-) Don't let any water get into the concentrate other than the water used for boiling the grapes.

b. Use a dry spoon to transfer it into a glass every time you intend to use it, if you want to store it for days together. Or else the concentrated grape juice goes bad very soon.

13. Serve chilled juice by diluting the concentrated grape juice with cold water. Add water depending on how thick you like your juice to be. Add ice cubes to the juice while serving if required.

15. You can also add a scoop of vanilla ice cream to 2 cups of chilled, undiluted, thick grape juice. Blend them together for a pulse and serve immediately. Adjust the amount of ice cream, juice you add according to your taste. It makes the drink yum!

Serves: 15-20

Tags: Juices, Fresh juices, Fruit juices, Grapes, Grape juice, home made juices, summer drink, quenches thirst.