Another beauty....Zesty Red Onion Jelly!

Rosie, Rosie Bakes a Piece of Cake, and Pixie, You Say Tomahto, I Say Tomayto, are hosting "Putting Up", a Canning Event and my entry is the Zesty Red Onion Jelly. I am so excited finally a blog event involving Canning...one of my favorite kitchen adventures.

I dearly love to can and it is so easy. Really, canning is no big deal, although many people think that it's so time consuming, but truly it's not. Just to show you how easy canning is here is a picture of the total ingredients for Zesty Red Onion Jelly! And this prep probably took me less then 10 minutes to prepare. The most time consuming thing was waiting for the Boiling Water Bath (BWB) to boil!





I did cheat a bit when prepping this recipe. It's best to make Red Onion Jelly when the onions are freshly picked and not wintered. The gorgeous color of the red onion would be stronger. In the back of my mind my natural dyeing experience kicked in and I knew exactly how I could save some of the color. But I'm sure using freshly harvested onions would insure even a deeper hue to the jelly. But I did pretty darn good with the color even with last years onions!


Onion skin, any onion skin, contains dye. So I just immersed the red onion skin in the required 3/4 c. white vinegar and popped it in the microwave for 30 seconds, just enough the to heat the vinegar. It worked beautifully, and more natural dye was infused into the vinegar! YES!!! I left the vinegar to cool to room temperature and then poured it through a strainer. The results were exactly what I had anticipated and saved quite a bit of color.

The Zesty Red Onion Jelly was posted by dear, sweet Zabby on the Harvest Forum at Garden Web. She clipped the recipe from an Ottawa newspaper long since lost to never, never land.





Zesty Red Onion Jelly
Recipe adapted and generously shared by Zabby

1 cup diced red onion
2 tsp lemon zest
3/4 cup white vinegar
3 cups granulated sugar
1 pouch (85 ml [3 fl oz]) liquid pectin


Cut red onion into 1/8 inch slices; cut slices into 1/4 inch dice. Measure 1 cup into a large, deep stainless steel saucepan. With a sharp knife, cut a wide strip of paper-thin yellow peel from lemon; cut into thin strips and measure 2 tsp into saucepan. Stir in vinegar and sugar.

***Over high heat, bring mixture to a full, roiling boil. Stirring constantly, boil hard 1 minute. Remove from heat. Immediately stir in one pouch Liquid Pectin, mixing well.

Pour jelly into a hot jar, dividing solids equally among jars and filling each jar to within 1/4 inch of top rim (head space). Wipe jar rims. Centre lids on jars & screw on bands. Process in BWB 10 minutes.

Cool for about 30 minutes, then, when lids are concave but jelly is still hot, carefully invert & twist jars to distribute solids throughout jelly. (**Do not let them remain upside down for long periods**) Repeat as needed during the cooling/setting time, until solids are nicely suspended.







All Rights Reserved 2008 © Big Black Dog