So you may have gathered from my previous post that this week we ordered some local produce from Greenling, a grocery delivery service here in Austin. We ordered from Greenling so that I could get a local watermelon because I LOVE watermelon. Especially juicy ripe watermelon which is what I figured I would get from Greenling.

Unfortunately, my watermelon turned out to be light pink when I cut it open and seems to be no where near ripe 😦  Sad for me, big time.

I used about half the watermelon making watermelon jelly, a recipe I saw on the Greenling blog. Hopefully it turns out tasty with underripe melon.

I got all my supplies for canning and started the process.

Melon, lemons, sugar, pectin, jars, and cheesecloth:

I then chopped up about half of the melon and pureed it in the food processor. The pulp was strained through some cheesecloth to get the juice:

While that drained, I went about the process of sterilizing the jars. This was my first canning experience and I think an extra pair of hands would have been handy.

First the jars, lid, and rings were washed in hot soapy water. Next, the jars went into a pot of boiling water, the rings into a separate pot, and the lids into a bowl and had boiling water poured over them. After the jars were done boiling, they went into the oven set to 200 degrees so that they stayed clean.

Sterilizing the jars:

After the watermelon was done draining and I had squeezed all of the juice out of the pulp, I added lemon juice and pectin and brought it to rolling boil. Next, the 6 (!) cups of sugar were added and the mixture brought back to a rolling boil for one minute:

The next part was the messy part. I had to ladle the watermelon mixture into the clean jars. It was not pretty. The instructions said to wipe off the jar threads and rim which made sense as I spilled the mixture all over them. Putting the hot rings on the hot jars was also an adventure. I just hope the jelly wasn’t contaminated. After the jars were assembled, I placed them in the boiling water to process for 5 minutes. Luckily my husband had a set of jar tongs specially designed for canning, so I used them to remove the jars when they were done.

I ended up with 3 pint jars, all properly sealed. Let’s hope the jelly is good!