Gelatin is something that has disappeared from our modern diet which is a terrible shame for the health of the population as gelatin has so many benefits. It is derived from collagen, the most abundant protein in the animal kingdom, both gelatin and collagen have a unique amino acid profile and it’s these amino acids that are so beneficial for our health. Bone broth, which is rich in gelatin, is well known for its ability to heal, particularly allergies, digestive issues and autoimmune disorders. But if you do not have time to be making bone broth then adding gelatin into your diet will give you the same benefits. Collagen and gelatin are well known for easing symptoms of arthritis by helping to stop the inflammation of joints and connective tissues. Studies have also shown gelatin to help improve sleep quality, lift mood, improve cognitive abilities plus gelatin can help improve your skin health as, like collagen it is key in cellular rejuvenation. So all in all it is a miracle food.

There are many ways to get more gelatin into your diet, add it to stews and curries as a thickener, make puddings such as cheesecake with it or make jelly. I was lucky enough to be given a large amount of grapefruit by my dear friend Jay who has an abundance of citrus fruit at this time year. So I decided to make grapefruit jelly. This recipe makes a soft jelly which can be eaten with cream or yoghurt as a pudding and a much firmer jelly more like gummy bears which can be snacked on like sweets or eaten with cheese. Of course there is no sweetener in these jellies so they are quite astringent and fresh tasting. Ingredients.

enough grapefruit to yield 1 litre of juice.

1/2 cup of gelatin.

First juice the your fruit, if you have an electric citrus juicer this will be much quicker but I find grapefruit yield their juice readily with a hand squeezer.

Put the gelatin in a small bowl and add 1 cup of the grapefruit juice and leave for a few minutes until the gelatin softens, it will be quite thick by the time it has softened. Put 1 1/2 cups of the grapefruit juice into a small saucepan and heat until just below boiling.

Add the softened gelatin to the saucepan of hot juice and stir until all the thick gelatin has melted and no granules are visible. Then pour just half of this mixture into a plastic box to set or if you have gummy bear or other molds use those, excellent for making sugar free sweets for little ones. Add the rest of the cold grapefruit juice, to the rest of the warm gelatin mix in the saucepan and pour into a bowl to set. Now you will have one very thick jelly and one much softer jelly, put both in the refrigerator to set.

After a couple of hours the jellys will have set and you can empty out the thick one and cut it into squares.

Eat the squares with cheese or on there own. The soft jelly is very good with lashing of cream. Gelatin is 9% carbs, the squares work out at about 1gm carbs each and the whole bowl of jelly is about 45 gms of carbs so a 5th portion would be about 9gms.