It's been a while since I did one of these. How are you guys enjoying the harvest?
Busy weekend this week...
I have tomatoes to finish processing (got a good deal on them, I'm happy). Just finished some red fruit jam (sour cherries, cranberries, raspberries) which I'll probably post as a cook along shortly. Mascarino cherries are cooling down. Then I need to figure out what I'm doing with the gallon bag of blueberries my friend dropped on me.
How about you guys?
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Red fruit jam!
Ingredients :
575g cranberries
575g sour cherries, pitted
350g raspberries
850g sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice
The cranberries were left-overs from last fall's cranberry sauce making. The sour cherries are from by friend's backyard and were frozen because she picked them 2 weeks ago.
1. In a large pot, combine the cranberries, sugar and lemon juice,
2. Savagely attack the mess of pitted sour cherries and throw them into the pot.
Stir over medium heat until the fruits thaw and start releasing their juices. It will look like an impossible sugar paste. Don't panic.
4. Eventually, this will start foaming/bubbling up as it reaches a boil. Once the cranberries start popping, take off the heat.
5. This step and the next is optional. But I dislike the skins of cranberries.
Run the sour cherries and cranberry mixture through the coarse disk of a food mill to remove the skins.
6. Transfer the pulp back into the pot.
7. Discard the skins and other debris left in the food mill (it's not that much... pic related is everything discarded from this batch)
8. Add the raspberries.
If you don't want to bother with the food mill, or if you like whole cranberries, skip steps 5-7 and add the raspberries in at step 1.
9. Bring to a boil and cook down for about 5 minutes.
Allow to cool slightly for 2-5 minutes before pouring into prepared jars.
10. Process 10 minutes (1/4 inch headspace is good)
Yield 6 half pint jars.
This sounds like something id enjoy doing. But i have no idea what a Food Mill is nor wtf youre saying in step 10.
Care to teach a primer?
Yeah, give me a few.
ok, back with a real keyboard.
>Food Mill
A food mill is something like this : amazon.ca
It allows you to puree things and/or remove parts of things. The disks allow you to choose how coarse or fine you want the puree. It's a mecanical device. As you crank the handle, the metal part in the middle smashes the contents on the disk. The advantage of it versus a hand blender or stand blender is that you get to retain -some- texture in the result.
>Process
In this context, "Process" means "submerge the sealed jars in a boiling water bath". This sterilizes the product (for long term storage) and removes the air from the jar.
>Headspace
You have to leave some amount of air in the jar so that the vaccum seal can be done properly. Too much or too little headspace and the jar will not seal properly.
1/4" is the mots common amount, but more liquid things (tomatoes, brandied cherries, poached pears) need 1/2" or 3/4"
Nifty, thanks. Might do some research and try it out next time i make sauce, and ive always wanted to try making jam, so this could be fun
It's lots of fun, IMHO. I do a few good weekends of canning per summer then eat that during the year.
Just make sure your recipe is safe for water bath canning :-)
Feel free to ask any questions!
Sure what the hell makes it safe or unsafe for water bath canning?
Typically my sauce is stewed tomatoes, base tomato sauce, tomato paste, sun dri3e tomatoes garlic, herbs, olive oil, red wine, onions
Waterbath canning is safe for high acid recipes (containing vinegar, like pickles, or lemon juice for poached fruits) or high sugar (like jam).
It is not safe for low acidity, anything that includes meat or fish, or most thing with high fat content.
For those you need pressure canning (they sell the pressure canners with instructions) to properly seal and sterilize the product.
At first glance your sauce recipe would be fine with pressure canning, but wouldn't be acidic enough for water bath.
Trying not to die from botulism
Then stick to proven high acidity/high sugar recipes and you'll do great.
Canner and forager here.
I recently found myself in a bind. It's the top of Serviceberry season, so I'm out picking like mad. I'm foraging about two hours every day, which leaves little time to process and can the berries piling up. And I also had a fridge full of fresh fruit from the grocery. And 25 lbs of peaches from my dear husband.
So I decided to break in my new steam juicer and I turned it all into juice. I'll can the juice and deal with it later. So far I have made 1/2 gal rhubarb, 1 gal peach, 1 1/2 gal strawberry and 3 gal Serviceberry. I got the Serviceberry canned, but I need to go buy qt jars to put up the rest.
I'm going to pick up some more jars tomorrow. I'll probably get them at the grocery, I see grapes and peaches are on sale...
Lol. You'really more dedicated then I am.
Other then what I am doing this weekend I only did some strawberry jams this year (rhubarb, lavander, plain).
What do service berry taste like?
Kind of like blueberries, but slightly bitter/musty. It doesn't sound plesant, but when you add sugar it's unique and very good. I'm making it into pancake syrup, jelly and Sefviceberry Melomel (mead made with juice instead of water).
I think I'm going to make most of the juice into pancake syrup. I sell my products locally, and no one else is selling pancake syrup.
Syrup sounds good.
Bump
I made some pickles recently, just a plain hot vinegar brine with lightly blanched vegetables.
I think it was
2 cups cider vinegar
1 cup malt vinegar
1 cup red wine vinegar
3 cups water
100 grams salt
2x bay leaves
3 tbsp peppercorn
1 tbsp celery seed
2 tbsp black mustard seed
half a dozen cloves
stick of cinnamon
couple grains asafoetida
2tsp cumin
1 cup sugar
I made pickled gherkin, spicy baby carrots, pickled beans and chili peppers, brocolli and onions.
This was a few months ago and I've almost used all of them up, I just need to get a decent source of jars without spending much money.
are there any advantages to canning as opposed to just freezing?
Of course there are, doofus.
the main one being you don't require a freezer
Saves freezer space (and is not electricity dependant) for one.
Then just plain better results. Pickles like for example. If you'd freeze the vegetables in that and thaw it later you'd have disgusting mush. That user will have crisp pickles instead.
i did clams in the spring
tomatoes aren't quite dirty cheap enough yet but soon
It's early in the season. you've got some time.
>love pickled okra
>but it's kind of expensive and full of salt
>make my own three months ago
>decide to open up the jar today and see how it is
>taste: A+
>texture: F-
I don't know what happened, everything was soggy and mushy. Not at all like the nice crisp ones I can get in the store.
Never made Okra, but extrapolating from pickles... did you brine them to get some of the moisture out? AKA, what was the recipe/steps you followed?
Still need to wipe down the jars with vinegar water to remove the calcium deposits, but otherwise all done.
put the vinegar in the canning water and you can skip that step
i can get pretty cheap mason jars from ebay
Last year's tomatoes
I'm trying to think of a retarded pun to make for this thread, but i don't think i can.
I always forget. Makes clean up a bitch. Wiping down the jars isn't bad but the stock pot I use for the water bath and the rack are coating with the stuff.
What make's your revolver, friend?
Made it a while ago so I don't remember the exact recipe, but I think it was like:
>boil apple cider vinegar and salt
>pour over jar of okra with a single hot chili inside too
>seal
>boil for a few more minutes to sterilize
>finished
Yeah. You'll want a recipe that includes a brine (salt and water solution) at some point to draw out the moisture and help withthe crisp. I can look around for one if you're interested?
Ruger Sp101 .357mag. Great little side arm