I've recently gotten into canning and preserving after having a great yield from my garden this year.
So far I've pickled beans, carrots, cauliflower, hot peppers, and cucumbers (pickles).
Tomorrow I'll be starting on my tomatoes.
Does anyone else here do this, have any recipes to share?
i can everything
i just finished a bowl of elk stew i made last winter
tastiest thing to pickle yourself is jalapenos. tastes so good
Damnit! I missed this thread and started my own. Mostly do tomatoes and tomato juice, but also love to can green beans.
Things like strawberry rhubarb jelly is great too, but those need to be refrigerated.
Pic is us processing tomatoes.
We can a lot of tomatoes, usually @ 50 quarts. Other vegetables like corn, beans, and green peas I prefer to blanch and freeze so they don't get mushy during canning. I used to can vinegar brined cucumber pickles but this year I've been ferment pickling so I don't can them. I'm doing them in gallon jars and after they're done I just store in a second refrigerator.
What exactly is preserved tomatoes? Is it like marinara sauce? Or is it used for something else?
*We also smoke and can salmon during the short period I can get wild caught flown in fresh as well as stocks.
I tried to pickle some Okra over the summer,
Looked up a few recipies online, tried a few different ones, one for each jar, But I don't have any measuring spoons, so I just eyeballed everything.
2 months later, turns out I put WAY too much thyme in all of them, completely ruined everything.
Will try again next summer.
If you get a watermelon before summer's out, try preserving the rind. Use the whole buffalo.
I do them the same way my Nonna used to do them.
Core them with a paring knife, blanch them so the skins slide off, quarter them or you can leave them whole you're choice, put them in hot sterilized jars, add a tablespoon of lemon juice a couple fresh basil leaves and some kosher salt, pour hot water over them, put the lids on tight, and then give the jars a water bath in a pot of boiling water that covers the lids for at least 45 minutes.
Then you just put the jars on a tea towel on the counter while they cool and pressure seal themselves. Store them in a cool dark place like shelves in the basement, they'll be good at least a year.
The rind, eh!? I've never heard of that, didn't know it was edible...
What kind of brine do you do it in usually? Spices to add? Or is it just like pickles?
Similar to this, but we don’t add anything except some salt. Also use a pressure canner rather than water bath method.
It’s from a time when everything has to be saved. Melon rind preserves are like a relish.
We dont' have a second fridge or large freezer yet (it's killing me). I love canned green beans, more than frozen but I was raised on them so there is a bias there.
Well, at my house canned tomatoes fall into two catagories, juice or whole.
Whole tomatoes have been blanched (to loosen skin), peeled and put in the jar with just a little salt, and pressure cooked to seal them in. Literally just tomatoes in their own juice, no water added.
Tomato juice is just whole tomatoes put through our juicer which gets the seeds and skin out but leaves the juice and some pulp. Can that up, done.
Grab a quart of whole tomatoes and a quart of juice and you have the perfect start for chili.
That is great, I have canned venison but never fish. I'll have to look into it.
It's the best canned fish I've ever eaten. I use this recipe from the University of Alaska so it's legit. I was inspired to seek it out because the best canned salmon I'd ever had prior was from a cannery on the Olympic penninsula where you could turn in a whole fresh caught fish and receive canned in return and it was smoked before canning.
It's in Pdf so I don't know how to link to it, but if you google "university of alaska canned smoke salmon recipe" it will be the first hit.
how you pickle the garlic?
i make but it come out blue everytime.
it just garlic cloves in vinegar in mason jar.
Nice, I'm going to look this up that sounds really good.
The reason the garlic turns blue is tap water. All tap water contains trace amounts of metals like copper, iron, and led In older houses/infrastructure. It's usually the copper that'll make that discolouration happen, the copper causes a reaction with the amino acids in the garlic, almost like a bruise. But even if this happens the garlic is still completely fine to eat, it doesn't change the texture or taste at all.
If you want to prevent this use distilled water in place of tap. And make sure your jars and lids are sterilized in distilled water as well.
I grew red beets for the greens and canned the beets themselves after the greens started getting too tough and I just let them grow out since I use them for red beet eggs anyways. Thankfully global warming has our summer extending well into fucking October. I'm still getting jalapenos and I'm canning them since I don't really use them all that much but I will over the winter.
Can't you just make a fuck ton of salsa?
Isn't garlic normally not preferably to pickle since it can possibly develop botulism?
Yeah but as long as you're very strict with following the direction and making sure everything is very clean, your hard and lids are sterilized, etc. It can be perfectly safe to pickle. But it's not something I'd recommend a beginner try.
For sure you can! Or tomato sauce, ketchup, spicy tomato jelly, bloody marry mixer, etc. There's so many fudging things you can make with preserved tomatoes it's actually really awesome.
Jar and lids are sterilized **
>like a relish
Not in my experience. I cut em into small chunks and serve em with toothpicks. They're good beer snacks since it's basically a bomb of flavored saltwater.
>Isn't garlic normally not preferably to pickle since it can possibly develop botulism?
You seem to have misunderstood a warning about garlic being used to infuse oil. That has a risk of botulism simply because the enviornment is not acidic. It's also not unique to garlic--it would apply to anything that you might infuse into oil.
Pickling is a totally different beast. There is no worry of botulism in pickling because you are using an acid (vinegar). Botulism cannot grow in an acidic environment.
Wanna share your recipe, user?
Sure thing user
Melon rind cut into 1 1/2 inch or so blocks (leave a little bit of the pink flesh on)
5% brine
quart jars
To each quart jar add
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1-1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper (depending on your heat preference)
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 bay leaf (keeps the rinds from immediately going soggy)
Pack jars with rind cubes, top with brine, seal
Give em at least 3 days to soften. I try to eat them within 2 weeks so they don't turn to mush.