amazon_syren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
amazon_syren) wrote2014-07-13 11:53 am
amazon_syren) wrote2014-07-13 11:53 am
Thoughts on Canning (and Other Forms of Preserving)
Making garlic-dill cucumber pickles.
Except that they contain very little garlic (alas). Let this be a lesson to me: Plan Vietnamese Garlic Chives that are available early-on and are perenial... y'know, in the event that I have a yard to garden at some point in the hopefully-not-TOO-distant future.
Last night, I processed half of my eight pint-jars in a boiling water bath... A process which resulted in a lot of over-flow and a lot of lost (leaked) pickling solution... So I'm trying again, this morning, with the jars the other way up[1].
The funny thing is that the jars that lost all the pickling solution? They still sealed. They might have been just fine to eat from in a month or three (or six, or twelve...) but I don't know that, so I opted to try again.
Anyway. The first batch is out (one jar has already sealed, I'm waiting for the tell-tale "plunk" from the othe three), and the other batch is processing. :-)
I'm hoping that this works.
So far, this season, I've done a moderate amount of freezing - serviceberries, strawberries, pesto, raspberries, "edamole" (although that was made, in large part, from previously-frozen edamame, so I'm not sure if it counts), and red currants - but only a little bit of canning (two cups of asparagus relish, four half-cups of black-currant curd). The pickles are my first "big batch" of canning in 2014, and I'm hoping that they'll work out, in part because - while Fridge Pickles are great and all - I don't want to have to eat through four litres of vinegarry, quasi-cooked cukes in a couple of weeks. (Ha! And a second jar just sealed! Woohoo!) So make that three litres of vinegarry, quasi-cooked, cukes. But you get the idea.
I continue to have high hopes around preserving - particularly tomato-based preserves (roasted-garlic balsamic tomato sauce, for sure, as well as a significantly larger batch of spicy tomato-peach salsa[2] - think 8-12 cups rather than three - and (maaaaaaaaaaaybe) some crushed tomatoes, most likely done as one-cup jars rather than two-cup jars... in the name of getting them to seal.
Which brings me back around to my pint-jars of cucumber pickles and my hope that they, too, will seal properly.
Getting a half-cup jar to seal is easy. It's small. Five minutes (ten, tops, for if you're doing fruit curds or other "dense...ish" preserves) and the lids'll plunk shut, fully sealed, in no time. But, I find, the bigger the jar, the longer the processing time (this is not surprising) but also the longer it takes for the seal to form after coming out of the bath. I'm not sure why this is, but it makes for some (mild-to-moderate) anxiety while waiting to see if the seals form at all.
Anyway.
So that's where I'm at with the canning and other forms of preserving.
TTFN,
Amazon.
[1] When I'm processing half-cup, or even whole-cup (half-pint), jars of preserves, I do what my mom did and use a frying pan with the jars flipped lid-side-down. Less water, yeah, but lots of steam (which is quite a bit hotter than water, thank-you-very-much). It works just fine.
[2] I admit, in the interests of finding out if it would work[3], I'm inclined to try making this stuff using slivers of dried appricots rather than diced fresh peaches...
[3] Because The Goal is to eventually own a yard that is big enough (20x12?) to grow a dwarf, two-variety apricot tree for the purposes of harvesting fruit for fresh-eating, drying, possibly fermenting into Country Wine, and canning as fruit butter, fruit-in-simple-syrup, "jam", and salsa.
Except that they contain very little garlic (alas). Let this be a lesson to me: Plan Vietnamese Garlic Chives that are available early-on and are perenial... y'know, in the event that I have a yard to garden at some point in the hopefully-not-TOO-distant future.
Last night, I processed half of my eight pint-jars in a boiling water bath... A process which resulted in a lot of over-flow and a lot of lost (leaked) pickling solution... So I'm trying again, this morning, with the jars the other way up[1].
The funny thing is that the jars that lost all the pickling solution? They still sealed. They might have been just fine to eat from in a month or three (or six, or twelve...) but I don't know that, so I opted to try again.
Anyway. The first batch is out (one jar has already sealed, I'm waiting for the tell-tale "plunk" from the othe three), and the other batch is processing. :-)
I'm hoping that this works.
So far, this season, I've done a moderate amount of freezing - serviceberries, strawberries, pesto, raspberries, "edamole" (although that was made, in large part, from previously-frozen edamame, so I'm not sure if it counts), and red currants - but only a little bit of canning (two cups of asparagus relish, four half-cups of black-currant curd). The pickles are my first "big batch" of canning in 2014, and I'm hoping that they'll work out, in part because - while Fridge Pickles are great and all - I don't want to have to eat through four litres of vinegarry, quasi-cooked cukes in a couple of weeks. (Ha! And a second jar just sealed! Woohoo!) So make that three litres of vinegarry, quasi-cooked, cukes. But you get the idea.
I continue to have high hopes around preserving - particularly tomato-based preserves (roasted-garlic balsamic tomato sauce, for sure, as well as a significantly larger batch of spicy tomato-peach salsa[2] - think 8-12 cups rather than three - and (maaaaaaaaaaaybe) some crushed tomatoes, most likely done as one-cup jars rather than two-cup jars... in the name of getting them to seal.
Which brings me back around to my pint-jars of cucumber pickles and my hope that they, too, will seal properly.
Getting a half-cup jar to seal is easy. It's small. Five minutes (ten, tops, for if you're doing fruit curds or other "dense...ish" preserves) and the lids'll plunk shut, fully sealed, in no time. But, I find, the bigger the jar, the longer the processing time (this is not surprising) but also the longer it takes for the seal to form after coming out of the bath. I'm not sure why this is, but it makes for some (mild-to-moderate) anxiety while waiting to see if the seals form at all.
Anyway.
So that's where I'm at with the canning and other forms of preserving.
TTFN,
Amazon.
[1] When I'm processing half-cup, or even whole-cup (half-pint), jars of preserves, I do what my mom did and use a frying pan with the jars flipped lid-side-down. Less water, yeah, but lots of steam (which is quite a bit hotter than water, thank-you-very-much). It works just fine.
[2] I admit, in the interests of finding out if it would work[3], I'm inclined to try making this stuff using slivers of dried appricots rather than diced fresh peaches...
[3] Because The Goal is to eventually own a yard that is big enough (20x12?) to grow a dwarf, two-variety apricot tree for the purposes of harvesting fruit for fresh-eating, drying, possibly fermenting into Country Wine, and canning as fruit butter, fruit-in-simple-syrup, "jam", and salsa.