I made the season’s first jam today. 20 pints of red plum jam.
It took me four years of trial and error to finally get the recipe I wanted. Every recipe I ran across either called for ripe plums only (too sweet) or ripe plums plus lemon juice, orange juice or other citrusy stuff (just not right to my taste). I finally decided to try making some with about half ripe plums and half some that are still a little green for the desired tartness. My plum jam is now in demand in three states (okay…family lives in one, friends in the other two :D). I start getting calls and emails around the first of August asking when the plums will be ready.
Tomorrow is raspberry jam. Regular and seedless/splenda (for diabetic Mom with dentures).
That got me wondering if anyone has a better way to get the majority of the seeds out without the mess of smooshing it all through layers of cheesecloth?
I thought about starting a thread for just that, but then decided I would like to hear all handy hints and tips about canning, pickling, preserving that the Dope has to offer.
This may sound a bit insane, but I’m afraid to eat what I’m canning, so much that I’ve dried every single tomato (even the cherry tomatoes) that has come out of my garden.
See, I’m a first time gardener and I planted lots of tomatoes and lots of greenbeans, thinking, “Oh, I’ll can the stuff from the garden!”. I did do greenbeans (followed the directions in the cookbook for canning them), but now I’m afaid to even consider eating them. I sterilized the jars, made sure everything was super clean, used the pressure cooker, and the lids sealed (I even heard them pop when they sealed). What’s weird is that I’ve never had bad canned food, never gotten sick, never known anyone who has died from badly canned food.
I’d really wanted to make blackberry and peach jams and syrups this summer (seperately, not together), but after my experience with the greenbeans, I’m too paranoid to try anything else. I didn’t even want to try the tomatoes, so I went and bought a food dehydrator and used that on the tomatoes. (I’m pleased with those results, and we use a lot of dried tomatoes, and buying them in the store is expensive. Still I would have like to have had at least a few canned tomatoes.)
Oh, and the okra–I nearly forgot about the okra! I planted that, and have had a bumper crop, and even wanted to pickle some of it…but there’s that whole paranoia with the canning thing again. Instead, I’ve been eating grilled okra, and fried okra, and sauteed okra…
I wouldn’t feel comfortable eating low-acid food I had personally pressure canned. I am only comfortable with foods safe enough to water-bath can because it is almost impossible to kill someone with fruit jam or pickles. The high acid environment, plus sugar or salt, makes it an extremely inhospitable environment for botulism and other bacteria.
Maybe if you read up a little on pickles and jams, you will feel more comfortable. They are not equivalent to non-acid foods - the margin for error is much larger, the opportunities for death, almost nil.
There is also no reason you must aim for the goal of being shelf stable right off the bat. You can make pickles and just stuff them in the back of the fridge.
I have and use a food mill. I used it yesterday on the plums. Howeverr, the raspberry seeds are so small that a lot of them make it into the pulp through the food mill and I end up having to sieve that through layers of cheesecloth.
Maybe different food mills have different size holes and mine are just too big?
Look for what’s called a China cap, or a chinois. It’s cone-shaped screen, and I believe the screen mesh comes in different sizes. You have to stir the puree in the cone, whereas a food mill has a crank.
Or you could use a Vita Mix and just smash the livin’ hell outta the seeds.
I freeze tomatoes–if you have room, this is a great option and takes zero time. Just cut out the caps (if you want, not really necessary) and pop them into a freezer bag whole. When you’re ready to use them, you can run them under hot water or drop them into a boiling pot for a few seconds to skin them, and chop them up easily ('cause they’re still mostly frozen) for stew, etc. Or if you want to feel really virtuous, you can skin them and chop them first, then freeze them, which does free up some more room in your freezer.
As to canning…there should be an extension office somewhere in your area. Often (around here, at least) they offer canning classes. They’re a lot of fun and you’ll get comfortable a lot easier if you have hovering experts. Food banks and garden clubs may also have some classes, or if you’re lucky enough to be near an Amish/Mennonite community, time to make new friends!
Canning jelly is easy and not so scary ime. And there are good freezer jam recipes you might try if you have enough fruit and freezer room.
The first time I canned tomatoes, I sterilized jars and lids and poured the hot tomatoes into hot jars, twisted the lids and waited for the “pop”. They popped and we ate those tomatoes for several months without any processing and without ill effect. I was told that since tomatoes have so much acid, they’d be safe for at least a few months.
Then somebody scared me about doing them like that, so I’ve been processing them.
I tried freezing them, but they tasted way too sharp (for lack of a better word). Tangy, maybe? So I haven’t tried freezing again.
I haven’t tried freezing tomatoes, I will do that with some of this year’s crop (if I have any left. They are being eaten as fast as they ripen)
I do freeze peppers (bell, jalapeno and banana). I de-seed and chop them up and freeze them in a single layer on a cookie sheet, then put them in a ziplock or vaccum seal.
I just processed a lot of raspberries in the food mill without having the seed problem, so I’d guess that you’re right about the varying sizes of holes.
First batch of applesauce complete. I have a transparent apple tree so no peeling, just cored the apples and quartered them. I add extra cooking time so the skins dissolve completely, which means I can add a cup of water at the beginning and there isn’t any risk of the apples scorching. Some of the apples were still a bit green, so I added a tiny amount of sugar (1/2 cup for 6 pints) along with a hint of cinnamon (1/2 tsp). I’ve been picking the apples for people who want to make pies, and the deer come every night to are eat all the apples on the ground that fall from the tree. I’ll give the applesauce away at Christmas time as gifts.
Wow, I had never heard of transparent apples. Now I am going to have to plant one next year!
I have a red delicious, a gala, two granny smiths and two unknown red apple trees, but none of those are ever ready until October.
Last year bears busted the fence down around our orchard three separate times to get at the apples. We rebuilt it bigger and stronger this summer, so hopefully the bears won’t decimate my apple crop this year.
I don’t understand what difference it would make whether or not you process them. It’s the canning procedures that are important. We parboil the tomatoes and peel them, but that’s it. We eat them for the next year, but there’s no reason why they would go bad if they remain sealed.
Uh, I was going to say the opposite. It varies by tomato variety whether or not they are safe enough to can via water bath at all. Tomatoes are pretty much just barely acid enough to water bath can (4.6pH). You should add 2 TSP lemon juice to each quart for safety.
Vis a vis processing (huh! What’s it good for?), see below.
Why is open kettle canning not recommended?
In open kettle canning, food is cooked in an ordinary kettle, then packed into hot jars and sealed without processing. The temperatures obtained in open kettle canning are not high enough to destroy all spoilage and food poisoning organisms that may be in the food. Also, microorganisms can enter the food when it is transferred from the kettle to jar and cause spoilage. http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/questions/FAQ_canning.html#3
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what is meant by “processing”. My wife jars them (with vinegar rather than lemon juice), then puts the jars with lids into the canning pot full of boiling water, and cooks them for the prescribed amount of time.
Transparent apples are very early to ripen, usually mid-August here in southern British Columbia (everything is late due to the cold spring this year). They don’t keep, but are excellent in pies or applesauce. The bears don’t usually bother with my apples (there is also a Mac and a Spartan), but they love my Italian plums.
That is processing with a hot water bath. There is another method of processing that uses pressure and requires a different kind of pot, which is what Hello Again was referring to. Here is a comparison of the two methods: Registered & Protected by MarkMonitor
I pressure can smoked salmon every year but I have also made jars of taco meat and sloppy joes with beef and venison and venison stew. I have also eaten green beans, garlic, sea asparagus and bull kelp salsa that was all pressure canned. It really is a great skill to invest a little time in by taking a class or by reading a few books.