Tag: Canning

Having food allergies has taught me so much. It’s also led me to so many doors I otherwise would not have passed through. I never thought I’d be the type to WANT to make homemade pectin, because I didn’t much care for jam. Come to find out, what I didn’t care for was the pectin. It has corn syrup solids in it (called dextrose). No wonder I’d always thought jam was too sweet. I have made preserves, instead, for years, but my husband misses jam. And preserves are not easy! They require standing over a hot stove all day, usually in a hot month. They fog up my windows and the humidity lingers. And they just plain take forever. Still good, though. Just lots of work.

Interestingly, my daughter hated jam as much as I did, but when she tasted some without the added dextrose, she told me instead, “Well maybe I like jam… but only if you make it.” Someday, kid, you’re going to actually put two and two together. Hates marshmallows unless mom makes it… corn. Hates jam unless mom makes it… corn. Not a big candy fan… corn. Kid, you have a corn allergy, too!

I think she doesn’t want to put the pieces together yet. Especially because her other biological relation already ignores her other, clearly tested, and serious allergies. If she recognized this one, she’d have to starve for 2 days.

I’ve made apple pectin before, and if I had to pick just one method, I’d go with citrus from now on. It worked easier and I could see results faster. If you’ve got lots of green, unripe apples, though, you may want to look into the other pectin.

During canning season, I go through lots of lemons. That is one other thing that I have to do now because of allergies. Bottled lemon juice contains a sulfate. Sulfate-anything makes my mouth go numb and my throat swell up. Not a good combo. Plus, fresh lemons are so much better for you. I know that canning people usually say avoid lemons because you can’t guarantee the pH, but I’d rather not die from anaphylaxis . Some day, I might find a way to check the pH of my food and then find out what it’s supposed to be in canning, but I don’t know where to start; which always leaves me spinning in circles. I feel like Captain Jack Sparrow trying to find a certain chest when he doesn’t know what he wants. “Ah! A heading. Set sail in a… uh… a general… that way! direction.”

but I digress. Lemon pectin. Love it. Will never buy a box again. Easy-peasy.

In order to help you understand, lets take a second and go over the parts of a citrus fruit. Biology lesson. Okay, these are not the terms you’d find in a biology textbook. But you would find them in old cookbooks.

image from Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries:

• • Zest: the oily coating on the outside of a lemon, lime, orange, or other citrus fruit. The part of the rind that has the color to it. Strong, potent flavor. Used in essential oils. It really only becomes zest after it’s been grated off of the lemon, but peel becomes so ambiguous and jumbled as part of the rind, that for my purposes, we’ll call it zest.
  • Pith: the white squishy part of a citrus fruit. Contains the most pectin. Pretty flavorless. Most often discarded (what a shame).
  • Fruit: the piece of a citrus most commonly used. Contains the juice and the pulp inside of membranes dividing the fruit into sections. Most often used for both consumption and juices.
  • Pips: the seeds. I don’t know why they’re not just called seeds, but pips sounds fun. Especially when you want both the pips and pith.

It will be WAY easier on you to grate/peel the lemons first, before you do anything else. Seriously. And before you do THAT you will want to wash/scrub your fruit. You can’t be sure of how carefully that fruit was cared for or what is on the peels.

I took a regular peeler to my citrus, but you can get the colored skin off however you would like. I wish I had a channel knife zester. There are so many uses for the zest. I, however, have not come up with enough ways yet. I’ve added the lemon zest to lemonade, before. That was great. I also want to learn how to candy them and such. My sister makes cleaners out of them. I haven’t tried that. I have dried them, but when I do dry them, they just sit there. Unused. Unloved. Wasted. I confess, this year, most of them ended up in my compost. Baby steps. Next year, I’ll try harnessing the lemony powers of goodness into something… good.

anyway, after you’ve peeled the citrus (as you can see most of mine is lemons and limes. It was salsa season. Grapefruits work amazingly, too. So much pith, it only takes a few of them. Plus they have a milder flavor. probably because you get more pith and less oil residue), juice them and use the juice for whatever you had in mind. Or bottle it. I’ve seen recipes, but I haven’t tried it. You will need some lemon juice for your pectin, so it’s nice to have lemons in the bunch, no matter what other combination you have in mind.

The more color you remove from the lemon, the better off you are. You can still see quite a bit of color on my citrus, but I’m not particularly worried about a lemon/lime taste in my jams.

After you’ve isolated the pith, throw in the pips (the seeds. They have tons of pectin, too). and add everything to a food processor. Chop, chop, chop.

When you’re done, you’ll end up with something that looks like this:

Now you have the base for your citrus pectin.

Measure out your pith into 8 ounce batches. Add 1/4 cup of lemon juice, and let it sit at room temperature for two hours. Then add about 2 cups of water and let it sit another hour. Transfer everything to a pot and rapidly bring it to a boil (stirring as needed). Once it boils, turn it to a simmer, and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Remove it from the heat and let it cool in the pan for about 20 minutes.

Then send it through a jelly bag or a few layers of cheese cloth (sorry, I lost my picture of this part of the process). If you squeeze the bag you will definitely get more pectin out of it (and I often find that it’s the pectin that will congeal the best), but your jellies will be cloudy. I don’t know why people care, but some do.

Test your pectin. To do this, I like to scoop out a spoonful and chill it in the fridge, so it cools faster than the rest of my pectin. Sources say you can’t test it when it’s warm (though I have gotten citrus pectin to set up even when warm. Never apple pectin, though), and then add a splash (my grandma’s terms) of rubbing alcohol over it. If it sets into a semi-solid blob that you can get onto a fork, you’re set. If not, reduce it down a little bit more (I’ve never had to do that with citrus, but I have had to do it with the apple pectin. Now you know why I prefer citrus pectin).

To Store:

Either bottle (which I’ve never done) or freeze your pectin. To freeze, measure into an ice cube tray. I know that each of my cubes will be about 1 1/2 Tbs. When solid, remove from trays and add to a freezer bag (they’re still kind of sticky when frozen. That’s not a bad thing. That’s pectin that works). It should store for 6 months to a year.

My sources tell me that to bottle it, re-heat the pectin until just below a boil, fill sterilized jars with 1/2″ headspace, and then process for 15 minutes, depending on your altitude. I haven’t tried it. It seems a waste of cooking time to bottle pectin.

To Use:

Here’s where it gets tricky. With a box of pectin, it tells you exactly how much sugar to use, how much fruit to use, and how much pectin to add. With homemade pectin, it’s all a bunch of variables. Your pectin is different based on each individual fruit. I would definitely use a box pectin a few times until you know what you’re looking for (although, really, sometimes they vary, too. I’ve got some syrup downstairs in my fruit room that was supposed to be jelly. I also have some really soft-set jams. Both from store-bought pectin).

The most important bit is to add the pectin before you boil your fruit (I think store-bought pectin is added after). You’re going to need a whole lot more pectin than you add from a box, too. A good place to start is 3 tablespoons (for me, that’s 2 pectin cubes) per cup of fruit. You may still need to add some fresh lemon juice as you’re making pectin, but with this recipe, you get a head start because it’s already in the pectin. You could need up to a whole cup of pectin.  You will need to keep track of how much pectin to add because a good rule of thumb is equal parts pectin and sugar (more sugar, to taste). It all depends on how hard of a set you have. To test your fruit to desired thickness, freeze a plate in advance, and when you’re ready to test your jam/jelly, take a spoonful and drop it onto the plate. You need to be able to run something through it and it takes a while to re-fill the space. This is a soft set. If you want a really firm jelly, you will want to let it set on the plate, and then touch it. If it wrinkles, it’s good.  I’m impatient. I don’t want to wait for it to cool, because then the jelly in the pan is cooked much beyond the jelly I tested on the plate, so I usually keep track of how thick it is and how long it takes to lose its shape.

If all of this is just too much work for you, you can just throw a few pips, or a mixture of chopped pith and pips into a cheesecloth pouch and add it to your boiling jams/jellies. I like something I wont have to fish out, though. And I like to adjust the amounts as needed. both are harder with throwing in a bag. You get much less control.

In case you haven’t noticed, I hate wasting any part of my fruits and veggies. Every time I process my produce and there is something left over, my mind asks, “what can I do with this? There has to be some use for it.” And, surprisingly, there usually is! With tomatoes, I was left with tomato skins. So I googled it, and found this recipe. I’m glad I found it, because I bottle about 200 lbs of tomatoes in a given year. From just 25 lbs, I got about 22 quarter-pints of tomato paste. I could have had more, but by the time I got to the last batch of bottled tomatoes, the first batch of skins went bad. Note to self: Do the sauce as the skins become available. They don’t last long in the fridge.

Isn’t this perfect sauce? I could have boiled it down a little further into a thick paste, but I left it as sauce. It’s a thick sauce, though.

It is important to wash all the pesticides and bacteria off of your fruit and veggies, especially if you intend to use the skins! There are a few different ways to wash them, so you can pick what works best for you.

Then blanch your tomatoes by sinking into their pot of boiling water (I let the skins pop. It cooks the tomatoes a little longer, but I like how much easier it is) and then sinking them into cold ice-water.

Do whatever you planned with the tomatoes. I make salsa, stewed tomatoes, and just plain bottled tomatoes. When I fill the bottles, I go in sets of 7 to fill my canner, then I throw any extra tomatoes that don’t fit in the right amount of jars into the pot. It’ll take a little longer to boil out the liquid in the tomatoes, but it is a good use for the extra tomatoes.

I know, it doesn’t look like much, yet, but place all the skins and the extra tomatoes into a pot and turn the stove to medium (avoid any high setting. Burning tomato is not the best way to spend your evening).

When it starts to get all soupy-looking use a stick blender to puree the skins. I simmered the tomatoes about an hour and a half, then pureed them and let them simmer another hour.

you see the good pulp forming? I’m sure it’s overkill, but after the second hour, I blended the tomatoes again, and let them cool slightly (just so I didn’t get burned. The tomatoes were still hot, but not boiling).

Here’s where I deviated from NW Edible. She works her tomatoes through a fine-mesh sieve. I have a fine screen

attachment to my Victorio

. It saves a ton of work! I don’t know if you need the fine screen, but I didn’t want to risk it. I ran it through twice. I wanted as much of the tomatoey goodness as I could get. I actually got a ton the second time, too! In the end, I got a bowl full of little straw-like skin leftovers and a bunch of coarse seeds and beautiful tomato sauce in a clean stock-pot.

To season, the measurements all depend on how much sauce you get. my tomatoes were really sour, so I added a bit of honey, some powdered garlic, some onion powder, dried parsley and oregano, and a little salt. Dried seasonings don’t mess with the pH too much, but I wouldn’t want to mix in too much. The flavor will get stronger as it is processed. And you can add more flavor afterwards.

Make sure to get the pH right. This is best achieved with a bit of lemon juice or citric acid. I can’t use the citric acid, though I wish I could (it’s usually corn-derived), so it’s lemon in this house. Add the appropriate amount to each bottle. Also, word to the wise: once I used vinegar. DON’T do it. sure, you wont have to worry about botulism, but you also wont have to eat it. It’s nasty. Oh, and do just the right amount of lemon juice, too. My tomatoes were so acidic this year, adding the lemon juice made my whole body cringe. I’m probably not being safe, but I cut the amount in half. It was the only way I could stand to eat them! I’ve never had that problem before, though. Just with one farmer’s boxes of tomatoes from the local farmer’s market. It might just be the variety he grew.

A few years ago, I was looking for a good salsa recipe and i came across the recipe from A Gardener’s Table (her original recipe is gone, but her site is still there), and I am so glad I did. This is my 3rd year making this salsa and I LOVE it. Salsa has become my comfort food. I made 12 jars the first year I made it, and 24 last year. 12 was too few, and 24 gave us quite a bit of extras, but not in a bad way. I made 4 batches this year, again (24) and made some of it super mild for the kiddo and some of it spicy enough for Ranger and I to enjoy. My love for it is 2-fold. First of all, because you bake the tomatoes, not boil them. Seriously, that trick makes it an instant favorite. Genius! No more watery salsa! Even with very juicy tomatoes (which is what I am using this year).

I also like that it uses lime juice instead of just lemon. I’m not a lime-and-spicy kind of person, so I was hesitant, but it’s an amazing difference. It goes from regular Joe-Shmoe salsa to yummy with a kick. In my case, a big kick. we use about 1/2 lb of mild peppers, then a whole lb of the mediums, followed by a 1/2 lb of the good and fiery varieties. You can use any combination, as long as you get to 2 lbs. It doesn’t sound like too much spice, since there’s still more mediums, but think of how little the big-ticket peppers are. A 1/2 lb of those tiny things is actually pretty intense. My cousin came over yesterday and his eyes were watering from the first bite. My eyes have been watering all day, what do I care!?! The onions are pretty potent when they haven’t chilled before you cut them. And I kept getting whiffs of peppers up my nose every time I opened the chopper.

I’ve tweaked the original a bit, adding back some of the lemon juice instead of lime (lime had a bit too much flavor for me), and I’m much happier with it now. I didn’t core the tomatoes this year. Next year, I’m going to. It is a whole lot easier to remove the cores before cooking as opposed to after.

I also used this recipe to make what I keep joking is “weak sauce” because there’s no spice and no chunks. Perfect for my anti-tomato, anti-spice, anti-chunk, and mild-flavors-only daughter.

I follow the directions above, but I use only bell peppers, and really blend the heck out of the tomatoes. I puree the peppers and onions really (really) well, and then blend the whole mixture again before it’s done simmering with my stick blender (caution! HOT. Legal disclaimer ;c)). I have this blender

, but I’m sure there’s newer and possibly better out there now. It works great, though. I just had to replace my old one, because it finally gave up the ghost. It was only 10 years old.

I have to say, my picky child loved it! Just proves that you can always make something enjoyable. Now she wont have much room to complain. And next time she doesn’t like something, I can remind her that saying no to healthful food is not a forever thing but a “we’ll try it a different way” thing and bring up the salsa as an example.

Every year when I bottle peaches, I always wonder if there is something I can make with the skins. Last year, I made peach honey (pick your own’s recipe), and it was delicious, but this year, I thought the idea of peach lemonade sounded FANTASTIC! So I played around with the idea, tinkering with the flavor. I think next year, I’ll use a cup less sugar.

after blanching all the peaches for canning, throw the skins back into the water used for blanching and let them sit in the fridge overnight. Boil the whole mixture the next morning, blending the skins, and then pouring it through a sieve to get the liquid. Discard pulp. You will need about 16 cups of liquid when you are finished. If you don’t have enough, you can use juice or enough water to make 16 cups.

To zest lemons, get a peeler and peal the zest in big strips. You don’t want the little sprinkles, you need big chunks. Place in a heat-resistant bowl and set aside.

Combine sugar and 3 cups of flavor-infused water (from step 1) and boil until sugar dissolves, creating a simple syrup. pour over lemon zest. Let soak for 10 minutes, then strain out the peels, reheat the water, and pour over the zest strips a second time. let sit. (you have to do it twice because the water cools and the oils arent completely released). strain a second time. You can now dehydrate the peels and make candied lemon strips. I’ve not done this but I want to next time.

Save the pith and pits for Citrus Pectin

Add peach water, syrup, and lemon juice in a pot. Simmer until desired flavor is achieved (can take a few hours). And remember it’s a concentrate, so it should be strong!. Add peaches and simmer another 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. you may blend peaches, but I left mine in chunks. It’ll make great texture when I use it.
Pour into warm sterile jars and process for 20 minutes, adjusting for altitude (I live at 5000 feet).
To reconstitute, it’s about one part concentrate to one part water or soda, but adjust it to taste.

I got a ton of apples from my tree this year. I don’t need that much applesauce. I don’t need that much apple juice. And I don’t have any pie filling. It took a long time to cut each tiny apple into a decent size for a pie, but I think it was worth it. The bigger ones, I used my VICTORIO Apple peeler-corer-slicer. Love that thing. Mine is the suction-cup bottom, but I wish it was the clamp-based one.

I think they turned out well. and both Ranger and I will be satisfied. He likes the thin apples in apple pie. I like to take a bite of the pie and actually get an apple, instead of a thin wisp of many layers of apples. Sure there’s less apples in my pie, but more flavor. To each his own. I left out any thinkening agent, because

1. I’m allergic to corn and corn starch is the #1 canning choice, with very few tapioca flour safety tests.
2. It’s finicky in the canning process and leaves the filling looking clumpy.
3. It’s much better and tastes much fresher if you add it after bottling.

I think I love this recipe. Mostly because I can’t handle commercial pectin that tends to be full of corn. It was my first batch of pectin (I mostly borrowed the recipe from pick-your-own but I love the information provided by Forager’s Harvest  (The site has had a major overhaul since I first found it, so it’s not as useful, now, but still good for a read). I highly recommend reading both links before trying out your pectin. I didn’t cook my pectin long enough, so it’s kind of soupy still. Next year I’ll boil it longer. I also want to make citrus pectin, but I keep procrastinating. Some day.

My last trial of strawberry jam, I actually followed someone else’s recipe. Katharine from Allrecipes had her version of strawberry jam, and it followed a few others, so I tried it. I like that it doesn’t have pectin. However, it was WAY too sweet. Next year, when I make it, I will use less sugar. It means more processing time in order to get it set up, but I might just add some homemade pectin, too. I’ll see what the year brings.

In all of my trying new recipes, I came across a recipe that called for lemon rind in the strawberry jam. I found it intriguing, so I added lime to my strawberry jam. I used apple pectin, because I was in a hurry to get them done, but next year I’m going to use citrus pectin. It makes much more sense to keep citrus with citrus.

I’ve been experimenting with different preservation techniques over the past few years. I’m not really a jam/jelly fan, and I think it is because of all of the corn included in commercial pectin. I know there are other sources for pectin, and I have heard good reviews, but I haven’t purchased any yet. For now, I’m trying recipes that don’t call for pectin or using homemade pectin. The nice thing about preserves is that they are cooked down, so that they don’t require additional pectin to set up. And preserves just sound fancy. The drawbacks to preserves are that it 1) takes WAY more time (1-2 days!) and 2) the longer you cook a fruit, the more you break down the nutritional benefits within the fruit. I guess it’s a toss-up. less sugar and corny ingredients. More nutritional breakdown.

That’s why you make some of each, right?

I haven’t opened the jars yet, but they sure look purdy.

I didn’t get nearly as many strawberries as I wanted to, this year. By the time I realized I wouldn’t be moving “any day,” most of the strawberries were already gone. and there was that time I waited too long when I HAD purchased some strawberries and I had to throw most of them away. We won’t get into how happy THAT made me. Especially because my brother saw the boxes of strawberries and said I must really love him to have bought that many, and if I weren’t his sister he’d think I was intending some romantic gesture. For my not-so-affectionate little bro, that’s huge.

I did get some strawberries in the freezer, and I dehydrated a TON (That somehow only filled 1/2 a gallon bag. Seriously, if my little miss didn’t like them so much, I wouldn’t do them. But she won’t each much fruit, so the fact that she loves dehydrated strawberries makes them totally worth the work).

The rest of the strawberries turned into strawberry preserves and strawberry jam. I am experimenting this year, so I tried a few different recipes.

Strawberry Preserves

Strawberry Lime Jam with Apple Pectin

Pectin-Free Strawberry Jam