Based on what you know about the product that you want to preserve, decide which method is best. Use the safest recommended method available to you. For example, if you’re going to preserve green beans and you don’t have any freezer space (and you don’t want pickled beans), then your choice will have to be pressure canning.
STEP 4: WHEN’S THE BEST TIME?
Try to synchronize your “canning calendar” with Mother Nature’s ripening calendar. It can be tricky, but aim to schedule the time for your food-preservation project and mark it on your calendar. For example: The tomatoes are starting to ripen. Enough of them should be ripe on Saturday to make a number of jars of stewed tomatoes, so plan to devote a few hours on Saturday afternoon to can the tomatoes. Making the time to put them up now means you’ll reap great benefits later.
Check on the fruits and vegetables in your yard often to gauge when you may need to schedule a canning day.
Just how much time you’ll need depends upon the quantity of food that you are processing, how large your equipment is, and how experienced you are. If you’re just starting out, plan on two to four hours. It really won’t take long before you become a pro and can zip through your food-preservation projects!
STEP 5: EQUIPMENT AND INGREDIENT CHECK
The instructions for each type of food preservation will give you a full list of equipment that you’ll need. Likewise, each recipe will spell out the exact ingredients. Read both of these ahead of time to make sure that you have what you need on hand. Nothing is more frustrating than starting a food-preservation project and realizing that you don’t have enough sugar for the jam or enough lids for the jars.
STEP 6: CONSIDER THE LOGISTICS
Check out your kitchen or other preparation area to make sure that you have enough space to work in. You don’t need a commercial-size kitchen or a sanitized science laboratory. You just need a clean and uncluttered area for staging and preparation. In general, you’ll need a place to gather the produce, a sink for cleaning and draining it, a place to clean and line up your storage containers (jars, lids, plastic containers, and so on) before filling, and a place to cool the processed jars. In addition, be sure to look at your long-term storage space. Do you need to make some room in the freezer or on your canning shelf?
Organizing your food and equipment before you begin helps ensure a successful and enjoyable canning experience.
STEP 7: JUST DO IT!
Your preparation is done. Now comes the fun part of actually starting your home food-preservation project. Each of the chapters to come provides step-by-step instructions, details, and recipes for:
INVITE A FRIEND!
In earlier times, “putting food by” was often a social affair. Folks worked together cooperatively at and after harvest to fill each other’s larders. It was a time to work and a time to “gab,” as my mother would call it. At the end of the day, friendships were stronger and food stores were swelled. This can work just as well today!
CHAPTER 3
Freezing: Flexible Food Preservation
Now that we have all of the background behind us, we’re ready to start putting away some food. Because the goal of this book is to keep things simple, we’re going to start with freezing, which is far and away the easiest and most flexible method of food preservation. Here is a short list of the advantages of freezing (one of which is that you can freeze apple rings for future pies):
WHAT CAN YOU FREEZE?
The short, easy answer to that question is, “just about anything.” Unlike other methods of food preservation, freezing doesn’t depend upon eliminating or killing spoiling agents such as bacteria. If a particular food was safe to eat when you froze it and—this is very important—you keep it frozen at a steady 0 degrees Fahrenheit, it will be safe almost indefinitely. Of course, while the foods may be safe to eat, you may not want to eat them. Simply stated, some foods don’t freeze well and should either only be eaten fresh or be preserved in other ways. See the sidebar “Don’t Freeze These” for the short list of foods that don’t freeze well. The long list of foods that do freeze well includes the following:
