Canning Essentials. Jackie Callahan Parente

thing about preserving food is that you have your own personal favorites on hand whenever you want them.

       WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T

      If you’re going to get into preserving, you’ll need to learn which vegetables and fruits respond better to which preservation styles. For example, blueberries freeze very well and make delicious jams, syrups, or pies. At the other end of the berry spectrum are those fragile, voluptuous red raspberries. They are decadent when freshly picked and make exceptional jams, sauces, and flavored vinegar, but they turn to red mush when frozen. As you explore the different preservation methods and recipes in the chapters that follow, you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t. If you’re a novice, start simple and build your technical skills.

      Meats, seafood, and meat/vegetable-based sauces are all candidates for home preservation using various methods. The quickest, easiest, and safest one is freezing, but canning can offer a flexible and convenient alternative. If your family enjoys meats, contact a local farm and get a fresh side or quarter of beef (preferably grass fed), pork, or some free-range chickens. While you can preserve meat that you get from your local butcher or grocer, buying a local side of beef is generally less expensive and the meat is fresher.

      Don’t have a garden of your own to harvest? Look for local farms where you can pay a small price and pick as much fruit or as many veggies as you need for your home preservation project.

       CHOOSING THE METHOD THAT’S RIGHT FOR YOU

      You know your goal: to preserve food in season to enjoy out of season. That’s simple. But within that overarching goal—and sometimes tangled in a sticky mess—are a number of other factors. Issues such as availability of a freezer or other storage space, dietary and/or nutritional preferences, and amount of time available—to name a few—have an impact on your choice of preservation method.

      Another point to remember as you review the various methods and their pros and cons is that these methods are all different tools in your preservation toolkit.

      CONSIDER THE SOURCE

      You can find lots of good information about food preservation and interesting recipes on the Web, but do be careful. Anyone can post anything to a website, but that doesn’t ensure accuracy or safety. For example, I found an online jam recipe that called for sealing jam by turning over the newly filled jars for five minutes to kill the bacteria on the lid. This is an old-style method that’s not approved by the US Department of Agriculture—the folks who help ensure food safety. Every method and recipe you’ll read about in this book is written with your safety in mind.

      The fact that they each have benefits and drawbacks does not make one inherently better than another. Each method simply serves a different need. Think about the appliances in your kitchen. There are times when a toaster oven is just perfect and others when your conventional oven makes more sense. The toaster oven draws less electricity per hour, but that doesn’t mean that it’s always the better tool to use. The same is true with preservation methods. The more options you have at your disposal, the more flexibility you’ll have in developing your methods of preservation. Following are the various preservation types I’ll cover, their pros and cons, and the foods most suitable for each method.

       FREEZING AND FLASH FREEZING

      Storing food in the freezer at 0 degrees Fahrenheit prevents microorganisms from growing and slowing down enzyme activity. Flash freezing is used to initially freeze food by rapidly lowering the temperature to -10 degrees Fahrenheit. This helps ensure the highest-quality frozen product. Once flash frozen, food can be stored at 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Freezing and flash freezing are best used for a range of foods, including fruits, vegetables, meats, jellies and jams, breads, and whole meals.

       Pros: This is the simplest of the common preservation methods (ideal for the food-preservation novice). Flavor retention is greater because it involves minimal heat processing. And this method has high degrees of success and food safety; microorganisms that can cause food spoilage are killed or become inactive when they’re frozen.

       Cons: The amount of food you can preserve is limited to the size of your freezer. Stand-alone freezers involve significant financial investment that may take several years to pay off. This method has the most expensive cost for storage (depending upon size, age, style, and your local cost of electricity, running a freezer can cost anywhere between $5.00 and $25.00 per month).

      Who hasn’t experienced frozen peas—whether with dinner or on a bruised knee? If they’re one of your favorites, growing your own peas and freezing them may be more economical.

       WATER-BATH CANNING

      After preserving food in glass jars using two-piece metal lids, you submerge the jarred food in a boiling-water bath for a specified period of time to destroy any harmful microorganisms and inactivate enzymes. Subsequent cooling creates a vacuum seal, which prevents air and other microorganisms from entering and causing spoilage. This method works well for a range of fruits, tomatoes, and other high-acid foods. You will also use water-bath canning to preserve jams, jellies, and other fruit-based soft spreads using primarily fruit and fruit juices together with a high sugar content. The high concentration of sugar helps prevent the growth of microorganisms. Pickles must also be water-bath canned. Using salt, vinegar, and other naturally occurring substances, the pickling process raises the acid level of the pickled food, creating an environment that is unfriendly to harmful microorganisms. Pickling is suitable for a range of vegetables, including cucumbers, peppers, cabbage, and cauliflower, as well as green tomatoes.

       Pros: Water-bath canning requires a low initial investment for equipment, electricity consumption for processing is modest, and there is no cost for storage.

       Cons: This method can cause some flavor and texture loss compared to freezing. The pickling process can take more than a month, depending upon the recipe.

      Think of all the pies you can make with home-preserved cherries or other tasty fruits. Turning your harvest into pantry staples is simple with water-bath canning.

       PRESSURE CANNING

      In this method, you also preserve food in glass jars with two-piece lids. Pressure canning must be used for low-acid foods and involves using an appliance called a—what else?—“pressure canner” to achieve a temperature of 240 degrees Fahrenheit, which is substantially higher than the 212 degrees that the water-bath method can achieve and is sufficient to kill both microorganisms and their spores, including botulism, to which low-acid foods are vulnerable. As with water-bath canning, subsequent cooling creates a vacuum seal, which prevents air and microorganisms from entering and causing spoilage. This is the only safe way to can low-acid foods such as vegetables, meats, and seafood because of their susceptibility to botulism.

       Pros: Pressure canning can also be used for high-acid foods such as