Preservation Link Roundup 8/18/10

I really appreciate that Well Preserved discusses in some depth the acidity problem in canning tomatoes (Well Preserved Tomato Sauce Recipe). Yes, the USDA is pretty conservative and you can get away with fudging their safety guidelines quite often. After all, your grandmother probably violated a number of their current rules and you're reading this, right? But,

The spoilage risk is very real. The family who taught ours lost an entire batch (around 200 jars) due to low acid and things began to ferment in bottle. They lost an entire weekend of work, a virtual crop of tomatoes and sauce for the year.

The Atlantic Food Channel has an excellent article on various ways to preserve venison, from curing to corning and, of course, making sausage (both fresh and fermented) (Venison Sausage: A Whole Different Animal). Bonus for Southern California readers, the deer was shot on Catalina Island.

Another cured meat (and a favorite of mine) is pâté. The Kitchn provides a few links on the subject (Do You Have a Good Recipe for Homemade Pâté?). Be sure to check out the comment section for additional links. If you've never made pâté or a rillette or similar, I highly suggest giving it a try. They can be surprisingly easy to make and are a wonderful side dish or appetizer. And you can play with flavors quite a bit. I make my own teriyaki-flavored "spam" for use in homemade musubi.

Food in Jars has a good post on substituting other salts for pickling salt (if you can't easily find it) (Canning 101: On Substituting Salt in Pickling). At the end of the day, there are only a few things you need to know:

1. Substitute by weight. 3/4 of an ounce per tablespoon for pickling salt. Simply weigh out the other salt.
2. Make sure the salt is pure. No iodine or free flow agents. The only ingredient listed should be salt.
3. Take into account that other salts won't dissolve as quickly as pickling salt.

If you can't find pickling salt, popcorn salt makes an excellent substitution. You can also process kosher salt into something resembling pickling salt by pulsing it in a food processor a few times.

The Blueberry Files goes through the steps of pressure canning beets (Pressure Canning Beats). Beets are an excellent candidate for pressure canning, since they generally survive the process quite well. Of course, if you don't have a pressure canner you can pickle beets and can them with a boiling water bath. There are plenty of recipes out there.

A Nutritionist Eats is getting into canning and has a Ball Canning Discovery Kit to giveaway (Canning with Lucia). Visit her blog for information on winning the kit.

I can't emphasize enough how canning works best as a social event. Feast After Famine learns canning from some neighbors at a canning party, "replete with wine and cheese and good cheer... "(Canning Party). Why not invite some neighbors over to learn canning from you?

Tigress in a Jam takes advantage of the fantastic stone fruit out there to make a lovely preserve using summer savory (an inspired choice) and white pepper (Nectarine Preserves with Summer Savory & White Pepper).

I've got mixed feelings about white pepper. It is generally used in dishes as a substitute for black pepper when you don't want little black flecks in your dish, such as in white sauces, lightly colored soups or mashed potatoes. However, there are distinct flavor differences. To me, black pepper is fruitier and more well-rounded, while white pepper is a little more directly spicy with less depth of flavor. More importantly, however, I think that white pepper suffers more from being pre-ground than black pepper. Frankly, I hate pre-ground white pepper. I dislike pre-ground black pepper, but can't stand the white pepper version. So, please, use freshly ground white pepper when you do use it.

Canning seems to get all the press, but sometimes it is important to remember that freezing is an important aspect of food preservation. Putting By freezes their bell peppers (they don't can well by themselves) (Bell Peppers). I like everything they did, except place the pepper strips into gallon ziploc bags. You should usually freeze in quantities that you would use. That way you don't have defrost/refreeze what you haven't used. So, instead of gallon ziplocs, why not quart or pint bags? And I can't emphasize this enough when freezing: label, label, label! When you freeze a lot of stuff, it will save many headaches months later.

Freezing is great, but they seem to fill up quite quickly, so back to canning it is. Putting By also has a post on canning pasta sauce (Pasta Sauce). They use those commercial square-ish pasta jars that I know many people have around the house. I know many people who use them for canning successfully, but I do have to point to the FAQ from the companies page:

Can I reuse the Classico® jar for home canning?
No. A coating is applied at the glass plant to reduce scratching and scuffing. If scratched, the jar becomes weaker at this point and can more easily break. This would increase the risk of the jar breaking when used for canning. Also, the lighter weight of our current jar could make it unsafe for home canning.

Do as you will, just passing on the information.

The LA Weekly's Squid Ink blog reviews yet another new canning book, Canning for a New Generation (Cookbook Review: Canning For A New Generation).

The book might as well be called Canning and Preserving For An Eager But Sometimes Lazy (Or Just Plain Busy) Generation. And that's exactly why we think it's pretty great.

Preservation Link Roundup 8/17/10

Yes, Another Cooking Blog cans tomato halves for the Can Jam (Tomato halves for Can Jam-August). Why halves? Much less floating. Floating doesn't affect flavor, but isn't an aesthetically pleasing.

But that's not all - how about a basic tomato sauce? Basic Tomato Sauce for August Can Jam

Bread Experience makes a non-basic tomato sauce (Roasted Vegetable Pasta Sauce: Tigress Can Jam).

Plate to Plate goes through some tomato canning basics (Canning Tomatoes). For more advanced tomato canning you can check out this post from Well Preserved (A Guide to our best Tomato Preserving (Canning) Posts).

If you need more hands on information, how about a class from my fellow Master Food Preserver Delilah Snell and the famous Evan Kleinman? The class is $100 and takes place September 11th (Tomato Canning Class: Mucho Mas with Evan Kleinman). I'll be doing a demo on the 29th.

I talked about pesto and basil yesterday, and today Road to the Farm has a lovely photo of some pesto she has put in canning jars for freezing (Oh, Pesto!).

Simply Daily Recipes reviews one of the newer canning books, Put 'Em Up (Put 'Em Up Book Review). As a beginning canner, she liked it. I've got a copy myself and will provide my opinion when I have time to play with it a bit.

Speaking of new preserving books, Doris and Jilly Cook are doing a giveaway of another new one (Giveaway: The Fresh Girl's Guide to Easy Canning and Preserving).

And, speaking of giveaways, Food in Jars is giving away vanilla beans to three lucky winners, but everyone gets her recipe for peach sauce with vanilla - or follow the alternative directions to make peach butter (better than apple butter in my book) (White Peach Sauce with Vanilla (+ giveaway!)). There are some really great notes on acidification of white peaches, since they have borderline acidity.

Of course, vanilla is good, but why not some rum in that peach sauce? Local Kitchen makes a peach sauce with Kraken Rum (Pirate Peaches). Love the labels too. Wish she'd post the file.

Simply Recipes is on a frozen yogurt kick (Blackberry Frozen Yogurt). And why not? If you make yogurt on a regular basis (which you should) why not toss some of that yogurt (along with some flavorings and some sweetener) into an ice cream churn? It's a lot easier than making a French-style ice cream and the sweet/tart flavor is fantastic. Doesn't have to be dessert either, why not frozen yogurt as an intermezzo?

For more information on frozen yogurt, The Kitchn collects a number of recipes in an attempt at answering a question about making creamy frozen yogurt (How Do I Make Creamy, Low-Fat Frozen Yogurt at Home?).

Since I make my own kombucha at home I didn't realize that they've stopped carrying it many stores. The Kitchn asks whether you're getting your fix of kombucha now (The Great Kombucha Freakout: Are You Getting Your Fix?). My answer is yes, of course. Couldn't afford that store bought stuff in the first place. Even if I could, I'm not sure I'd want to pay so much for something that is simply tea and sugar and culture and some time.

Preservation Link Roundup 8/16/10

Sometimes I'm so jealous of Georgia. Seems like nearly every high school there boasts a community canning center. How come we don't have any in Los Angeles? The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that there will be tours of these canning centers (Georgia Organics Plans Special Tour on Canning).

The canneries, Croom said, are a unique public resource.

"We really want people to use them," said Croom, Georgia Organics' Farm to School program coordinator. "What can take eight hours in your kitchen can take two-and-a-half hours there; you can do huge amounts at once."

We need one of these centers in LA.

Doris and Jilly Cook answer a question about non-sealing jars of stock when pressure canning (Ask the Goats: Bad Seals in the Pressure Canner). There is some good advice on getting a firm seal, such as removing as much of the fat from the stock as possible. I like to chill my stock overnight in the refrigerator and remove the fat that has solidified on the top. It is easy to remove the fat in this way and I also get a better idea how fortified my stock is - does it seem just like a thick liquid or have I gotten a jelly-like flavor bomb?

And don't forget to save the fat. The fat from beef stock makes a nice frying medium, especially for potatoes. Or use it (instead of butter) to caramelize onions. Chicken fat is even better, I think, because what you now have is a flavorful schmaltz. I wouldn't make Matzah balls without it.

In any case, the main recommendation was to let the pressure canner cool down for at least an hour after turning off the heat. This is good advice for any pressure canning. Just be careful that with some models of canners, excessive cooling may create a vacuum seal making opening more difficult.

Speaking of pressure canning, Frugal Canning did what everyone with a pressure gauge canner should do every year: get that gauge checked (Pressure Canning Gauge Check). Unfortunately, we don't have a testing setup in LA County, but will see if we can't get that changed in the next couple of months. Of course, even if you don't need to get the gauge checked, don't forget to replace any rubber gaskets on an annual basis as well.

The Jam and Jelly Lady provides a little background on how she left office worker and became tJ&JL (My Journey to Becoming a Canning Mom).

Well Preserved is getting ready for some major tomato canning (The Tomatoes are Here – One of My Favourite Weeks of the Year). Sounds like a good time with family!

We`ve got our system down pretty good and the four of us can run through 6-8 bushels with a solid day of work. Even after 5+ years of doing this as a team we find there`s a few kinks that we can work out (last year we had 200 liters of sauce but no large pots left for the hot water bath) and will continue to learn from the process. One of the great joys has been learning to work as a team and having fun together with it. We now complete the entire task in less than half the time than what we took 5 years ago (with most of the same equipment).

The Kitchn laments that they haven't done enough preserving this summer (something I can relate to), but there is still plenty of time for tomatoes (Weekend Meditation: That Time of the Year ... or counting the jars in my pantry). Of course, while you are canning those tomatoes with friends or family, you might want to take a break for a refreshing beverage. Luckily, the Kitchn also provides a simple recipe for Ginger Ale, with bread yeast providing the fermentation for the bubbly (Try This! Easy Homemade Ginger Ale).

There is more to canning tomatoes than sauce and whole tomatoes, however. Mother's Kitchen makes a tomato salsa for the August Can Jam (Can Jam August: Salsa #5). This recipe features tomato paste and tomato sauce for a thicker consistency (Mother makes her own from scratch). Looks really good to me.

The Washington Post looks at whether you can make a good homemade ketchup with those excess tomatoes (Could Homemade Ketchup Beat Heinz?). It might seem that is an obvious win for homemade, but we expect certain things from out ketchups, and some homemade versions (including some I've made) just don't seem what we're used to. Good, yes, but not quite the ketchup you've grown up with. On the other hand, maybe we shouldn't expect so much consistency in our flavors. We're not five year olds afraid of everything different. So, let one thousand ketchups bloom. More later, but I will demoing homemade ketchup Aug. 29 at the Hollywood Farmers' Market.

Know Whey makes "spiced peaches," which I call "pickled peaches" (Spiced Peaches). This year I've made both pickled peaches and plums. Love 'em. So sweet and tart. Although it is wonderful to have these pickles in the winter or for Thanksgiving as Know Whey does, I really enjoy them in the summer as well. They go great with barbecue and taste like summer to me; they are very refreshing on a hot day.

Tartelette does something a little more traditional with her peaches, she makes several jams (French Word a Week - Confiture de Peche). What I particularly liked is that she varies the flavor with different spices and a bit of alcohol. Why not try the same with pickled peaches as well?

Putting By makes a favorite preserve of mine: Razzleberry Jam). Sometimes you don't have enough berries for a single berry jam, or you just like to add layers of flavor. Razzleberry jam it is then.

In My Kitchen provides some excellent lessons learned on storing fresh basil (Garden Journal 8/15/10: How to and, More Importantly, How Not to Store Fresh Basil). Of course, sometimes you have more fresh basil than you can use over a few days. Freezing is the best method of preserving basil, though you can dry it as well. You can chiffonade the basil and freeze it in ice cubes, freeze it on sheet trays and then bag it, chop it and mix with oil to freeze as a preliminary pesto, or freeze as an actual pesto (my favorite).

And feel free to play around with the pesto. Cold Cereal and Toast not only makes a nice mention of a recent report on food policy (Planting the Seeds for Public Health: How the Farm Bill Can Help Farmers to Produce and Distribute Healthy Foods) but describes making pesto from a CSA excess of basil - but without the traditional pinenuts, substituted peanuts (The Thing About Surplus: Easy Peanut Pesto).

Preservation Link Roundup - Catching Up - 4/9/10

Since last week I discussed pickling leftover Easter Eggs, I decided to share a "before" shot of some of the four dozen eggs I pickled this week. In a couple of weeks, I'll share a photo of the finished eggs and even a dissection (to see the color gradation inside). I tried the pineapple pickled eggs and a soy sauce/pineapple brine.

Master Food Preserver (and co-author of this blog), Delilah Snell, has finalized her food preservation classes for the near future - check them out! I'll be doing one, wish I could do more, but my new job means my schedule is uncertain right now: Food Preservation Classes, Workshops and More - FINAL

She also is on the lookout for free fruit to preserve, especially loquats (Adventure in Loquats and Other Backyard Fruit - and a Special Request for Readers of this Blog!):

if you have any fruit trees that you want me to pick or you can pick and hand over-i will give you a few jars of whatever i make....viva Spring!

I was a participant in "loquat-a-palooza" last year, they are a great preserving fruit (though a little labor intensive).

Food in Jars takes a look at Ashley English's new book: Homemade Living: Canning & Preserving with Ashley English: All You Need to Know to Make Jams, Jellies, Pickles, Chutneys & More (A Good Book for the Can Jam or Anytime). She discovers that it is perfect for providing some ideas for April's Can Jam.

Not everybody has the room for a backyard smoker, or even a backyard. The Chicago Tribune runs a nice story on stovetop smoking (Smoke Signals). If you haven't tried smoking food at home yet, the stovetop method is a great place to start. You'll be surprised by the flavors you can achieve. I love smoked foods, and what you can do easily at home beats the heck out of what is available commercially. Smoke is another one of those techniques that can be used to transform routine dishes and take them to a new level. Mmmmm ... smoked roasted chicken salad.

Leda Meredith of her eponymous Urban Homestead did a radio interview on the Heritage Radio Network's Hot Grease in which she discusses lacto-fermentation as a preservation method among other topics (Hot Grease Interview).

If you are lucky enough to have access to ramps (foraged or in farmers' markets), then you might want to read a bit about using and preserving them. Local Kitchen provides some excellent ideas and information (Ramps):

The Spring ramp season is short; to preserve your bounty for the coming months, blanche & freeze the leaves as you would chard or kale, or make pesto or infused oil or vinegar as you would with fresh herbs. Dry chopped bulbs and leaves in a dehydrator or low oven, or use in pickles, chutneys, or confit. For a host of allium preserving recipe ideas, check out the March Can Jam round-up. I have a big pile o’ ramps to cook with, and I hope to score some more to preserve, so I’ll update this post as I experiment. Stay tuned!

The Canning Doctor roasts a chicken and then makes and cans stock from the carcass (Pressure Canning Again). This is an excellent practice whenever you roast a chicken (one of the greatest, most versatile meals there is). If you don't have time to make the stock that day or the next, freeze the carcass and make the stock when you do have the time.

The Practical Preserver provides instructions for properly freezing strawberries (Strawberry Season). Though I'm a huge fan of canning, in my book, it is always a good idea to have some frozen berries available in the pantry - then you are ready for all sorts of quick desserts and sweet/savory dishes.

One Perfect Bite makes a versatile pesto (aren't most pestos versatile?) from homemade sundried cherry tomatoes (Red Pesto Sauce + Home-Style Sun-Dried Tomatoes). It'll be awhile before tomato season is back, but I'm lucky enough to have a stock of homemade sundried (actually, dehydrator'd) cherry tomatoes from last August to give this pesto a try.

What Julia Ate is clearing out her freezer by canning the contents, in this case combining summer stone fruit with her homemade pectin (Apricot Plum Jam with Orange Pectin). Once again, she shares her valuable experience in working with homemade pectin.

After learning how easy it is to make buttermilk, What Julia Ate also learns how easy it is to make crème fraîche (Crème Fraîche). Crème fraîche is basically buttermilk made from cream, so it is richer and thicker. It is an excellent substitute for sour cream in most recipes, and is incredibly useful in its own right. It doesn't curdle and it is a great addition to hot dishes, such as soups and sauces. Or use it to make your own "ranch" dressing.

Preservation Link Roundup 3/7/10

Fellow Master Food Preserver Delilah Snell will be giving a 1-hour lecture on food preservation at the Spring Garden Show at the South Coast Plaza (Ed Begley and....Delilah Snell ????). Set your calendars for Friday, April 23rd from 2:30pm-3:30pm.

Hungry Passport is a blog dedicated to travel and good food. It is written by a tour professional who, as you might imagine, gets around quite a bit. Recently, she was in Alsace Los Angeles enjoying a rustic French meal at Café des Artistes (Week 25 - Rustic French).

I noted throughout the evening that our meal looked like a study of food preservation methods. Since it was late wintertime, this meal reflected what we'd be eating when we're relying on our reserves of food and awaiting the return of springtime and a new growing season.

Pickles, marmalades, confits, rillettes, pâté and, of course, cheese. What would French cuisine be without food preservation?

Chiot's Run has a good post on using canning jars for freezing (Using Canning Jars in the Freezer). Plenty of good tips:

You may worry about freezing in glass because of the possibility of breakage, but there are a few things you can do to minimize this chance. Do not fill jars all the way, most wide-mouth canning jars have a “freeze fill line” marked on the side of the jar. Using smaller jars also helps, with less liquid you don’t have to worry as much about expansion and the possibility of breaking the jar. The larger the jar the more expansion room you’ll need to allow. I freeze in jars often and have only had a broken jar once, it was my fault for filling it too full and not allowing enough expansion room. (another note, make sure the stock or veggies are cold before putting into freezer)

The "freeze fill line" he is referring to is actually the 1-inch headspace line - good for freezing and most pressure canning.

Hitchhiking to Heaven makes a conserve with dried fruit, Clementine syrup and red wine (Red Wine and Clementine Stewed Apricots and Prunes). What a number of flavors going on; it sounds truly delicious. Conserves just don't get the respect they should.

What do I do with partial bottles of red wine? I pour them into my red wine vinegar jar. What does preservation guru Eugenia Bone do? As she explains on Well Preserved, the Blog, she makes a reduction sauce (Red Wine Reduction Sauce). This can be a sort of secret ingredient that you can take in many different directions and use with all sorts of different dishes. Bone uses it with duck breast, but add some sautéed mushrooms and you've got something that will go well with beef. Add some cherries and suddenly you've got a sauce for pork loin. Stir it into stews, or add it to a tomato sauce for pasta. Your imagination is the only limit.

Earlier in the week I hosted a birthday dinner party for my girlfriend's sister. She had requested a Red Velvet Cake for dessert. Traditionally, Red Velvet Cake is served with cream cheese frosting. I have to be different, of course, so I used a standard buttercream frosting (with ganache between the two layers of cake) and put the cream cheese into the ice cream, instead. Tonight, I had some leftover cherry pie filling from a pastry I made in the morning. Just a little over the cream cheese ice cream was sort of like a frozen cheesecake with cherry topping. Go light on the cherry pie filling, though. Its flavor can overwhelm the ice cream, which has a more delicate cream cheese flavor than a real cheesecake.

When a recipe for a preserve says that it is good on ice cream ... it doesn't mean it has to be a common ice cream.

Preservation Link Roundup 3/1/10

According to the National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association, March is National Frozen Food Month.

Tigress in a Jam is quite proud of the plum jelly she put up last October (Jam on It: Plum Hot Jelly & Almond Butter). I always say that canning provides you with two senses of accomplishment. The first you enjoy immediately as the canning lids ping during cooling. It feels good seeing the finished jars filled with all sorts of goodies. You get to revisit that feeling when, months later, you open those cans.

Well Preserved learns that they don't have to compost all of their vegetable scraps, but can save them to make vegetable stock (A Butcher Opened My Eyes to Vegetables with an Option Better than Composting). This is absolutely a great way to use vegetable scraps. If you don't have enough vegetable scraps for immediate use, you can freeze them to use later. Carrots, onions and celery are particularly useful as you can use them for vegetable stock and protein stocks.

You might even choose to keep mushrooms separate so that you can make a mushroom stock (great for mushroom risotto, other rice dishes and soups).

Of course, vegetable stocks can be pressure canned for shelf stable storage.

If you want to advertise your canning prowess via a t-shirt or reusable bag, Cafe Press has a nice selection (Food Preservation).

Food in Jars has some excellent suggestions for playing with spices in canning (Season to Taste).

But I do want you to know that it’s okay to gently tweak the spices. If you know that you can’t handle a great deal of heat in your food, please, please reduce the amount of chili or cayenne that the recipe calls for. If you’re a cinnamon fiend, feel free to increase the amount you include in your blueberry jam. Also, keep in mind that a small amount of spice can increase in flavor over time, so if you’re making something in July that you don’t plan on eating until February or March, adjust accordingly. Most of all, remember that you’re making those pickles or that chutney for you, and so the way it tastes should always, always please you.

Might I also add that you should use mostly whole, cracked or broken spices, not ground (as they make brines, jellies and jams cloudy). But, definitely! And don't forget those fresh herbs!

Preservation Link Roundup 2/25/10

Well Preserved is on a yogurt kick. Last week they drained regular yogurt to make Greek-style yogurt and yesterday they discussed making yogurt in their dehydrator (Making Yogurt in the Dehydrator – the Night Time Stood Still).

I have the best yogurt maker in the world, the Salton YM9 - 1 Quart Yogurt Maker. Unfortunately, it is no longer manufactured - sorry. It is great for making 1 quart of yogurt at a time, usually enough for 3-5 days for me. But when I need to make more yogurt all at once, I turn to my dehydrator.

Well Preserved doesn't mention what sort of dehydrator they have, but almost certainly it is a box type, such as an Excalibur. The Ronco-style round tray dehydrators can be used to make yogurt, but in small tubs, not in large quart mason jars. In a box dehydrator, you just remove enough trays to fit the jars you want and then place them on the bottom. I like pint and quart jars for yogurt, but you could make a whole passel of 8-oz or 4-oz jars if you like pre-divided individual servings. Set to about 115 degrees F, the dehydrator will keep the yogurt at the right temperature for growth.

Ah, dehydrators. So useful. Bonus, after making yogurt with your dehydrator, you can make yogurt leather. Mix 2 parts yogurt to 1 part of your favorite jam, spread 1/4-inch thick on a leather drying sheet (offset spatula, thank you), 130 degrees until leather consistency, pliable, but not sticky. Cut into bite size pieces, my nieces call it "candy" - heh, heh.

Two Frog Home has been doing a great series on stocking your pantry (Pantry Stocking :: Buying in Bulk and Pantry Stocking :: Finding Space). Good tips.

Of course, while taking care of your pantry don't forget the refrigerator (the mainstay of food preservation). The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on how appliance manufacturers are redesigning their refrigerators so that they are easier to clean and keep organized (Why Won't Anyone Clean Me?). The most important issue, actually, is education - teaching people how to properly store goods in their refrigerator.

People often don't store things properly anyway. Four years ago, in an effort to understand how people organize their fridges, Sub-Zero bought a week's worth of groceries and asked a group of 12 customers to put away the items in refrigerators at the company's research facilities in Madison, Wis.

What ensued was chaos. People put meat and soda cans in the crisper drawers, which have a temperature and humidity meant for veggies. They put their milk in shelves on the door. While the door shelves seem to be a perfect fit for a carton of milk, Sub-Zero says the area is the worst place to store dairy products because it's the warmest part of the fridge.

Read the whole thing. I like this tip:

Ms. Johnson [training manager at Merry Maids] recommends that people explore the depths of their fridges once a week for food that needs to be tossed. She suggests cleaning one shelf at a time so that the task is less overwhelming.

Flying Tomato Farms does something interesting when making homemade bouillon - they roast their vegetables first (Eureka! Homemade Bouillon). Sounds like a real good idea to me. Freeze in a jar or as cubes.

The Foodinista makes a variation on an old-school classic (Baked Brie with Apricot-Rosemary Chutney). If you already have some canned chutney handy, this is ridiculously quick and easy to make. You just need some puff pastry or phyllo, a wheel of brie, 10 mintues of prep, a little oven time and you've got something spectacular when entertaining.

Eleanor Barkhorn of The Atlantic's Food Section cooks from her pantry, where she finds a can of Tuscan white beans and garbanzo beans (After Snowpocalypse, Bean Soup). The bean soup she created was simple and easy and sounds decidedly satisfying. Convenience food from the pantry made with canned beans ... hm, sounds familiar. The only thing is that the soup contains cream and she froze it. Soups with cream that are frozen have a tendency to separate. Better to freeze the soup without cream and add the cream when reheating.

Delilah Snell loves the look of Weck canning jars (Must...Have...These...Jars). If you buy her a case, she promises to give you one back filled with something delicious. Rufus and Clementine also like the jars and have put together a little guide to getting some (In Pursuit of | A Weck Resource Guide). Be sure to use new rubber gaskets when canning, do no reuse gaskets.

The Herald Journal News of Utah publishes an article celebrating eating home canned food in the middle of winter (Home Canner Glory).

Home-canners, this is your moment of glory.

Now is the payback for the weeks of hard labor - hours spent up to your elbows in tomato pulp and peach skins. The foolhardy folks who scoffed at your industry can only dream of the rich fruit of the summer. They’ll ingest the counterfeit meat product and fried starch at fast food restaurants while you dine on colorful bottled treasures from your cellar, one luscious quart at a time.

Heh. There are a few recipes for using home canned goods as well.

Nurse Elizabeth also celebrates her canned bounty (Canned Poached Pears).

Tonite, in the dead of winter, I ate a perfect October pear, frozen in time. YUM. You can’t even get that at Whole Foods right now!

And to me, Canned Poached Pears is, to date, the most awesome thing I have ever made in my kitchen. Not because of the taste, though. Don’t get me wrong, it is a delicious, savory dessert. But the idea that I am preserving fruit when it is just perfect, then poaching it while it is already sealed in the jars (preserving the alcohol content-YES!), then cracking a jar open for an elaborate, special occasion dessert 6 months to 2 years after I made it is, to me, nothing short of awesome.

They have citrus up in Canada? Who knew? The Toronto Sun has three recipes for marmalade, plus good tips for making and canning it (Making Marmalade).

Preservation Link Roundup 2/23/10

Wow, is canning growing in popularity. The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting statistic in an article on gardening trends (Garden Trends: What's In and Out for 2010).

Domesticity is back. People are returning to a simpler life of cooking, gardening, and even raising chickens! According to LOHAS – Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability – seed sales are up 30 to 50 percent and canning sales saw a whopping 45 percent increase.

Produce sharing with community-supported agricultural farms and produce exchanges are springing up throughout urban and suburban and rural communities. The take-home message is: urban farming is cool; urban wastelands are not. [emphasis added]

Yesterday I linked to Well Preserved's post on making tzatziki and thickening their homemade yogurt (Tzatziki, Thickening Yogurt and Other Favourites…). I forgot to mention ... save the leftover whey. It is protein-rich and full of probiotic bacteria. I drink it straight, mix it into smoothies, use it as a substitute for buttermilk (think low fat ranch-style dressing - or in baked goods), or in anything that calls for water and you want to add flavor and tartness. It freezes well if you can't use it all at once. Finally, it is useful for lacto-fermentations.

Department of "Hey, that was my idea":

Serious Eats is all excited about a food truck in D.C. selling oatmeal with a brûléed top (Oatmeal Brûlée from the Sweetgreen Truck in Washington, D.C.). Darn. I did that years ago.

I'm a huge fan of porridges (basically any grain or legume boiled and served as a mush). Porridges are one of the earliest cooked foods and a staple item for most of human history. Not only are there many different styles of oats, but so many different grains to make porridge from. Try some groats or quinoa for something different.

So what is the food preservation angle? How about another idea that some hip new food truck can steal? Jam or canned pie filling can be put on top of the oatmeal, but rather than simply stir it in, top that with a crumble topping (including more oats), place in a 350-degree oven for about 30 minutes until the top is golden brown and crispy and ... oatmeal fruit crumble.

The Burlington Free Press has some suggestions on using chutneys (Tips for Using What You Have on Hand: Chutney). Once you find some that you like, you'll be coming up with all sorts of things they can be used for. Hmmmm ... maybe with some drained yogurt for a spread or a dip?

All Types of Cooking, And a Whole Lot of Canning Here! enthusiastically recommends pressure canning home made stock (Canning Chicken Stock). I couldn't agree more. Never let bones go to waste. Freeze them, if necessary, until you have enough for a batch of stock. I always buy pork shoulder bone-in, so I can save the bones - and, it is usually less expensive that way. My shrimp are always purchased uncooked, shell-on so that I can freeze the shells for stock later (used my entire stock of shrimp shells to make a lobster bisque a few weeks ago). You get the picture.

Apparently, yesterday was National Margarita Day. Now there is nothing like freshly made sour mix. However, when you want to mix a drink, a fresh sour mix isn't always conveniently available. And forget that store bought stuff. Seriously. That stuff is horrible. I'd rather go parched then drink something with that stuff in it. However, making your own canned sour mix is a possibility. It won't be as good as the fresh stuff, but it is better than the store-bought junk. Equal parts (by volume) water, fresh lemon juice, fresh lime juice and sugar. Some of the zest from the fruit is also nice. Bring all ingredients to a boil, let infuse for 10 minutes and strain out zest. Can as you would a syrup.

I've been remiss in linking to several good posts from jelly fan What Julia Ate. Most recently she discovered a chutney she really liked (The Heavy Heavy Carrot Apple Chutney Sound).

I am on the chutney train, people. I really didn't think this was going to be good while I was cooking it. I thought, damn, I put too much in. Made it too complicated. But lordy, is this good. I don't often eat chutney out of the jar but I am now a convert

For the February Can Jam she made the popular (with a few small twists) Vietnamese Carrot and Daikon Pickle.

Jelly doesn't always get the respect it should, I think, but Julia aims to change that. Just one example, using jelly in cocktails (Jelly Toddy). Yes! Heck yes. Now I have to go make some coffee liqueur.

Jellies and marmalades are also great in tea, or just hot water, of course. Koreans make something very similar to a citron or yuzu marmalade, stir it into hot water and call it citron or yuzu tea or yujacha. It is considered a winter sore throat/cold remedy. A little brandy added is a bonus.

Preservation Link Roundup 2/19/10

First, a Can Jam update:

Tigress in a Jam had a difficult time finding local carrots for her Can Jam (California carrots were available, natch), so she decided to add a local ingredient to make a Carrot-Apple Butter (w/ Cardamom). Later, however, she did get some local carrots and match them with some ingredients from her freezer (a good way to do things) for Carrot-Rhubarb Jam (w/ Rosemary) (Carrots: Buttered & Jammed). Using ingredients from the freezer is a great way to match flavors out of season.

Well Preserved make a better carrot cake jam and a great way to use it: over a campfire between two pieces of bread in a pie iron (Can Jam - Carrot Cake Campfire Toast Pie).

Delicious Potager - love the name! - unfortunately used up the last of her own garden's carrots just before the ingredient for this month's Can Jam was announced (Tigress' Can Jam: Classic Pickled Carrots). Hers was a basic recipe, but she'll have some experience for her next crop.

Kevin West was on a shopping spree for rare citrus at the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers' Market and discusses his finds (Rare Citrus: Bergamots, Kaffir Limes, Seville Oranges). For more information, you should know that Southern California is home to one of the greatest citrus research collections in the world: the University of California Riverside
Citrus Variety Collection. And if you want a great day trip to see over 70 varieties of citrus, be sure to visit California Citrus State Historic Park - in Riverside, of course. Definitely worth a trip, especially now, during peak citrus season.

Two Frog Home has a good piece on how you can stock your pantry with home preserved foods (Pantry Stocking :: Food Preservation). The article is short, but it is a good look at how one family approaches food preservation.

I'm so envious. Chickens in the Road received a gift from a reader: a collection of vintage canning books and catalogs (Treasure Trove). If you like vintage canning jars and recipe books, you definitely have to check out her photo-rich post.

Last summer, Cold Cereal & Toast canned some summer peaches from their CSA share. Now, in February, they are using local peaches to bake some delicious-sounding muffins (Channeling Summer: Peach Muffins).

Preservation Link Roundup 2/16/10

The LA Weekly's Squid Ink updates on what's fresh in the local farmers' markets (What's in Season at the Farmers Markets: Chamomile Gets a Boost from the Rains). Chamomile ... what a wonderful flavoring for certain jams and jellies. It has a particular affinity for citrus, especially lemons. Lemon-Chamomile marmalade, anyone?

Cooking Issues, the tech/food blog from the French Culinary Institute, has been experimenting with making stocks using a pressure canner (All-American, natch!) and goes into detail about the results (Pressure Cooked Stock 2: Changing Pressures, Playing with Chemistry). Conclusion: pressure-canned stock is the winner, but you need to use a non-venting lid. Guess I'll have to look into getting a non-venting lid for my canner - which would make it a sterilizer, not a canner - but great for making stock - then I switch lids, and can the stock.

Mother's Kitchen cans a classic and integral part of bánh mì sandwiches (Vietnamese Carrots and Daikon Pickle). This do chua is great on its own, but having some around for last minute sandwich making is a good thing. Bonus, though she is in Michigan, the carrots and daikon were from California.

Of course carrot slaws aren't only good on Vietnamese sandwiches. Put a Lid on It is canning a carrot and onion slaw for, presumably, Western-style sandwiches (Carrots and Onion Sandwich Slaw).

Nina Corbett has a recipe I can use with the basket of kumquats sitting on my kitchen counter right now (Kumquats in Honey Ginger Syrup). I've already made and canned some syrup and marmalade last week, but slicing all those kumquats into rings is very time consuming. Nina's recipe sounds much quicker and easier. I might cut the kumquats in half and seed them for easier eating later (and serving to friends and family). I also might add a little bit of an orange liqueur or, perhaps, some brandy.

Kevin West waxes rhapsodic about citrus culture and geography in suburban Southern California and adopts a free tree from Fallen Fruit (The Great Fruit Tree Giveaway).

Planting a tree is always an optimistic act, and planting a fruit tree is doubly so: you assume that you'll be around to enjoy the literal fruits of your effort. Planting my two Meyer lemon trees in California was something more, though, and more specific. It was a kind of declaration: about starting over, about setting down roots for a new future—about staking my claim on the California Dream.

Dream on Kevin!

Farm to Table is really excited about the wonderful beets now in market, providing some nutritional information as well as a brief history of this important vegetable (Beet Envy). They also have a recipe for beet pickles. Most pickled beets are quick pickles, made with a brine of vinegar, sugar and salt. F2T's recipe is for another type of beet pickle, fermented!

F2T discusses using Mason canning jars for the fermentation. One thing you might consider when using a Mason jar for fermentation is to put the flat lid on upside down, with the silicon ring up and screwing it on loosely. This will help ensure there isn't an airtight seal by accident, for example, by temperature variations creating a loose seal.

Well Preserved's Cheap Tuesday Gourmet discusses how home food preservation can improve both flavor and economy, whether freezing roasted red peppers or canning beans (Cheap Tuesday Gourmet – Calling All Food Preservers).

From now on we will also price all of our preserving posts (based on ingredients). Not all of our preserves will be considered cheap (wild blueberries with maple syrup is an adorable jam but not for the most cost conscious), but I want to help get the message out that preserving can help make a significant difference – in the amount of food that rots, the cost of what you eat and the quality and taste of what appears on your plate.

Pricing preserves is a great idea. I'll have to incorporate that in my journals and jars sometimes.

Preservation Link Roundup 2/12/10

As anyone who knows me knows ... I am a huge fan of pickles. So how excited was I that I could express my fandom on Facebook? Very. Express your fandom: Can this Pickle get More Fans than Nickleback?.

The Kitchn, has a good idea for keeping your freezer nice and full of a variety of home frozen meals without hitting the frozen foods aisle in the supermarket (Great Idea! Start a Freezer Meal Cooperative).

A group of six (or more) people decide on a certain amount of meals for a six-week period. Angie's group does 12 meals. Then each person prepares two of the meals, and freezes enough for all six people in the group. (It's obviously a lot easier to prepare and freeze a lot of one or two recipes, rather than 12 recipes!)

Then they distribute the frozen meals among themselves, and everyone has a frozen yet homemade meal for their family twice a week.

Ah, convenience! One of the wonderful things about food preservation plus, in this case, community ... another benefit of food preservation if you share it with others.

Food Safety News reports on a new food preservation technique developed at Washington State University (New Technology Extends Food Shelf Life).

Juming Tang, a professor in the WSU Department of Biological Systems Engineering, led a team of industry, university, and U.S. military scientists to create this technology. The outcome not only results in food with a longer shelf-life, but also food with better flavor and nutritional value when compared to more traditional food processing methods such as canning....

The team's Microwave Sterilization Process technology submerges the packaged food in pressurized hot water while concurrently heating it with microwaves at a frequency of 915 MHz--this frequency penetrates food much more deeply than home microwave ovens. This combination eliminates food pathogens and spoilage microorganisms in five to eight minutes and produces foods with much higher quality than conventionally processed products.

It doesn't sound as if this technique will be reaching the home soon, if ever, but I like keeping up with food preservation news.

Dancer and local foods activist Leda Meredith has a guest post on the Farm to Table blog on how food preservation and local foods go together (Why Food Preservation is an Important Part of Eating Local and Two Ways to get Started). She's preaching to the choir. I also like that she has a recipe for a fermented fruit chutney, something I've never tried, but will now.

Delilah Snell visits a friend's mother's garden and kitchen and helps in making some fermented dills and lemon curd made with agave syrup rather than sugar (A Rainy Afternoon with Joanne - Lemon Curd Recipe). The curd isn't for canning, but can be kept in the refrigerator or longer in the freezer. There are cannable curds, but because they contain butter and eggs (generally a no-no in canning), their shelf-stable life is only 2-3 months.

My curds usually don't last that long, so I don't bother canning them.

Preservation Supplement to LA Times Food Section 2/4/10

I'm starting a new series in which I look at the LA Times' weekly Food Section (now published on Thursdays) from a food preservation point of view. I plan on looking at the articles and seeing what sort of food preservation twist can be drawn from them.

For example, the cover story this week is on chili, tied to yesterday's Super Bowl (Who Dat?!) (Chili: A Bowl of Red-blooded American Heaven). The article goes a bit into the history of the dish and a recitation of some of the variations, including somewhat modernized takes such as a Moroccan-inspired chili featuring harissa and Merguez sausage. Chili, of course, is a classic when it is pressure-canned. True homemade convenience food, and versatile in the ways it can be used. Here is a basic recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation: Chili con Carne. There are also recipes for home canned harissa.

A related article profiles the Dolores Canning Co. (Chili Bricks Built a Family Business). I've seen the bricks and I've eaten the chili (a classic SoCal flavor), but what I didn't know is that the company got its start with the paterfamilias canning menudo for sale. The chili was canned as well, but really took off when they switched to freezing. Moreover the name, "chili brick," comes from a dehydrated form of chili:

The unusual name, a reference to the the chili's shape when packaged and frozen, isn't just a clever marketing gimmick. The term hails from the earliest dehydrated chili "bricks" made by Texas cowboy cooks around 1850. Drying a mixture of pounded beef, chile peppers and salt and shaping it into stackable rectangles that could be easily rehydrated with boiling water came in handy on Mid-western cattle drives and Gold Rush treks to California.

Wow, a food preservation hat trick; three types of preservation in a couple of paragraphs.

A little later the article notes that the "family ... produces a handful of jarred pickled products, including jalapeño-laced pork rinds and pig's feet spiced with red chile peppers." Canning, freezing, drying and pickling; this company wouldn't exist without food preservation.

The article also includes some good cooking tips. The chili itself contains ground beef hearts along with ground beef, "to give it a more robust, meaty flavor." And Philippes uses stock to rehydrate the chili, for additional flavor. Rehydrating dried or condensed goods with a flavored liquid is a wonderful trick for all sorts of dried ingredients.

Finally, a there are a couple of brief paragraphs on the opening of Forage, a new Silver Lake restaurant that is aggressively local and seasonal (Restaurant Opening: Forage in Silver Lake Calls All Home Gardeners). So aggressive, in fact, that they encourage local gardeners to bring in their own produce, where the restaurant will turn it into something delicious:

Central to the restaurant's concept is its "foraging program," through which [chef-owners] Bacon and Kim, along with the help of a friend named Eugene Ahn, encourage diners to bring in fresh fruits and vegetables from their gardens. Then, Kim and Bacon will create a dish, pastry or drink around those ingredients.

I sure hope they make some preserves with the bounty they are likely to get.

Preservation Link Roundup 2/5/10

If you're interested in some good ideas for organizing your cabinets and spices while "Taking Stock," Serious Eats has a collection of suggestions (Weekend Cook and Tell Round Up: Catastrophic Cupboard Cleanup).

Cut Out + Keep has step-by-step instructions for turning any photo you have into a canning label (for the top of the can - on the disposable lid) using Microsoft Word (Canning Labels). Too bad I'm too cheap (and devoted to open source) to use Word; I prefer OpenOffice. I'll have to check to see whether I can do the same with OpenOffice.

The Chicago Tribune reports that Wisconsin's governor has signed into law a bill that will let home canners sell their goods at farmers' markets and the like without a professional kitchen license, so long as they sell less than $5,000 of goods a year (Wis. Gov Signs Martial Arts, Canning Bills).

Vermont's Burlington Free Press reported on a fund raiser to support local food for food shelters and schools - a "Souper Bowl" featuring soups made from local ingredients (Mad River Localvore's Souper Bowl Benefits Community). Not only is this a clever idea, but some of participants used canned and frozen ingredients in order to stay local in the middle of winter:

Like the local butternut squash and roasted peppers Flanagan also used, many ingredients had been pulled from freezers or canning jars, a reminder that it helps to plan when eating locally through the winter. Harwood Union High School’s chicken and corn chowder was made with local Neill Farm corn husked and shucked by the girls’ soccer team last fall as a community service and team-building project, said Paul Morris, food service director.