Blackberry Jelly

Originally uploaded by nodigio

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/dining/27cann.html?_r=1&hpw

“People want to take back their food and their skills from the industrial giants.”

People are also looking for thrifty, crafty ways to eat well.

There are many, many excellent books out there on home canning, and I’ll provide links to a few of my favorites at the end. Because there are such excellent resources available, I won’t go into detail here on the how-to’s. I will, however, talk a bit about the “why”.

Why can your own food? In days gone by, when farm wives put up enough food to feed large numbers of people (family, farm hands, neighbors, guests…) because there were no convenient grocery stores nearby, canning was a huge undertaking; hot, exhausting, and sometimes dangerous. We still have memories of those days inside us – the huge cauldrons of bubbling fruits over an open flame or atop the stove, clouds of steam, rows of heated jars. It’s a primitive, fascinating scene etched into our memories and it’s not accurate anymore. With small batch canning, what was once a summer-long undertaking is now done in an hour or two here and there. Canning in small batches allows you to tinker more with the recipes until you get exactly the taste you want, and you control all the ingredients.

You can still do the big batch days long canning and some people make it a community event, some to preserve the gleanings from commercial farms as food for the hungry and homeless, others because their CSA hosts weekend canning events to preserve their huge bountiful harvests, and still others because they like it.

For the rest of us, small batch canning is our preferred method. We can harvest our fruits, herbs, and veggies from the local farmer’s market or pick-your-own patch, or even from the grocery store. We can make just our favorite jellies and jams, or we can preserve as much of our food as possible. Those who live alone or have small families benefit from being able to preserve just a bit, here and there, as both the season and the whim strike.

Small batch canning doesn’t require acres of counter space, either, something those who live in small apartments or houses lack. Nor do we need huge pressure canners – sometimes an ordinary pressure cooker is enough. There are a few useful gadgets – tongs for lifting up hot jars, a magnetic lid lifter for handling sterilized jar lids, a rack to hold the jars inside the water bath or pressure cooker/canner and obviously canning jars and lids – you’ll need http://tinyurl.com/panzea . Other than those items, you’re likely to have the rest of the equipment already or can acquire it easily enough.

Now, I’m not a person who insists there is one right true and only way to go about doing something and if you want to use pectin in your jellies instead of rendering your own pectin from little green apples, I say go for it! The goal isn’t to be a purist, it’s to can food you love eating so you’ll have it on hand to eat. Once you can your own produce (whether harvested off the shelves at the produce stand or from your patio), you may never go back to commercially canned. In the here and now, canning your own food means getting food that tastes marvelous to you.

Canning your own food goes beyond taste, if you need more reasons. By canning your own food, not only do you create recipes you love, you know exactly what’s in the jar because you put it there. You can be a bit fanatical (like me) and know exactly where your tomatoes grew and by whom, but maybe it’s just enough to know tomatoes were on sale at the farmer’s market and the family manning the booth looked like they knew all about their tomatoes. You won’t be blindsided by salmonella outbreaks in the peanut butter because you canned your own. And if you have food sensitivities or allergies, you won’t have to worry if the food manufacturer slipped soy into your peanut butter or gluten into your strawberry jelly. If you’re on a low-salt diet, you won’t have to worry about the salt content of your canned peas. And you don’t have to wonder if your food is spoiled. Commercially canned foods may look good and harbor botulism or salmonella or more inside them, but home-canned spoiled food looks spoiled. You can tell at a glance if the food is bad – the lid leaks, the lid is bulging, the jar looks crusty, it’s bubbling, or it looks a funny color. It may even have a noticeable unpleasant aroma if it spoiled enough.

Most known food spoilers – mold, bacteria, yeasts, enzymes – can’t survive heat for long so questionable food can be poured into a pot and boiled up again for 10 minutes. It will be safe to eat then, but it may not be pretty or tasty anymore. Food ‘s food, and if you’re hungry enough, looks and taste won’t matter as much as a full belly. Keep this tip in mind in case of serious food shortages or disaster.

The canning process is much easier when you’re actually doing it than it seems by the description in the books. For jams, jellies, and pickles, a water bath http://tinyurl.com/pce3xe method is the easiest to do – simply cook your jam or jelly; pour them into hot, clean jars; put on the lids; put the jars into a pot of boiling water deep enough to completely cover the jars; boil the recommended amount of time; then remove the jars from the pot and set on a towel on your kitchen counter or table to cool.

There are two low-tech tests to make sure your home-canned jars are well sealed: lifting the jar by the lid, and pressing the lid to make sure the center is sucked down. If you can hear, you’ll also hear the lids popping as they seal. Should a jar fail to seal right out of the processing, you can re-process it right away. If a jar fails the sealed test later on, either boil the food for 10 minutes before eating it (it should reach an interior temperature of 165ºF) or discard it. You can keep the jar and lid ring, though, and sterilize them. Just buy new lids.

If you want to can vegetables and meats, you’ll need a pressure canner/cooker as they lack the necessary acids, sugars, or salts that would inhibit spoilers. If you don’t plan to do a lot of this type of canning, and cost is a concern, start out with an inexpensive canner http://tinyurl.com/qyl6c2 or http://tinyurl.com/ov5jj2 but if you plan to can a lot, invest in a better http://tinyurl.com/owkmr7 quality canner

“Putting Food By,” by Janet Greene , Ruth Hertzberg and Beatrice Vaughan (Plume, 1992) http://tinyurl.com/pypn2o ;

“The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving,” by Judy Kingry and Lauren Devine (Robert Rose, 2006) http://tinyurl.com/odepk4 ;

“Preserving the Taste,” by Edon Waycott (Hearst Books, 1996) http://tinyurl.com/oq49u7 ;

“Well-Preserved,” by Eugenia Bone (Clarkson Potter, 2009) http://tinyurl.com/r3gzlf ,

“Joy of Pickling” by Linda Ziedrich (Harvard Common Press, 2009) http://tinyurl.com/o6guxo ;

“Joy of Jams” by Linda Ziedrich (Harvard Common Press, 2009) http://tinyurl.com/px4tph ;

“Complete Guide to Home Canning and Preserving” by the USDA (Dover Publications, 2009) http://tinyurl.com/o79eht ;

www.uga.edu/nchfp/
www.freshpreserving.com
www.pickyourown.org