Pomona’s Pectin is an alternative to conventional pectin, which allows you to make jams with reduced, or no, sugar.

Due to the very mild winter we have had this year, strawberries have come into season early and very sweet. What else could I do apart from make some jam? And as I have Pomona’s Pectin, and some local honey, well… that’s pretty much a match made in heaven!

Prepare your boiling water bath canner along with 7 jam jars, lids, and rings.

Put the strawberries and calcium water into a large cooking pot. Mix the pectin into the honey very thoroughly. Bring the strawberries and calcium water to a full boil, stir in the blended honey and pectin while returning the strawberries to a full boil. Once the jam has returned to a full boil, allow it to stand for a couple of minutes then stir thoroughly – this short rest should make sure that the fruit gets distributed evenly throughout the jam.

This will make a jam that is semi-solid with a nice juicy texture. For a thicker jam, try a sliding scale of up to double the pectin and the calcium water. If you double the pectin and calcium the jam should set almost solid.

Put the jam into the jars, boil for 10 minutes, allow to cool for at least 12 hours, label, and store in a cool, dark place. Jam!

Check this ingredients list against commercially made jams. What do you notice? No preservatives, no High Fructose Corn Syrup, no artificial colouring. Just fruit, pectin, honey, calcium, and a little water. In other words… food.

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The whole reason I make canned/preserved foods is to be able to eat them when they are out of season and thus expensive and shipped in over long distances. But once you’ve got them, what do you do with them?

Last year I made a couple of different pie fillings while the fruits were in season and cheap: blueberry pie and cherry pie.

For Pancake Day I decided to go in a slightly different direction and made a clafoutis with canned cherry pie filling. It didn’t last very long!

BATTER

• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup flour

Preheat oven to 350F.

Place the batter ingredients in your food processor and blend at top speed for about 1 minute to make a very wet batter (if you don’t have a food processor, beat gently to mix all the ingredients and pass batter through a fine sieve to make a very smooth, no-lumps batter).

Lightly butter your skillet and set over moderate heat on the stove. Pour in just enough of the batter to make a thin layer on the bottom of the skillet and heat until the batter is just set. Remove from the heat, gently spread your pie filling over the set batter and top with the rest of the batter. Put into the heated oven and bake for about an hour or until the batter is golden brown and delicious. Serve warm, sprinkled with powdered sugar, hot tea or coffee, and enjoy!

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Now that we are in the new year and produce is beginning to wake from its long winter slumber, canning time is back! With my focus on canning only what’s in season, winter can be hard as there really isn’t a lot to can.

But the good point about winter is that you get the benefit of the foods you canned over the spring, summer, and fall, and you can plan accordingly for the next year.

This year, 2012, I intend focusing more on veggies and low, or no, added sugar jams. Whether you need to be mindful of sugar for health or diet reasons, I hope you’ll find some of the upcoming recipes useful.

See you soon!

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Sweet Potato and Chickpea Curry

2 medium red onions, peeled
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 bird’s eye pepper, Thai chili or other very hot small pepper with its seeds
1 2 ½ to 3 inch piece of ginger, peeled and cut into chunks
3 tbsp vegetable oil
½ tsp hot red pepper flakes
½ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 ½ tsp ground turmeric
3 cardamom pods, lightly crushed or 1 tsp ground cardamom
Salt to taste
2 pounds (about 3 medium) sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into ½ to 1 inch cubes (I am a scrub and chop skin-on kind of guy)
1 ¾ cups coconut milk (one can)
1 tbsp tamarind paste
2 ¼ cups hot vegetable broth
4 to 5 cups (about 4 cans) cooked chickpeas
2 tbsp chopped cilantro leaves

1. In a food processor, combine onions, garlic hot pepper and ginger. Pulse until finely chopped. Place oil in a large pan over medium-low heat. Add chopped onion mixture and saute until softened, about 5 minutes.
2. Add hot pepper flakes and spices. Stir to mix. Add sweet potatoes and stir until well covered in spices. Stir in coconut milk.
3. Dissolve tamarind paste in hot broth and add to pan. Bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, until sweet potatoes are just tender, about 25 minutes
4. Add chickpeas and simmer until heated through, about 5 minutes. Adjust salt to taste. Serve over rice.

Note on spiciness: this dish comes out medium hot to hot in terms of spice. You can swap out the bird peppers for jalapenos, or even omit the added chilli altogether if you want to make it more to the medium spice. You can also add sour cream or yoghurt to the dish to reduce the heat.

The chickpeas are rich in many trace minerals your body needs. The sweet potatoes are ridiculously good for you from the perspective of fibre, minerals, vitamins, etc. This recipe is also trivially easy to double in size if you need to serve a large group, or just want lots of leftovers. It also tastes awesome.

PRICE BREAKDOWN
Buying everything in the store (the no other option way)
2lb sweet potatoes at 99c/lb (I often get them for half that price)
onions – about 50c
chickpeas – $1.19 a can
coconut milk – $1.39 to $2.39 a can
vegetable broth – tends to be around 79c a quart
spices, ginger, etc – about $1
Total store cost: around $10.50

Doing it the Addicted To Canning way
sweet potatoes – $2
chickpeas – 2 pints – 50c
onions – 50c
coconut milk bought from ethnic stores – $1.09
spices, ginger, etc – about $1
vegetable broth – made from leftovers, so basically 0c
Total AtC cost: around $5.09

Just by canning your own chickpeas and vegetable stock, you can more than halve the cost of the dish.

The cost per serving of this ridiculously good for you dish, based on 6 to 8 servings:
STORE BOUGHT – $1.32 to $1.75 per serving
AtC WAY: $0.64 to $0.85 per serving

It’s cheap, healthy, vegan, tastes awesome, and if you serve it over basmati rice it is complete protein.

What more can I say?

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If you want to know how to preserve food by pressure canning, this article is what you need. You may want to check out my boiling water bath article as well.

First, what foods must you pressure can? Low-acid foods. In this context, low acid is defined as “pH 4.7 or higher”. Vegetables, meat, fish, stocks, and finished foods like stews or soups all need to be pressure canned. Tomatoes are a special case as they are right on the cusp of pH 4.6, so they can be canned using either the boiling water bath method (with added acid like lemon juice or citric acid) or by using pressure.

Second, what is a pressure canner? Can I just use my pressure cooker?

Pressure canner and jiggle weight ( jiggle weight is the column to right of pressure gauge with ring either side)

The simple answer is “no”. Most domestic pressure cookers are not rated or constructed to take the sustained pressures for which a pressure canner is designed. When processing beans with my easy prepare method, for example, I am canning at 10psi for 90 minutes. Unless your pressure cooker specifically states it is rated for pressure canning, it is not suited to this task. Canners like the Presto 23qt canner I have (see picture) cost around $80 and are a worthwhile investment – you can use it as a pressure cooker, pressure canner, AND as a boiling water bath canner.

A note on pressure canner gauges. If you intend using the pressure gauge, you must get the gauge checked for accuracy every year. This is a free service by most county extension services in the USA. I use a jiggle weight because I can always tell when the canner is at the right pressure – I listen for the “pshht pshht” noise of the jiggle.

Third, you need lids and bands. New jars come with lids and bands, but you should pick up extra lids when you can get them at a good price. The bands are reusable for many canning sessions – they only need to be discarded if they show signs of rust or corrosion.

And finally, you need something to put in the jars – the “jar contents”.

PREPARATION STEPS

If you’ve already read my article on boiling water canning you already know the first few preparation steps, and can skip down to Putting on the squeeze.

JARS
To start a pressure canning session, first clean the jars you are going to use. Running them through the dishwasher works well; if you don’t have a dishwasher you can wash them in the sink. Once they have been cleaned, put them in the canner, fill the canner with hot tap water to the appropriate fill line marked on the inside of the canner (see your canner’s instruction sheet) and put a little hot tap water into the jars to keep them from falling over. Once the jars are resting in the hot tap water, put the lid on the canner to retain heat, put the canner on the hob, and set it to a medium-low temperature.

This is all before you do anything to the “jar contents”. You are aiming to have the jars at a good hot temperature before filling them with the “jar contents” – too much of a temperature difference between the jar and the contents leads to thermal shock, also known as “glass shrapnel and incendiary contents spread across the kitchen”. Thermal shock is generally considered A Bad Thing(TM) and is definitely to be avoided.

Once the “jar contents” are starting to cook, increase the heat under the canner with the aim of getting it to a boil once the “jar contents” are ready. It’ll take you a little practice to know exactly when to turn the heat up, but don’t sweat it too much – you can keep the “jar contents” nicely hot for a few extra minutes if needed, and it doesn’t really matter if the empty jars are heating for longer than needed.

LIDS
Give the lids a good clean with plenty of soap and hot tap water and then rinse thoroughly. I have seen many people saying to boil the lids and then keep them in the hot water straight after boiling, but according to the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (which I cannot recommend strongly enough – it is absolutely essential for a home canner), all that is needed is to keep them to a simmer – 180F/82C.

Once your lids and jars are ready, you can ladle in your jar contents (the soup, stock, stew, beans, etc.) and then seal the jars.

SEALING THE JARS
Once each jar is filled to the appropriate level (usually within 1/2 to 1 inch of the top of the jar depending on the recipe) you should wipe off the rim of the jar to make sure that there is nothing on the rim to interfere with a proper seal. Use a paper towel sprayed with a 50/50 mix of white vinegar and water to wipe off the rim. Lift lids out one by one and place on the rim. Screw down the bands to “finger tight”: use your fingertips to screw the lid down until you can’t tighten it any more, but do not tighten the lid as tight as you possibly can. The purpose of this step is to secure the lid on, not to seal it completely – there needs to be a little looseness in the band to allow air to escape, but equally you don’t want water to get into the jar. The jar seal comes from the vacuum you will create in the water bath stage.

PUTTING ON THE SQUEEZE
Once your jars, lids, and “jar contents” are ready, it’s time to put them into the canner on the rack at the bottom.

Place the lid on the canner, bring the canner to a full boil, and vent the canner for 10 minutes. Count the 10 minutes from when the stream of steam is running full blast – on my canner I get a whistling noise at this point. You can tell that the appropriate point is reached when the steam is a solid column – this is when you start your timer.

Once the 10 minute vent is completed, put the weight on the vent and process for the amount of time specified in the recipe. Once the processing time is up, take the pot off the heat and walk away. You need to let the pressure canner return to normal pressure. This will take a variable amount of time, but you cannot hurry this step – remember thermal shock! Once the pressure gauge has dropped to normal, leave the canner for an additional 10 minutes then take the lid off the canner. Use your jar lifter or tongs to take the jars out of the hot water to cool.

COOLING THE JARS WITHOUT THERMAL SHOCK
The best way I have found to cool jars without having any danger of thermal shock (hot jars and cool countertops do not mix) is to use a cookie rack. This allows free air circulation around the jars without putting them onto any surface which could turn them into bombs.

Leave the jars overnight; the next day you can take the screw bands off and test the seal.

TESTING THE SEAL
Testing the seal is easy. If you can lift the jar up by the lid, the seal is good. If you can’t, the seal is bad! If a jar didn’t seal properly, treat it as an eating jar and just finish the contents within a few days or freeze the jar and its contents for later use.

RULE OF THUMB
The rule of thumb when calculating how long to pressure can for: look up each ingredient on the USDA list separately. Note the longest time any single ingredient requires. Pressure can for that amount of time – the longest amount of time required by any single ingredient.

You were waiting for me to say what the jar contents are? Well… that’s up to you. Go for it!

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One of the benefits of going to a farmer’s market is that you can get some absolute steals when they are at the end of their produce and want to go home.

I got 1.5 bushels of tomatoes for $4. So far I have canned 7 qts of tomatoes and 7 qts of basic meat sauce, and I still have 0.5 bushel left.

What to do with that other half bushel… so many options!

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This article should serve as a handy reference point for anyone who is unsure how to can by using the Boiling Water Bath, or Hot Water Bath, method. You might want to have a read of my article on setup costs as well.

The technique I am describing here is only for products that can be dealt with in a hot water bath process, or “high acid foods”. A few examples of high acid foods are jams, jellies, pickles, relishes, and chutneys. Foods such as vegetables, meat, fish, stocks and broths are “low acid foods” and need to be dealt with by pressure canning, which I will deal with in a separate article.

First, you need a boiling water bath canner:

Canner and jars

Next you need some jars. Exactly what size you use will vary depending on recipe. Jelly jars hold 1 cup(8 US fl oz)/250ml (centre of rack in picture above). Pint jars hold 2 cups/500ml (centre left and right of rack in picture above). Quart jars hold 4 cups/1 litre (back of the rack in picture above). I know that these are not exact conversions of US fl oz to ml, but the volume difference between the metric and American style jars doesn’t make any difference for our purposes – the recipes and the processing times are the same.

Third, you need lids and bands. New jars come with lids and bands, but you should pick up extra lids when you can get them at a good price. The bands are reusable for many canning sessions – they only need to be discarded if they show signs of rust or corrosion.

And finally, you need something to put in the jars – the “jar contents”.

PREPARATION STEPS

JARS
To start a boiling water bath session, first clean the jars you are going to use. Running them through the dishwasher works well; if you don’t have a dishwasher you can wash them in the sink. Once they have been cleaned, put them in the rack, place the rack in the canner, then fill the canner with hot water (from the tap is fine) until the jars are covered to about a finger width above the rims. Once the jars are covered with hot tap water, put the lid on the canner, put the canner on the hob, and set it to a medium-low temperature.

This is all before you do anything to the “jar contents”. You are aiming to have the jars at a good hot temperature before filling them with the “jar contents” – too much of a temperature difference between the jar and the contents leads to thermal shock, also known as “glass shrapnel and incendiary contents spread across the kitchen”. Thermal shock is generally considered A Bad Thing(TM) and is definitely to be avoided.

Once the “jar contents” are starting to cook, increase the heat under the canner with the aim of getting it to a full boil once the “jar contents” are ready. It’ll take you a little practice to know exactly when to turn the heat up, but don’t sweat it too much – you can keep the “jar contents” nicely hot for a few extra minutes if needed, and it doesn’t really matter if the empty jars are boiling for longer than needed.

LIDS
Give the lids a good clean with plenty of soap and hot tap water and then rinse thoroughly. I have seen many people saying to boil the lids and then keep them in the hot water straight after boiling, but according to the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (which I cannot recommend strongly enough – it is absolutely essential for a home canner), all that is needed is to keep them to a simmer – 180F/82C.

Once your lids and jars are ready, you can ladle in your jar contents (the pickles, jam, relish, etc.) and then seal the jars.

SEALING THE JARS
Once each jar is filled to the appropriate level (usually within 1/4 to 1/2 inch of the top of the jar depending on the recipe) you should wipe off the rim of the jar to make sure that there is nothing on the rim to interfere with a proper seal. Use a paper towel sprayed with a 50/50 mix of white vinegar and water to wipe off the rim. Lift lids out one by one and place on the rim. Screw down the bands to “finger tight”: use your fingertips to screw the lid down until you can’t tighten it any more, but do not tighten the lid as tight as you possibly can. The purpose of this step is to secure the lid on, not to seal it completely – there needs to be a little looseness in the band to allow air to escape, but equally you don’t want water to get into the jar. The jar seal comes from the vacuum you will create in the water bath stage.

HOT WATER BATH
Once your jars, lids, and “jar contents” are ready, it’s time to put them on the wire rack and lower them into the hot water, which should be at a boil at this stage. You want to see a stream of bubbles come up from the jars.

Place the lid on the canner, and process for the amount of time specified in the recipe. Once the processing time is up, take the pot off the heat, take the lid off the canner (carefully! you don’t want to get caught by the steam!) and leave for 5 minutes before lifting the rack out of the hot water and hooking it over the edge of the canner. Use your jar lifter or tongs to take the jars out of the hot water to cool.

COOLING THE JARS
The best way I have found to cool jars without having any danger of thermal shock (hot jars and cool countertops do not mix) is to use a cookie rack. This allows free air circulation around the jars without putting them onto any surface which could turn them into jam bombs.

Leave the jars overnight; the next day you can take the screw bands off and test the seal.

TESTING THE SEAL
Testing the seal is easy. If you can lift the jar up by the lid, the seal is good. If you can’t, the seal is bad! If a jar didn’t seal properly, treat it as an eating jar and just finish the contents within a few days, or as normal (pickles last longer than jams when opened).

You were waiting for me to say what the jar contents are? Well… that’s up to you. Go for it!

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The modern grocery store is a wonder. You have all sorts of produce available all the year round – strawberries in December and lemons in July. If you look carefully, you will notice that all of the produce is uniform – everything of one type is pretty much the same size, shape, and colour as the rest. All the apples are about the same size, all the cucumbers are similar lengths and thicknesses, and so on.

There is a good reason for this uniformity – it allows the produce to stack nicely, and it is very visually appealing. The downside is that the produce tastes kind of like styrofoam. Watery styrofoam.

As a home canner you can take a different approach. You can shop at a farmer’s market and buy only what is in season, which means produce that is at the peak of freshness and nutritional value, as well as bursting with flavour. You can also sometimes get great bargains at the end of the day if you walk up, cash in hand: the farmers will often allow you to take the bruised fruit off their hands at a fraction of the store price. You get food which is ripe, tasty, and ready to can.

The other thing you can do is to go for the ugly produce. If you want tomatoes for canning, who cares if they fell out of the ugly tree? The ugliest ones are frequently stunningly cheap, too. As you’re going to chop, strain, and can them, no-one need ever know how hideous they were.

Go shop at your local farmer’s market and see what bargains you can get. Good luck!

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I am in the lucky position where the farmer’s market comes to our office once a week. This is a great way to get people to eat more fruit and veg (put it right in front of them!) so I bought some pluots* and proceeded to make jam with them!

4 pints of sorted, scrubbed, and chopped pluots – about 3lbs
1/4 cup lemon juice – fresh squeezed or bottled
1/2 cup Water
5 cups white sugar
1 packet pectin
1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil (I use plain olive oil – not the extra virgin stuff)

Put the chopped pluots in the pot with the water, lemon juice, pectin, and sugar. Heat gently while stirring vigorously to ensure the pectin is completely incorporated into the mix.

Once the pectin is fully incorporated, apply medium-high heat while stirring frequently until the mixture comes to a full, rolling boil – a boil that cannot be stirred down. Keep boiling and stirring for at least 1 minute then take off the heat. If there is a lot of foam stir in the 1/2 teaspoon of vegetable oil and allow to rest for 5 minutes.

Once the 5 minutes is up, stir the mixture, jar, lid, ring, and boiling water bath process for 10 minutes, Yield: 8 to 10 jelly jars (1/2 pint).

* pluot: hybrid between a plum and an apricot

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Apologies for missing out on the July seasonal eating post – I have been busy canning like a madman, because pretty much everything is in season!

Broccoli
Carrots
Tomatoes
Squash
Onions
Potatoes
Cucumber
Eggplant
Beans
Corn
Peas
Garlic
Herbs
Basil
Cantaloupes
Figs
Peaches
Muscadine
Watermelon
Honeydew

What can you make with these ingredients? Pickled cucumbers, relishes, chutney, jams, pie fillings, fruit butters… the list goes on.

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