Putting Food By - Janet Greene [101]
It dissolves easily in cold water or juices. Figure how much you’ll need for one session at a time (see individual instructions), and prepare enough.
For Wet pack with syrup. Add dissolved ascorbic acid to cold syrup and stir.
For Wet pack with sugar. Just before packing, sprinkle the needed amount of ascorbic acid—dissolved in 2 or 3 tablespoons of cold water—over the fruit before you add the sugar.
For Wet pack in crushed fruits and purées. Add dissolved ascorbic acid to the prepared fruit; stir well.
In fruit juices. Add dry ascorbic acid to the juice and stir to dissolve.
In Dry pack (no sugar). Just before packing, sprinkle dissolved ascorbic acid over the fruit; mix gently but thoroughly to coat each piece.
Ascorbic Acid Tablets
It takes 3000 milligrams (mg) worth of ascorbic acid to equal 1 teaspoon of the crystalline form. Crush the tablets between the nested bowls of two large spoons, and dissolve in a little water. The fillers present in all such tablets are no problem.
Citric Acid
Drugstores carry citric acid in pure crystalline form—but again, it is expensive bought this way. National and ethnic grocery stores (and what treasures they offer!) sell it in bulk, chunked like chopped nuts, or cut fine as “sour salt” for kosher cooking, or as “lemon salt” for Greek cooking.
You need three times more citric acid than ascorbic acid to help prevent discoloration. Dissolve the required amount in 2 or 3 tablespoons of cold water. For the individual fruits, add it as for dissolved ascorbic acid, above.
Lemon Juice
A long-time favorite, it contains both citric and ascorbic acids. An equal amount of crystalline ascorbic acid is six times more effective than lemon juice—which also imparts its own flavor to the food.
Steaming
Steaming in a single layer over boiling water is enough to retard darkening in some fruits (for example, apples). The treatments described above are easier, though: they take 3 to 5 minutes, depending on altitude.
Important Note about Sugar: it is too cumbersome to indicate in every individual instance later on that sweetening with sugar—or with any other natural or non-nutritive sweetener—is OPTIONAL. But it is. The amounts and types of sweet syrups and sugar are intended as maximum indications only, and are given for the use of people who are used to added sweetening for a special purpose, and want to include it in the pack.
THE VARIOUS PACKS
A few fruits freeze well without sweetening, but most have a better texture and flavor when packed in sugar or a sugar syrup.
The size and texture of the fruit influences the form in which you pack it for freezing. The intended future use is your deciding factor.
Fruit to freeze whole, in pieces, juiced, crushed or puréed is packed Dry or Wet.
Dry Pack (Always Sugarless)
The simplest way is just to put whole or cut-up firm fruits in containers (do not add a thing), seal, and freeze. This is especially good for blueberries, cranberries, currants, figs, gooseberries, and rhubarb.
If you have the space, spread raspberries, blueberries, currants, or other similar berries one layer deep on a tray or cookie sheet and set in the freezer. When berries are frozen hard, pour them into polyethylene bags and seal. They won’t stick together. Later the bag may be opened, the needed amount taken out, the bag reclosed and returned to the freezer.
Versatile Dry pack lets you use the fruits as if they were fresh.
Wet Packs
This means adding some liquid—such as its own natural juice, sugar syrup, crushed fruit, or water.
Wet pack with sugar. Plain sugar is sprinkled over and gently mixed with the prepared fruit until juice is drawn out and sugar is dissolved. Then you pack and freeze. Fruit fixed this way is especially good for cooked dishes and fruit cocktails. This has less liquid than the Wet pack with syrup.
Wet pack with syrup. Fruit, whole or in pieces, is packed in containers