Putting Food By - Janet Greene [158]
Toward the end of the cooking time, wash and scald four 1-quart canning jars, and prepare their lids; hold in scalding water. Quickly ladle boiling-hot mincemeat into jars, leaving a good ½ inch of headroom, and adjust lids; process in a finishing B–W Bath (212 F/100 C) for 15 minutes. Remove jars from the canner and complete seals if using bailed jars. Makes 4 quarts, enough for four 9-inch pies.
If you wish, cut in small pieces 2 tablespoons of butter or margarine for each 1 quart of mincemeat, and press the pieces into the filling when you build your pies.
This mincemeat is excellent used for small holiday tarts: see no-fail Pie Pastry in Chapter 23, “Putting By Presents for Christmas.”
• Adjustment for my altitude_________________.
20
Curing with Salt and Smoke
In the preceding chapter we dealt with one type of salting; brining cucumbers to “pickle” them by fermentation. Here we’ll start the first—and longer—of our two main sections with Salting, breaking it down into treating vegetables and then meats. The other major section, Smoking, will give the Why/How of smoking meats, and, as an example of the treatment for fish, coho salmon from the Great Lakes.
CONVERSIONS FOR CURING
Do look at the conversions for metrics, with their workable roundings-off, and for altitude—both in Chapter 3—and apply them.
SALTING
We don’t discuss curing two sorts of food: (1) the kind that cannot stand up to the taste of salt—fruit is obvious in this case; and (2) extremely perishable high-protein foods whose flavor, even though enhanced by a little salt, would be ruined by the process of heavy salting—organ meats are an example. (So is fish roe; but what, then, about caviar? Best leave this to the experts.)
Still, there are many cured foods that must have most of their salt washed out before they can be cooked and eaten. Or they were salted so lightly that they must be refrigerated; or, if they really are to be put by, they must be canned or frozen. In the next chapter, “Drying,” there are instructions for meat (Jerky) and for cod.
What Salting Does
A concentrated brine—which is salt + juice drawn from the food by the salt (called “dry-salting”), or salt + water if juice is limited or not easily extracted (called “brining”)—cuts down the activity of spoilage micro-organisms in direct relation to the strength of the solution. The following general proportions give the idea, with percentages reflecting ratios by weight of salt to water, not sophisticated salinometer readings.
Note: the salt used in the instructions is granulated, food-grade, regular pickling and canning salt—don’t use gourmet sea salt and never use “solar” salt evaporated in open basins and unrefined, and never use regular table salt with iodine or “free-flowing” additives. The bulk of salt changes with its cut, but in the following examples it’s simpler to consider 1 pound of salt equaling 1½ cups (12 fluid ounces) in volume.
A 5 percent solution (1 pound of salt to 19 pints of juice/water) reduces the growth of most bacteria.
A 10 percent solution (1 pound of salt to 9 pints of juice/water) prevents the growth of most bacteria.
A solution from 15 percent (1 pound of salt to 5½ pints of juice/water) to 20 percent (1 pound of salt to 4 pints of juice/water) prevents the growth of salt-tolerant bacteria.
The amounts of salt given in the individual instructions are designed to give the necessary protection to the food being cured, provided that any further safeguards are followed as well. Sometimes a brine is added to make sure that enough liquid is present to carry