The Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home - Janet Chadwick [34]
mix vegetables in pan
chill vegetables in ice water
pack in rigid containers
Freezing Mixed Soup Vegetables
Best and quickest method
Wash 16 to 20 pounds of vegetables. Peel if necessary. Slice, dice, julienne, or chop coarsely.
Mix the vegetables in a large pan. Add water to cover. Bring to a boil. Remove from the heat; drain.
Cool in an ice bath for 30 minutes. Drain.
Stir well. Pack in rigid containers. Leave 1-inch headspace. Seal. Freeze.
tip To freeze purées, chop the vegetables and cook in a minimum of water until mushy tender. Do not add seasoning. Purée in a hand-cranked strainer, blender, food mill, or fine sieve. Cool quickly and pack in rigid containers; leave 1-inch headspace.
CHAPTER 5
Preserving Fruits
MOST OF THE TECHNIQUES THAT APPLY to preserving vegetables apply to preserving fruit. Cold storage works well for apples, grapes, pears, and citrus fruit. Tray-freezing is quick for berries. Apples, cherries, peaches, nectarines, pears, and plums can all be canned. Drying makes sense for fruit, too. Quick snacks of sliced dried fruits or fruit leathers are real kid-pleasers.
As with vegetables, fruits contain enzymes that affect their quality after harvest. With some fruits, natural sugars rapidly convert to starch after harvest; the challenge there is to get the fruit into the freezer or canner or dehydrator as soon as possible. With others, the challenge is to prevent the natural enzymes from causing the fruit to darken and discolor.
Antioxidants Prevent Discoloration
SOME FRUITS, ESPECIALLY APPLES, peaches, and pears, will discolor if left exposed to the air. The way to avoid this discoloration is to work quickly and in small batches, and to treat them with any of the following antioxidants:
A commercial preparation such as Fruit-Fresh, according to label directions.
One teaspoon or 3,000 mg ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to 1 gallon of water. Dip the fruit in as you go along. Or add ¼ teaspoon ascorbic acid per quart as you pack fruit into jars if you didn’t soak them beforehand. Ascorbic acid in crystalline form can be obtained at drugstores.
A solution of 5 tablespoons lemon juice to 1 gallon cold water. Slice fruit into solution before packing. Work quickly and drain thoroughly; do not leave fruit in water longer than 15 minutes.
Please note: Before you start freezing, drying, or canning, turn back to chapter 3 for a quick review of the basic techniques. Assembling all your equipment, setting up for a productive work flow, and ensuring the safety of your methods will help to save you time in the long run.
Sugar Syrups
FOR CANNING AND FREEZING MOST SLICED FRUITS, a sugar syrup is recommended. The sugar is not needed as a preservative, but it does help the fruit maintain a good texture and color. You can substitute honey or maple syrup for the sugar, sweetened or unsweetened fruit juice for the syrup, or plain water. I find that a light sugar syrup makes an excellent product; using unsweetened juices or water leaves the fruit mushy and flat-tasting.
Figure that you will need ½ to ¾ cup syrup or liquid for each pint of fruit, or 1 to 1½ cups syrup or liquid for each quart.
SUGAR SYRUPS FOR CANNING AND FREEZING A 7-QUART LOAD
At the end of each fruit entry, I have included instructions for making juice. Since quality fruit juices are readily available in the supermarket, you may not feel the necessity of making juice. However, I’ve found it worth while to make juice from homegrown fruits to use in jelly later in the year, when I am freed from gardening and other preserving tasks, so I included the information here. Juices can be frozen (never skimp on the headspace if you are using glass jars) or canned in a boiling-water bath. I can unsweetened juices as most of my juices end up as jelly, where the amount of sugar is specified by the recipe. If you are planning to drink