Food Preservation

Sweet Black Cherry Pie Filling

July 28, 2010 by Rebecca 17 Comments

I used to think I despised cherries.

This was some high-heresy for a girl raised awfully close to ‘The Cherry Capital of the World’.* Why I thought cherries were gross I can attribute to two reasons: A) I didn’t like the whole spit-the-pit thing. I was a tidy child. B) The only way to eat cherries sans pits, as far as I knew, was maraschino cherries and I still maintain that those are disgusting.

*Nothing like some trivia to de-cobweb the old gray matter. Does anyone out there know which area I mean?

I realized the error of my ways long after moving out of state*. I was at a friend’s house when she insisted I try a beautiful red cherry she had picked earlier that day. I was blown away by the intense, tart, sweet flavor. And I didn’t even mind spitting the pit. My devotion was deep and instant. But DANG they were expensive. On sale, loss-leader sale even, I couldn’t find pre-picked cherries for anything less than $2.99 per pound. I lived much too far from any cherry orchards to make it cost-effective to drive to one to pick my own. Then we moved again.

*I have a major food regret from my childhood. I wish I hadn’t been such an anti-cherry and anti-morel mushroom picky-pants. I had both overflowing in my backyard free for the taking.

I am now fortunate enough to live in Amish country where the bulk-food buying and canning mindsets of my ‘Dutch’ neighbors combine to provide me with ample and affordable supplies of pre-picked fruits and vegetables at prices that would make grocery store managers reach for the antacids. This year, I pitted sixty pounds of sweet black cherries and I’m still canning my way through thirty pounds of pre-pitted sour cherries. The black sweet cherries rang in at $0.70 per pound and the pre-pitted sour cherries came in at a slightly pricier (but still bargain-basement price of) $1.26 per pound. You already know about the Rum-Soaked Preserved Cherries and the Boozy Cherry Molasses, and I’ve been promising my Sweet Black Cherry Pie Filling recipe for an (indecently) awful long time. How many of you are waiting out there languishing with a whipped ganache filled tart in hand just hanging on for a pie filling that doesn’t taste and look like glorified maraschino cherries and doesn’t plop out of a pull-tab can? I am so sorry. I blame my children.*

*Because I can. Yes, I can. A little laughter please? Can’t a girl get a little giggle for politico-culinary humour?

Why make your own instead of buying the cheap stuff? For the usual reasons; flavor and health. Store-bought canned pie filling can’t hold a candle to homemade in terms of flavor. But just as compelling is the long list of nasty additives and artificial flavors present in the storebought stuff. There are five -count ‘em- FIVE ingredients in homemade Sweet Black Cherry Pie Filling, all of which are readily available and pronounceable.

Ah, Sweet Black Cherry Pie Filling. What can’t you do? Sure, you can make a good old-fashioned cherry pie with it, but you can also top cheesecakes with it, layer it with brownies and whipped cream in a mean trifle, pour it on top of softened cream cheese to serve with graham crackers or make a deadly no-bake Black Forest Truffle Tart. You want some of this on your pantry shelves. Seriously.

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Sweet Black Cherry Pie Filling: Printer Friendly Version

From The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (see here for book details!)

Yield: about 8 pint (500 mL) or 4 quart (1 L) jars

Ingredients:

10 pounds frozen sweet black cherries, thawed in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup ClearJel (Or Thermaflo or Permaflo)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup lemon juice

Position a colander over a large bowl. Pour partially thawed cherries into the colander, cover lightly with plastic wrap and leave on the counter top, stirring occasionally, until you have collected 7 cups of juice in the bowl. Set aside the juice and the cherries.

Prepare the canner, jars and lids. For more information, see our basic canning how-to’s.

In a large stainless steel or enameled stockpot, whisk together the sugar, ClearJel and cinnamon. When it is evenly combined, whisk in 4 cups of the cherry juice*. Place stockpot over medium-high heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly to prevent scorching. Continue boiling until thickened. Whisk in the lemon juice and return to a boil, stirring constantly. Continue stirring and allow the mixture to boil hard for 1 minute. Add the reserved cherries all at once, stir in gently, and continue stirring constantly while returning to a boil. Remove the pan from the heat.

*You can freeze or can the remaining juice or turn it into Boozy Cherry Molasses. The basic instructions remain the same, just add half as much sugar (by volume) and go forth with the directions from there.

Scoop the hot pie filling into the hot jars allowing 1-inch of headspace to remain between the pie filling and the rim of the jar. Remove air bubbles from the filling by inserting a long, flexible spatula or chopstick into the jars. Wipe the jar rims and position the lids in place. Screw the rings onto the jars to fingertip tight.

Place jars in a canner, cover with hot tap water by at least 1-inch, cover, and place covered canner over high-heat to bring the water to a boil. Once the water is boiling hard, you can begin timing; both pints and quarts must be processed for 35 minutes. After 35 minutes, turn off the heat, remove the lid and let the jars remain in the water for an additional 5 minutes. Remove to a cooling rack or towel lined counter and allow to cool, undisturbed, for 24 hours before removing rings, wiping jars clean and labeling. Processed and sealed pie filling can be stored in a cool, dark place for a year or so.

~~~~

Before I leave you to whipping up your own batch of Sweet Black Cherry Pie Filling I want to let you in on a dirty little secret. I have a treat that I allow myself that I refer to as Mommy’s Little Helper. It’s the thing that stands between sanity and selling my children to the nearest traveling circus and it is as simple as it is delicious. Just dip a spoon into your resident jar of Nutella (you DO have one, don’t you?) and top with a dollop of Sweet Black Cherry Pie Filling. Open mouth. Insert. Oh sure, you could class it up a little and serve it on graham crackers or chocolate wafer cookies, but then it’s not so naughty -and therefore- not so much fun. Danger. It’s my middle name.

Filed Under: Canning, Component Foods, Desserts, Food Preservation, Instructional, kid food, Recipes, Stretching your dollars Tagged With: Canning, dessert, Food gifts, Food Preservation, Frugal Food, frugal gifts, kid friendly, kids, party food, seasonal

Rum Soaked Preserved Cherries and Boozy Cherry Molasses

June 28, 2010 by Rebecca 18 Comments

Cherry season usually gets away from me. It seems like I find out cherries are on about twelve hours before the end of the (what feels like a twenty four hour) season. I usually manage to get one or two glorious pounds. We dispatch of those quickly with a manic eating and pit spitting binge that ends not with the jars and jars of pie filling and preserved cherries that I wanted but with pink stained lips and teeth and hands. Then I sigh, promise myself I’ll get the jump on it next year and wait semi-patiently for blueberry season where I compensate by picking about a hundred pounds of blueberries.*

*Would that I were joking. I put up in the neighborhood of 100 hand-picked pounds of blueberries every year. We were talking cherries, though, weren’t we?

But not this year. Oh no. Not this year. This year, thanks to my good friend Lisa, I heard about an almost unbelievable deal from one of our local Amish bulk stores. They were putting together a group order of cherries; sweet dark cherries, freshly picked, for $0.95 per pound. And what’s more, they would be getting sour cherries, already pitted, in a couple weeks time for $1.26 per pound. I ordered thirty pounds of sweet darks and thirty pounds of sours. I didn’t just get a jump on it. I bungeed. Off a cliff.

The results of my cherry preserving bender are nothing short of lip-smacking and I’ll be sharing all of the recipes over the next couple weeks. Some of the recipes require fresh cherries, some require frozen and some can take advantage of fresh, frozen or canned cherries; I’ll start with the ones that use the fresh cherries first. Aren’t I logical?

First up is a two-fer; Rum Soaked Preserved Cherries and Boozy Cherry Molasses. Rum Soaked Preserved Cherries are exactly what they sound like. They are cherries soaked in a rum-heavy sweetened syrup. And they are heavenly. These tipsy little beauties can be eaten straight from the jar, added to baked goods, used to garnish drinks (think Maraschino cherries, but delicious and all natural), or perched on top of a scoop of ice cream that has been drizzled with the happy side-product of their creation; Boozy Cherry Molasses (a jewel-toned rum and Kirsch fortified, thick, sweet, intensely cherry syrup boiled down after making Rum Soaked Preserved Cherries.) What do you do with the Cherry Molasses? It’s a chameleon, I tell you. Pour it over ice cream, brush it on grilled pork or venison, eat it from a spoon.

You have some decisions to make when you start with these; stems or no stems and pits or no pits. I prefer to leave mine with stems and pits intact. I think it makes for a prettier finished product but I’m not all flash and no substance; leaving the pits intact imparts a gentle almond flavor and leaving the stems on gives each cherry a built-in handle for removal from the jar. If you want to remove the stems and pits, go for it! I’ve included the different quantities needed for both versions.

For a printer-friendly, photo free version of this recipe, click away!

Rum Soaked Preserved Cherries

Adapted from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (See here to learn more about the book.)

Yield: about 4 (8 ounce) jars.

Ingredients:

1 cup granulated sugar
2 cups water
6 1/2 cups cherries with pits and stems intact (5 cups of cherries if you remove stems but leave pits intact, 7 1/2 cups of unpitted cherries if you wish to pit and stem them before preserving)

Per Jar:

1 1/2 Tablespoons Golden Rum

Prepare your jars and lids. If you wish to make the cherries shelf-stable, please also prepare your canner.

Place a stainless steel or non-reactive stock pot over medium-high heat; add the sugar and water to the pot and stir to dissolve the sugar. Bring the syrup to a boil and add all of the cherries immediately. Return to a boil while stirring constantly. Reduce the heat and allow to remain at a gentle boil for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat.

Using a slotted spoon and a wide-mouthed funnel, transfer the hot cherries from the hot syrup into the jars, leaving 1/2 of an inch of head space (the space between the rim of the jar and the food). Add 1 1/2 Tablespoons of Golden Rum to each jar, then spoon or ladle the hot cherry syrup into the jar, maintaining the 1/2 of an inch of head space.

Insert a chopstick or skewer down the insides of the jar to remove air bubbles. If necessary, add more cherry syrup to keep that 1/2 of an inch of head space.* Wipe the rims of the jars, center the lids on the jars and screw down the rings until finger-tip tight.

*Hang on to that leftover hot syrup and leave it in the pan; that’s the most important part of the Boozy Cherry Molasses! You can either make the Boozy Cherry Molasses right away, or pop the pan into the refrigerator to complete later.

You can either refrigerate the cherries in the syrup for up to a month or you can process them in a boiling water canner to make them shelf stable for a year. I prefer to can them.

To process them, place the jars in a stockpot or canner, covering them by 1-2 inches of warm tap water. Cover the pot and bring to a boil. When the water is at a rolling boil (a boil that cannot be stirred down), begin timing and allow to process for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, remove the lid to the pot, turn off the heat, wait 5 minutes and then lift the jars straight from the water and place them carefully on a cooling rack positioned over a towel. Do not tilt the jars (it interferes with the natural formation of a vacuum which is one of the things that keeps the food safe and shelf-stable!)

Cool, undisturbed, for 24 hours. As the jars cool, you will hear a popping sound. That is the sound of the lids sealing. That is what you want to hear. Check the jars after 24 hours. If any of them have not sealed, simply store in the refrigerator. Wipe the jars clean and label them before storing in a cool, dry place (like a cupboard.)

Boozy Cherry Molasses

Yield: Between 1 1/2 and 2 (8 ounce) jars

Ingredients:

Remaining hot cherry syrup from making Rum-Soaked Preserved Cherries

Per Jar:

1 1/2 Tablespoons Golden Rum
1 teaspoon Kirsh (or other cherry liqueur)

Place the remaining cherry syrup back over the burner over medium-high heat and return to a boil. Lower the heat to medium-low and maintain a gentle boil until syrup is reduced by half (or more, depending on how thick and concentrated you want the syrup.) The syrup should fall slowly from the spoon when thickened and leave a clear trail when you draw your finger across a spoon that was dipped into it. But do be careful. Hot sugary syrups are, well, HOT! Be patient. Wait before testing! When the syrup is thickened to your liking remove from heat.

Prepare your jars and lids. If you wish to make the syrup shelf-stable, please also prepare your canner.

Add the Golden Rum and Kirsh to your jars and ladle the thickened syrup into the jars to within 1/2 an inch of the rims. Wipe the rims, center the lids on the jars and screw the rings on until fingertip tight. I usually process this in a boiling water bath along with the Rum Soaked Preserved Cherries, but if you opted to save the hot cherry syrup and complete the task later, boiling water processing is optional. As with the preserved cherries, you can store the Boozy Cherry Molasses in the refrigerator or process them for one year’s worth of shelf stability. If you opt to can them, the directions are as follows.

Just look at this elixir poured over chocolate ice cream.

And ooh boy, how about doing this?

Go on. You know you want some…

Oh. I’m sorry. You can’t taste it through the computer? I guess you’ll just have to make some. You’ll be happy you did. Now pardon me, please. I have to finish off this bowl of ice cream before it melts or I do.

Filed Under: Canning, Component Foods, Desserts, Food Preservation, Gifts, Instructional, Rebecca, Recipes, Stretching your dollars Tagged With: Canning, dessert, Food gifts, Food Preservation, frugal gifts

Homemade Ghee (Clarified or Drawn Butter or Beurre Noisette)

June 3, 2010 by Rebecca 13 Comments

Welcome to part III of the series of component dishes (Part I, Candied Jalapenos, can be read here! And Part II, Homemade Greek Yogurt and Cucumber Yogurt Salsa [Raita] can be read here!) to make the transcendent ‘Second to Naanwich’ that still has me obsessed almost three weeks after eating it. In the next post, I’ll share the recipe for the Tandoori Style Grilled Chicken and directions for putting together the you-know-what!

I promised myself I wouldn’t start this post with an excuse about why it’s taking me so ever-loving long to get these recipes to you. I pledged I wouldn’t tell you all that I’ve been hosting everybody and their uncle (well, everybody BUT the Uncle…), trying to finish up the year-end reports for the school district, keep the kids focused on the last few days of school, plan a trip to a theme park and catch up on my life-long enemy laundry. I made a vow that I wouldn’t talk about the fact that I’ve spent more hours in the last two weeks outside putting in vegetable, herb and flower gardens than I have in the kitchen. And I pinky-swore that I would absolutely, positively not mention that a guy in the neighborhood (yes, three houses in five square miles counts as a neighborhood) kept us all awake until three in the morning all the way through Memorial Day weekend with a really lousy and very enthusiastic indefatigable live band*. And I’m always good to my word, so I will not go there and we will instead jump straight to the food. After all, that’s why we’re all here, right?

*I am writing my Congressman to ask that he propose legislation that if you are going to mike your band and turn the amps to eleven that you will be required to be good. Anyone who has ever been forced to listen to the band who sounded like they had set up shop in my front yard would vote for it in a heartbeat.

Ghee (also known as ‘clarified’ or ‘drawn’ butter) is a staple in many world cuisines; Indian, French, English, Brazilian, and Iranian just to name a few. It is -to use Wikipedia’s highly accurate and mega-scientific explanation- an anhydrous milkfat rendered from butter to separate the milk solids from the butterfat. Hoo yeah! In short, it’s pure butterfat.

Why not just use regular butter?

Ghee has gone through the process of removing the two things that tend to make butter go bad more quickly; milk solids and water. By cooking it over low, slow temperatures, you evaporate the water and use density to separate the milk solids. But that’s not the only amazing reason to make ghee. Not only have you made the butter more shelf stable, you’ve raised the smoke point. That means you can use it to cook at higher temperatures without scorching than you would be able to do with normal butter. You get the butter flavor, it lasts more than five times as long as it would have and it is more versatile. That’s a win/win/win situation.

As with many foods, you’ll get a better end result by starting out with a better ingredient. If you can get your hands on cultured or European-style butter, you won’t regret it. If you can’t, just use the best butter you can easily afford. It’ll be delicious either way.

Let’s talk cost. Have you ever bought or priced out a jar of ghee at the grocery store? First of all, that preceding statement assumes you live in an area where they carry ghee in your grocery store. In my little grocery store? Not so much. But if I were to head up to The Big City, I assure you that I wouldn’t pay the $16.00 they want for a twenty eight ounce jar. Not happening. No way, no how. I pay my Amish neighbor $2.00 per pound of cultured butter. I’ll pause and let you rage at me for a moment. Are we done? Okay. That means that I yield about twenty-four ounces of ghee for $4.00, if you want to add the cost of the fuel to cook it, we might generously push it toward the $5.00 range. So that’s somewhere in the range of one third of the cost of store-bought to make my own. I bet you don’t need two guesses to figure out what I do.

And don’t you let me catch you tossing out those milk solids that precipitated from the butterfat. They turn a toasty gorgeous brown and have the flavor to match their appearance. Spooned into a pot of fried rice, spread on a piece of fresh bread, or stirred into soup, you’ll be amazed at the depth of flavor they impart. Plus, you can pat yourself (butter pun alert) on the back for being so frugal when so many people just tell you to discard that flavor powerhouse. You just saved even more money and provided yourself with a fan-flippin’-tastic ingredient that you cannot buy.

One warning, though. You may want to have some snacks prepared to munch on while the ghee is cooking. This stuff smells just a little too good while it’s cooking.

For a printer-friendly, photo-free version of this recipe, click here!

Homemade Ghee

Yield: About 1 1/2 pints of Ghee plus 1/2 pint of crispy bits.

Ingredients:

2 pounds of good quality butter (use Cultured or European Style if available)

Melt the butter slowly over low heat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan.

Stir occasionally. When the butter is melted, it will begin to foam near the top.

Continue cooking over low heat. After a couple of minutes, you will begin to hear snapping, popping and crackling. This is the sound of the water separating from the fat and simmering to the top to evaporate away. You need for this to happen. This is what helps make the ghee so shelf-stable.

You will also start to see the milk solids separate out from the fat.

Continue cooking over low heat until the crackling sounds cease and the milk solids have mainly sunk to the bottom and taken on a toasty brown color. Another good indicator that your ghee is done is that it will smell like popcorn. There may still be a thin layer of foam near the top or it may have lost all of its foam. Either way, if the crackling sounds have stopped and the milk solids are golden brown, it is time to remove the ghee or clarified/drawn butter from the heat.

An example of a batch with no foam at the top:

An example of a batch that had foam at the top:

And my beloved toasty milk solids:

Allow it to cool, uncovered for 30 minutes.

While it cools, set up your straining station. Line a fine mesh sieve or colander positioned over a bowl or jar with paper towels, a clean tea towel or extra-fine cheesecloth.

After the ghee has cooled, carefully pour it into the straining apparatus.

When you are through straining, there should be the toasted milk solids left in the strainer. Scrape these into a separate clean jar to save for spreading on toast or adding to recipes. The toasted milk solids should be stored in the refrigerator in a tightly covered container.

The ghee can be stored at room temperature in a tightly covered jar for up to six months. At room temperature, ghee is mainly solid and opaque. It will look like this…

Filed Under: Canning, Component Foods, Food Preservation, Instructional, Kitchen Techniques and Hints, Rebecca, Stretching your dollars Tagged With: food gift, Food gifts, Food Preservation, Frugal Food, frugal gifts, kid friendly, party food, quick and easy

Homemade Greek Yogurt and Cucumber Yogurt Salsa (Raita)

May 27, 2010 by Rebecca 13 Comments

Welcome to part II of the series of component dishes (Part I, Candied Jalapenos, can be read here!) to make the transcendent ‘Second to Naanwich’ that still has me obsessed almost two weeks after eating it. While you can definitely buy Greek yogurt from the store to complete this dish, the homemade variety is so much tastier and less expensive. I encourage you all to try making it from scratch.

I am addicted to Greek yogurt. But man-oh-Friday, is it ever an expensive habit. I was buying cases of it through our local health food co-operative at a price that -while lower than grocery stores- was still painful to pay. I needed a less expensive way to feed my habit and I found it.

Googling ‘homemade Greek yogurt’ yields a bunch of folks, bless ‘em all, who tell you the same thing. Strain your yogurt and ‘voila!’ it’s Greek yogurt. Okie dokie. Easy enough. So if you want a super fast homemade Greek yogurt, just strain yourself a quart of yogurt. And that’s good in a pinch, but when you’re talking volume, that can still get expensive. So. Take it back one step further and make your own yogurt. This is just as exciting from a stick-it-to-the-man viewpoint as homemade buttermilk. It’s not hard people. Don’t fear the yogurt.

Unless you’ve been in a cave you’re probably at least minimally acquainted with the health benefits of yogurt by this point; the live and active cultures in the yogurt are like a magic bullet for intestinal health.* But don’t forget the calcium, magnesium, potassium, Vitamins B2 and B12 and protein. Those are pretty handy to overall health, too.

*I’m sorry if you just lost your appetite reading the words ‘intestinal health’. In my defense, as the mother of five boys ages twelve and under, I thought that was pretty restrained of me. I could’ve said “It helps you poop regularly.” Oh my gosh. I’ve lost all sense of propriety. I need to hang out with girls more often.

Because I love you bigger than the bay, today’s post is a three-fer. You get the recipe for Greek Yogurt made from scratch, but in the process, you also learn how to make ‘regular’ yogurt. And you also get my favorite thing to do with Greek yogurt. (Other than eating it straight with honey, making frozen yogurt, using it for dill dip, using it in place of sour cream, or turning it into tartar sauce…) Cucumber Yogurt Salsa. This salsa is similar to a raita (an Indian and Pakistani condiment made to cool the palate) but it is made without what I think are key components of a honest-to-goodness raita (chiles, cumin, et al.) The red onion gives it the flavor punch I crave, but the dill and cucumber keep it cool and refreshing. This is a crucial component to the Second to Naanwich (more information on the mythical Naanwich is here.)

I put Cucumber Yogurt Salsa on all sorts of things; burgers, sandwiches, vegetable sticks, spoons… Let your imagination run wild. This is some good stuff.

So come on. Make yourself some yogurt, I want y’all around for a while. I like you.

For a printer-friendly, photo-free version of this recipe, click here!

Homemade Greek Yogurt (or regular yogurt)

Yield: About 4 cups of Greek yogurt

Ingredients:

2 quarts whole, 2% or 1% milkfat milk
4 Tablespoons yogurt with live and active cultures (store bought or less than 36 hour old homemade yogurt)

Heat the milk in a saucepan to 180°F. If you don’t have a thermometer, don’t sweat it. You can watch the milk. When it gets lots of little bubbles around the edge but before it boils, you’re good to go. It’ll look like this.

And if you happen to get a little warmer than that, don’t worry. See this?

No one from the yogurt police came to have words with me. My yogurt turned out just fine. The important part is waiting for the milk to cool to the right temperature before adding the yogurt. That nice lukewarm temperature encourages the beneficial bacteria to get cuddly and reproduce. Anything too hot kills them. So…

Cover the pan and cool to about 116°F. Again, don’t panic if a thermometer isn’t handy. Simply drip a couple drops of the milk on the inside of your wrist. If it feels pleasant and slightly warmer than body temperature without feeling hot or uncomfortable you can proceed. Remove about 2 cups of the warm milk to a small bowl and whisk in the yogurt until evenly combined. Whisk that back into the pan of milk. Pour into jars or a bowl. Cover tightly with plastic wrap or a lid and place in a warm dry place at least six to eight hours or until thickened, overnight if necessary. A good place for this is an oven that is off but has the interior light on. If you stop at this point, you have regular yogurt. Simply refrigerate at this point if that’s what you want.

To make Greek yogurt, place the yogurt in the refrigerator for four hours to firm it a little further and allow some of the whey to separate. After four hours, line a colander with fine mesh cheesecloth or a clean tea towel. Pour the yogurt into the colander. You can either gather the corners of the towel and tie it before hanging it over your sink for 5 hours like this.

Or you can place the colander over a bowl and place in the refrigerator overnight to drain.

After draining to desired consistency, turn into a bowl.

Cover tightly and refrigerate until ready to use.

Cucumber Yogurt Salsa (Raita)

Ingredients:

2 cups Greek yogurt
1 medium sized cucumber, peeled and diced into small cubes
1/2 of a small red onion, peeled and diced into small cubes
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon dried dill weed or 1 Tablespoon chopped fresh dill
1 clove of garlic, peeled and minced
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Stir all ingredients together in a bowl. It is preferable to cover tightly and refrigerate for at least an hour before serving, but this can be eaten immediately.

Filed Under: Appetizers & Snacks, Component Foods, Food Preservation, Happy Healthy and Wise, Healthy Foods, Instructional, kid food, Kitchen Techniques and Hints, Party Food, Rebecca, Recipes, Side Dishes, Snacks, Stretching your dollars, Vegetarian Tagged With: dessert, Food Preservation, Frugal Food, kid friendly, kids, quick and easy, Vegetarian

Candied Jalapenos

May 23, 2010 by Rebecca 147 Comments

This last week, my baby brother Luke told me admiringly that I had finally done it.

“To which it do you refer?” I inquired.

“IT!” said Luke.

Luke was referring to this.

This sandwich blew my mind. It was the perfect sandwich. I do not use the phrase ‘perfect sandwich’ lightly. It is a very serious appellation to give a sandwich*. This one earned it.

*Could I possibly use the word ‘sandwich’ any more? There just doesn’t seem to be any way around it. And so I’d like every single English and composition teacher reading this to take a muscle relaxant right now to help them get through the rest of this post without cringing themselves into spasms.

Let me tell you what makes this bad boy so very bad*. The sandwich is built of naan brushed with ghee, tandoori style grilled chicken, cucumber and yogurt salsa, crunchy pickled onion rings and candied jalapenos. Un-bloody-believably delicious. The Evil Genius declared it to be ‘A Second-to-Naanwich’.

*Bad in a good way. As in phat. Not fat. It’s totally fly. I should probably stop now. Fo shizzle.

Every single component of this sandwich was made from scratch. Okay, so I didn’t grow the lettuce greens, spices or the chicken, but shy of that, all homemade. And over the next few posts, I will give you the recipes to make each component needed to reproduce this amazing sandwich in your own kitchen.

Even though this sandwich alone is worth the work of making each of these building blocks, you’re not just canning, yogurt, bread, and grilling for one purpose. Each of the ingredients can be used for multiple recipes. This is a springboard recipe. Once you’ve mastered each component, the world is your oyster. Are you ready for the first part? Here we go!

We’re starting with Candied Jalapenos for a very good reason. After being made, they need to sit for at least two weeks before you crack open the jar to start eating them. And by need, I mean it’s strictly optional, but you’ll be glad that you did. The flavors need time to meld and marry.

Candied Jalapenos. Ah. There’s a story here. A couple months ago, my friend Katie casually mentioned eating a sandwich made with candied jalapenos. She was singing the praises of what she described as an addictive jar of goodies. Then she said the magic words, “I wish I could figure out how to make these at home.” By this point, you know me enough to know what affect that statement has on me, right? I quizzed her on the texture, flavor, and appearance of the jalapeno rings. I begged for photographs. I had her send me a picture of the ingredient list on the label. I asked her to describe the flavor to the very best of her food blogging abilities. She was game. She provided all the information and even sent a link to a recipe that she thought looked like it would come close to the benchmark for her.

After carefully examining close to thirty recipes on candied jalapenos (who KNEW there were so many people candying jalapenos?) I called my local Cooperative Extension office to pick the brain of their home food preservation specialists. Since jalapenos are a low-acid food, some precautions need to be taken when canning them. You have two choices for safely canning peppers of any kind; you can pressure can them or you can acidify (i.e. add vinegar, lemon juice, etc…) the liquid in which you pack the peck of pickled peppers.

I opted for acidifying the pepper liquid because I wanted to maintain some of the texture of the peppers through the process. Pressure canning these would turn them to flavorful mush. The result was gobsmackingly, head-spinningly, brain-addlingly delicious. Sweet, spicy and savory, candied jalapeno rings are way too easy to eat on just about everything. I’ve stashed them in sandwiches, chopped them up on baked beans, tucked them into tacos, used the syrup to brush meat on the grill, perched a couple rings on top of a cream cheese laden cracker and all sorts of other evil things.

For such a simple thing to can, these pack tons of flavor. You’re going to want to make as many of these as you possibly can simultaneously, because once that first jar is cracked open you’re not going to be able to stop eating them. And I mean it.

Hey! Don’t forget to come back over the next few days to get the other components to my Second-to-Naanwich. You will love me. That’s a promise.

Candied Jalapenos

Scroll to the bottom for an easy-print version of this recipe!

Yield: About 9 half-pint jars of Candied Jalapenos plus additional jalapeno syrup.

Ingredients:

3 pounds fresh, firm, jalapeno peppers, washed
2 cups cider vinegar
6 cups white granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
3 teaspoons granulated garlic
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

Wearing gloves, remove the stems from all of the jalapeno peppers. The easiest way to do this is to slice a small disc off of the stem-end along with the stem. Discard the stems.

Slice the peppers into uniform 1/8-1/4 inch rounds. Set aside.

In a large pot, bring cider vinegar, white sugar, turmeric, celery seed, granulated garlic and cayenne pepper to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the pepper slices and simmer for exactly 4 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the peppers, loading into clean, sterile canning jars to within 1/4 inch of the upper rim of the jar.

Turn heat up under the pot with the syrup and bring to a full rolling boil. Boil hard for 6 minutes.

Use a ladle to pour the boiling syrup into the jars over the jalapeno slices to within 1/4-inch of the rim. Insert a cooking chopstick to the bottom of the jar two or three times to release any trapped pockets of air. Adjust the level of the syrup if necessary. Wipe the rims of the jars with a clean, damp paper towel and fix on new, two-piece lids to finger-tip tightness.

*If you have leftover syrup, and it is likely that you will, you may can it in half-pint or pint jars, too. It’s wonderful brushed on meat on the grill or added to potato salad or, or, or… In short, don’t toss it out!

Place jars in a canner, cover with water by 2-inches. Bring the water to a full rolling boil. When it reaches a full rolling boil, set the timer for 10 minutes for half-pints or 15 minutes for pints. When timer goes off, use canning tongs to transfer the jars to a cooling rack. Leave them to cool, undisturbed, for 24 hours. When fully cooled, wipe them with a clean, damp washcloth then label.

Allow to mellow for at least two weeks, but preferably a month before eating. Or don’t. I won’t tell!

4.9 from 19 reviews

Candied Jalapenos

Author: Rebecca Lindamood

Recipe type: Canning, Condiment, Ingredient

Prep time: 30 mins

Cook time: 45 mins

Total time: 1 hour 15 mins

Serves: 32

There aren’t words that exist to describe how addictive these little savoury, sweet, spicy, crunchy, garlicky pickled jalapeno rounds are. Put them on sandwiches, tacos, rice or bake them into cornbread. You’ll need more and more!

Ingredients

3 pounds fresh, firm, jalapeno peppers, washed
2 cups cider vinegar
6 cups white granulated sugar
½ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon celery seed
3 teaspoons granulated garlic
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

Instructions

Wearing gloves, remove the stems from all of the jalapeno peppers. The easiest way to do this is to slice a small disc off of the stem-end along with the stem. Discard the stems.
Slice the peppers into uniform ⅛-1/4 inch rounds. Set aside.
In a large pot, bring cider vinegar, white sugar, turmeric, celery seed, granulated garlic and cayenne pepper to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the pepper slices and simmer for exactly 4 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the peppers, loading into clean, sterile canning jars to within ¼ inch of the upper rim of the jar. Turn heat up under the pot with the syrup and bring to a full rolling boil. Boil hard for 6 minutes.
Use a ladle to pour the boiling syrup into the jars over the jalapeno slices. Insert a cooking chopstick to the bottom of the jar two or three times to release any trapped pockets of air. Adjust the level of the syrup if necessary. Wipe the rims of the jars with a clean, damp paper towel and fix on new, two-piece lids to finger-tip tightness.
*If you have leftover syrup, and it is likely that you will, you may can it in half-pint or pint jars, too. It’s wonderful brushed on meat on the grill or added to potato salad or, or, or… In short, don’t toss it out!
Place jars in a canner, cover with water by 2-inches. Bring the water to a full rolling boil. When it reaches a full rolling boil, set the timer for 10 minutes for half-pints or 15 minutes for pints. When timer goes off, use canning tongs to transfer the jars to a cooling rack. Leave them to cool, undisturbed, for 24 hours. When fully cooled, wipe them with a clean, damp washcloth then label.
Allow to mellow for at least two weeks, but preferably a month before eating. Or don’t. I won’t tell!

Notes

I know this sounds crazy, but double this recipe. People will beg you for jars of this and get surly if you say no. Just. Trust. Me.

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Filed Under: Appetizers & Snacks, Breakfast Foods, Camping Food, Canning, Component Foods, Food Preservation, Happy Healthy and Wise, Healthy Foods, Instructional, Kitchen Techniques and Hints, Party Food, Rebecca, Recipes, Side Dishes, Stretching your dollars, Vegetarian Tagged With: Canning, Food gifts, Frugal Food, frugal food preservation, frugal gifts, home canning, home food preservation, hot peppers, how to preserve jalapenos, kid friendly, party food, Vegetarian

Canned Barbecue Beans (El Pollo Loco BBQ Black Beans clone)

May 18, 2010 by Rebecca 22 Comments

If I live to be a thousand years old I will never exhaust the possibilities offered by beans. And what is there not to like about beans? They are- all at once- so inexpensive, so nutritious, so easy to store, so delicious, so versatile.

If you’ve been with me here at Foodie With Family for a while you’re pretty familiar with my adoration of beans. They’re a quick, filling, el-cheapo way to feed a growing family.

“Quick? Beans? Well, surely you aren’t making them from the dried state,” sayeth the doubting crowd. Ah, but yes. Yes, I am. And here is where this post morphs from singing the praises of beans to evangelizing about canning. Pressure canning, specifically. And this requires a diversion of some length from beans…

Even if you were raised in a family who canned a great deal of food (as I was) chances are you heard something like this regarding pressure canning, “Pressure canners are DANGEROUS! My Aunt Bertha had one explode on her once. She leapt in front of it to protect the baby who was walking through the kitchen. They had to pull shrapnel from her neck. Just missed the jugular.” (The preceding cautionary tale was an amalgam of the pressure-canning horror stories from my own family members and friends.) The truth is that pressure canners were dangerous.

The operative word here is ‘were’. The reason so many of us have heirloom pressure canner tales of gore from ages of yore is because there were so many of them that actually exploded. But there is a whole new generation of pressure canners on the market now. They have ratcheting, locking lids with metal-to-metal seals instead of the inferior rubber gasket seals and their disturbing likelihood to warp, crack or otherwise deteriorate.

The Evil Genius has inspected Carol (Yes, my pressure canner has a name. Don’t you name your appliances?) and pronounced her to be the domestic equivalent of a small-scale industrial sterilizer. (And the man ought to know, he stares at/operates/programs/troubleshoots the real thing all day long every day. If the fellow who sits in front of the blast window on an industrial sterilizer waiting for little glass vials to explode says it’s safe, I think you can take his word for it. And since I’m incapable of remaining on topic for more than three sentences, let me just ask one thing. Does anyone else find it amusing that a man who is clearly NOT sterile [I remind you we had five sons in nine years] specializes in sterilizers?)

Hello?

Is anyone out there?

“Get back on topic already!”

I can take a hint…

Yes, well. Here’s where I was going with this. Pressure canning is very safe now. Provided you use a new model pressure canner and follow the safety instructions. And don’t let Aunt Bertha near it. Just saying.

As for which pressure canner to use, I prefer this beauty:

This is the second to the largest model made by the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry. Yes, it’s a little more expensive than its smaller siblings or cheap knock-offs made by other companies, but it can hold and process fourteen quarts simultaneously. Come on! That’s seriously amazing. That means that it twice as efficient as models that hold seven quarts. And it can double as a big old boiling water canner. There’s no boiling water canner on earth that can do double duty like Carol.

I have major warm fuzzies for this company. When I broke my gauge (read: my fault completely. I didn’t read the directions.) they replaced it –free of charge- even after I confessed what happened to it. They sent it via Priority Mail. Did I mention they sent it for free? As in gratis? I declared my love for them over the phone. I think they’re used to it. But we were talking about beans, weren’t we?

Ah yes, these beans.

As if Facebook wasn’t a giant enough time hoover for me, I recently discovered the existence of the fabulous and aptly named ‘Canning’ group. In this group was a picture of a batch of barbecue beans one member had made. The original recipe described them as being a clone of El Pollo Loco’s BBQ Black Beans. Having never been to an El Pollo Loco, I had no idea what that meant. One look at the recipe, though, and I knew I had to try it. The method was so simple. And the payoff was huge.

The hardest part of the whole project was waiting two weeks after processing to try them. Their hermetically sealed jars beckoned from their shelf in the basement, “Eat me!”

And boy, oh boy, these beans are good. There is no hint at all of the paltry ten minutes of hands-on time (well, alright, twenty minutes if you count wiping and labeling the jars.) that went into creating this masterpiece. Smoky, spicy, saucy- they taste like beans that have baked for hours upon hours in the oven rather than beans poured from a jar that sat in the basement. These beans alone are reason enough to justify the price of a new pressure canner even if they’re the only thing you ever make in it. How can that possibly be?

Let me paint you a little mental picture. Let’s say, hypothetically, that you have five sons. (Could happen, you know…) And let’s say that two of them are in a play; rehearsal is on Tuesday and the show is on Thursday, a column due Wednesday, paperwork to fill out at the bank on Thursday morning, a house full of company coming for the weekend on Friday and they’re planning on eating with you. Right. So, where in there are you going to find time to make a delicious and filling dinner for your company? Try this one on for size. Throw on a pot of rice. Open and reheat a couple jars of Canned Barbecue Beans. Put a couple links of your favorite sausage on the grill (Kielbasa, smoked sausage, link-chorizo, what-have-you…) and toss together a salad. Fluff the rice, top with the beans and sausage and serve with a salad and something icy cold to drink.

But hang on. It’s cheap, people! It’s dirt cheap! You can’t get food much cheaper than this, and you certainly can’t buy food of this quality for anywhere near this little in any store. And more banging of the drum… it’s so very good for you. Fiber, vitamins, minerals, no funky preservatives or additives. It’s great food the way food was intended to be.

For a printer-friendly version of this recipe, with no photos and sidebars, click here!

Canned Barbecue Beans

adapted from Creative Canning and Mary Kay Craig

1 pound (or slightly more) black beans or a mix of pinto and black beans, rinsed, picked over and soaked 8 hours or overnight
2 onions, peeled and small
5 small cloves garlic, minced
2 1/2 cups barbecue sauce (I used my favorite homemade Kansas City style sauce, but bottled sauce will do the job in a pinch.)
2-3 drops liquid smoke per pint jar
1/4-1/2 teaspoon ground chipotle powder per pint jar, to taste, or 1/2 of a fresh jalapeno, minced, per pint jar.

After the beans have soaked overnight, drain and rinse them. What you see below is mixture of black beans and pinto beans that is approximately equal by weight.

Divide the beans between five clean pint jars. The beans should fill the jars about halfway. Divide the onions and minced garlic evenly between the jars.

Add the chipotle powder (or minced jalapenos) and liquid smoke to each jar.

Add 1/2 cup of barbecue sauce to each jar. Notice how the pinto beans have been stained by the black beans? That’s just inevitable. Don’t let it worry you.

Then add clean, fresh water to the jars to within an inch of the top rim. Insert a chopstick to the bottom of the jar two or three times per jar to release any trapped air bubbles.

Adjust the liquid if needed to maintain one-inch of clearance from the upper rim. Wipe the rims, add new two-piece lids and process, according to your canner’s manufacturer’s recommendations, at 15 pounds of pressure for 90 minutes.

How is that possible that you don’t have to cook the beans first? Pressure canning is more than just efficient, it’s convenient. As you’re processing the jars, you’re also cooking the beans inside the jars. It’s like doing a little bit of kitchen magic.

And now comes the tricky part. You have to wait at least two weeks for the beans to soak up the liquid in the jar. You could even wait four weeks for the ultimate experience, if you can stand it. You’ll be making another batch as soon as you open up that first jar, though. I guarantee you that!

P.S. There was a really neat phenomenon that happened with these jars. Because you form a vacuum inside the jars (by design) when pressure canning, the liquid inside the jars can continue to boil long after they’re removed from the canner. One jar’s contents boiled for thirty-five minutes after it was sitting on the cooling rack! The Evil Genius assures me that this is perfectly normal and safe.

Filed Under: Beans, Camping Food, Canning, Component Foods, Food Preservation, Happy Healthy and Wise, Healthy Foods, Instructional, Kitchen Techniques and Hints, Party Food, Rebecca, Recipes, Side Dishes, Stretching your dollars, Vegetarian Tagged With: barbecue beans, home food preservation, how to can beans

Homemade Cultured Buttermilk

March 24, 2010 by Rebecca 93 Comments

I use a lot of buttermilk. And by ‘a lot’ I mean a ton. Many of my baked goods contain buttermilk. Much of my salad dressing uses buttermilk. And The Evil Genius? He drinks buttermilk. * We go through a lot of the stuff. And I may have mentioned that I live in the middle of nowhere in Amish country before (or a million times before, but who’s counting?) so frequent last minute trips to the store are not convenient.

*Now before any of you out there yawp with a resounding, “EW!” let me just mention that millions of Southerners and displaced Southerners are right now saying, “Mmmmmmmm! A nice tall glass of buttermilk with salt and pepper sounds mighty fine right now.” A reminder: never yuck another person’s yum. Unless we’re talking durian, then all bets are off… (You may want to read about my family vs. Durian.)

There are probably quite a few of you out there saying, “Oh pish,” (Someone other than me says that, right?), “All you have to do is add a little vinegar or lemon juice to milk and you get the same thing. Why buy buttermilk?” See? I just knew someone out there was saying it. Not so fast! It’s not the same thing. To prove my point, I have to make a scientific sidebar.

Scientific Sidebar Alert!

Buttermilk is used in recipes for several important reasons:

Buttermilk is acidic, so it helps invigorate leavening agents -such as baking powder, baking soda and yeast- when added to baked goods. The acid also helps combat discoloration in baked goods and promotes deep, beautiful browning.
Buttermilk contains natural emulsifiers; this improves texture and aroma, and extends shelf life after baking.
Remember how buttermilk is acidic? That makes it a wonderful addition to marinades for chicken and pork. The acid helps tenderize the meat and gives it a tangy flavor.
You know the ‘cultured’ part of cultured buttermilk? It’s good for you. It contains many active cultures similar to those found in yogurt. Most of the cultures generally found in buttermilk are form the Lactococcus Lactis family and many of their subspecies. Those cultures are what make buttermilk so thick and creamy. And what? Good for you!

Now that you know more than you probably ever wanted to know about buttermilk let’s get onto the ‘Why make my own?’ thing. Because you can. Seriously. You need more than that? Okay. Also make it because it’s dirt cheap, it’s super simple, it’s really fun and you’ll never run out of buttermilk again.

Hang on one second. Someone out there just said, “I never use a whole thing of buttermilk. What do I do with all that buttermilk?” I’m so glad you asked. How about a few of these ideas:

Bacon and Swiss Rye Muffins These are every bit as good as they sound and as easy as pie. No wait! They’re easier than pie. Pie can be hard.

Buttermilk Cornbread Rounds Based on my Grandma’s Buttermilk Cornbread recipe, these perfectly portioned cornbread rounds fit neatly in the hand and go anywhere cornbread goes, but look cuter doing it! This one’s going a little way back in the FWF archives. When you read it, please forgive the “I’m learning” format!

Buttermilk Pancakes Nothing beats beautiful, light, airy buttermilk pancakes smothered in real maple syrup. Nothing. This one’s also reaching back. Wow. I played around with those fonts and indentations a bit, didn’t I?

Garam Masala Depression Cake from Val. Nothin’ depressing about THAT cake, I’ll tell you. We’re talking about a decadent, Garam Masala flavored chocolate cake with orange buttercream and toasted coconut. Oh my. I only take issue with the number of servings Val specified in it. It looks like a one-person cake to me.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention these others…

Chocolate Chip Breakfast Cookies (Drop scones)
Extra Crispy Fried Chicken Fingers (The Evil Genius can cook!)
Cornbread Salad

Are you good and hungry yet? Excellent. Let’s make some buttermilk. I promise it doesn’t take but two shakes.

Homemade Cultured Buttermilk

Scroll to the bottom for an easy-print version of this recipe!

Ingredients:

1/4 to 1/2 cup cultured buttermilk (from the store or home cultured)
1 to 2 quarts skim,1%, 2%, or whole milk from the store or raw milk

Also needed:

1 clean, dry quart or half gallon jar with a tight fitting two piece lid.

Okay. Ready? If you blink you’ll miss how to do it.

Pour buttermilk (1/4 cup for a quart jar or 1/2 cup for a half gallon jar) into your clean jar. Top off the jar with your plain milk. Tightly screw lid to the jar and shake vigorously for 1 minute. Place in a warm (but not hot) area out of direct sunlight. Let it sit there for 12 to 24 hours, until thickened. Refrigerate when thick. Use within two weeks. If you re-culture this regularly, you can carry on re-culturing indefinitely. I always feel like I’m stickin’ it to the man when I do homemade stuff like this. Who doesn’t love beating the system?

Now here’s a glimpse of my finished product. Note that mine is super thick. I used raw, whole milk to culture my buttermilk. If you use skim, it may end up a little thinner than what you see here.

4.8 from 6 reviews

Homemade Cultured Buttermilk

Author: Rebecca Lindamood

Recipe type: Ingredient, Condiment, Home Cheese Making

Prep time: 5 mins

Total time: 5 mins

Serves: 12

Once you’ve made this you’ll never want to go back to storebought cultured buttermilk or vinegar soured milk. This is thick and creamy and tangy and perfect.

Ingredients

¼ to ½ cup cultured buttermilk (from the store or home cultured)
1 to 2 quarts skim,1%, 2%, or whole milk from the store or raw milk
Also needed:
1 clean, dry quart or half gallon jar with a tight fitting two piece lid.

Instructions

Okay. Ready? If you blink you’ll miss how to do it.
Pour buttermilk (1/4 cup for a quart jar or ½ cup for a half gallon jar) into your clean jar. Top off the jar with your plain milk. Tightly screw lid to the jar and shake vigorously for 1 minute. Place in a warm (but not hot) area out of direct sunlight. Let it sit there for 12 to 24 hours, until thickened. Refrigerate when thick. Use within two weeks.

Notes

If you re-culture this regularly, you can carry on re-culturing indefinitely. I always feel like I’m stickin’ it to the man when I do homemade stuff like this. Who doesn’t love beating the system?

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Filed Under: Component Foods, Food Preservation, Happy Healthy and Wise, Healthy Foods, Instructional, Kitchen Techniques and Hints, Rebecca, Recipes, Stretching your dollars, Vegetarian Tagged With: Food Preservation, Frugal Food, frugal gifts

Homemade V-7 (not 8) Garden Vegetable Juice Blend

September 21, 2009 by Rebecca 38 Comments

A few weeks ago, my mom made the trek out to Michigan to visit her sisters (my aunties) and my Grandma.

One night while Mom and my baby sister were out there, the Shaffer girls (because that’s what they become when they’re all together again) and Grandma gathered around the kitchen table to talk food and enjoy one another’s company. That’s when Grandma brought out the game. Boggle. My grandmother looks sweet and kind and delicate because she normally is. My beloved late grandfather was a pastor and Grandma fed every stray person and dog that Grandpa brought home; and that was many, many mouths. She is kindness personified and I have never once heard her say a bad word or gossip about anyone she knows. She doesn’t drink, she doesn’t swear, and she takes care of everyone who crosses her path. But you put Boggle in front of her and she morphs into a killer. Grandma has handily defeated engineers, teachers, doctors of theology, English majors, physicians, and housewives and has -so far as I know- an undefeated Boggle record in her 83 years of life. Grandma is a walking thesaurus. Grandma is a a word creating machine. And don’t let her sweetness fool you. You don’t want to write down a word incorrectly or make one up. She’ll lower the boom; then offer you a bite to eat because you look famished.

Here’s a fact; playing Boggle is the only time my Grandma talks smack. She challenged my mom and aunties by saying, “Come on. I’ll wallop the dang out of you!” Seriously.

I learned to can at the collective elbow of these women. I don’t even have to close my eyes to picture all five of them sitting around my grandmother’s table or on her porch peeling peaches, snapping green beans, peeling and packing tomatoes, brining pickles or playing Boggle to unwind after a marathon canning session. If I put the tiniest effort into the thought I can even feel the steam in the kitchen from the rocking canner on the stovetop. They would sit and talk and laugh and eat while helping put up the massive amounts of produce from Grandma’s gardens for the winter. Nothing was wasted. If it couldn’t be eaten right away it was frozen or canned or fed to the wildlife surrounding their home that we had named ‘Grandpa’s Mountain’. All creatures great and small eat well when my grandma is around!

I am blessed that all of these wonderful women are still canning up a storm and ever present in my life. We regularly call (or email, these days. And yes, my Grandma emails. She’s a techno-Grandma!) to share our canning tallies. And honestly? It’s absolutely wonderful to pop down the basement stairs and struggle back up lugging those luscious jars of summery tomatoes and whatnot to make dinner on a dreary winter’s day; But sharing what you’ve made is a more than half the fun.

My sister and I are carrying on the tradition. We make staples like tomatoes, salsa, pickles, jam and more, but also consult each other and try to make something new each year so we have something to swap that the other doesn’t have. And we try to figure out a way to get stuff out to our Michigan family every year.

Just this past summer I knew I wouldn’t get a chance to get up north in the mitt to see Grandma and the aunties. I got to see Aunt Sarah briefly and sent a heavy box of pickles and jam along with her to distribute amongst Grandma, Aunt Molly, Aunt Vicki and the cousins during one visit. (Don’t worry. I didn’t burden some poor old thing with a massive box-o-jars. My Aunt Sarah is only a handful of years older than me and she agreed because I added an extra jar of pickles to pay her back for lugging them around. Well, she might’ve also agreed because she loves me. The next time I talk to her I’ll ask if it was for love or pickles.)

I wish I had laid my hands on tomatoes before our visit because I would have loved to send a jar full of one of our more recent favorites along with her: V-7 Juice. This is definitely a canning recipe that reminds me of my grandma. This seven veggie juice blend uses up the odds and ends from a well stocked garden. No garden? No problem! You can throw this together easily with vegetables that can be found at almost any grocery store or farmer’s market. Why not rustle up an additional ingredient to make it homemade V-8? Between my husband and kids and I we have seven people in our family, and I become symbolic-slash-nostalgic at odd moments. V-7 it remains. Strange that may make me. Talking like Yoda am I. A V-7 I need. *

*Promise to stop talking like Yoda do I. Hard to quit it is…

This juice is a bit of a project. It’s not hard, but it is time-consuming. You’ll want to block off about five hours total from start to finish. It can be divided up over a couple days, so those five hours don’t have to be consecutive. And the surpassingly fresh flavor is so worth the effort. It is infinitely better tasting and better for you than the stuff in cans at the store. It smokes it. Dare I say it wallops the dang out of storebought vegetable juice blends?

For a printer friendly, photo-free version of this recipe, scroll to the bottom of the post!

V-7 Garden Vegetable Juice Blend

Ingredients:

24 pounds tomatoes
1 pound carrots, scrubbed and diced
1 head celery, scrubbed and diced
1 cup diced onions
1 large bunch parsley, washed (This can be found bundled at the store if it is not in your garden. If you grow it, firmly pack a measuring cup with washed parsley still on its stems.)
1 Tablespoon Kosher or sea salt, optional
Bottled lemon juice (use the best stuff you can afford here.)

Wash the tomatoes.

Slice a shallow wedge out of the top, stem-end of the tomato to remove the core.

If they are small or average size tomatoes, cut into quarters.

If they are large, cut into eighths. Add a couple cups of the chopped tomatoes at a time to a large, non-reactive (glass, enamel, and stainless steel are all good choices) stockpot over medium-low heat. Lightly break it up with a large spoon or potato masher.

Continue adding tomatoes and breaking them up after each addition until all the tomatoes are in the pot. Add the carrots, celery, parsley, and onion to the pot and stir to combine. No onion pics today, though. Those were some powerful onions and I was crying too hard to take a picture.

Raise heat to medium high and bring to a boil, stirring frequently to prevent scorching and sticking. Lower heat and simmer for about 35 minutes, or until carrots and celery are mostly tender.

Position a strainer over a large bowl or another large, non-reactive stockpot.

Ladle the vegetables and their juice into the strainer.

Once everything has been strained, return the liquid you’ve collected to the (rinsed) stockpot. Juice the remaining vegetables (or process until smooth in a food processor or food mill.) Strain over the stockpot to remove seeds and peels. If using salt, stir it in now.

Heat juice to 190°F. DO NOT ALLOW TO BOIL! If you don’t have a thermometer,190°F looks like a great deal of steam coming from the surface of the juice with no bubbles breaking the surface. Hold at this temperature for 5 minutes.

Prepare jars.*

Add 1 Tablespoon of bottled lemon juice to each sterile* pint jar and 2 Tablespoons of bottled lemon juice to each sterile* quart jar you will fill. Ladle the hot juice into the jars leaving 1/4″ of headspace. Wipe the rims of the jars and add the lids, then tighten the rings just until resistance is met.

*If you need help learning what this means or how to sterilize your jars, click here!

Fill your canner about halfway full of tepid water. Arrange the jars around the base of the canner and add water, if needed, to cover the jars by 2 inches. Cover and bring to a full, rolling boil. Start timing at that point. Process quarts for 40 minutes and pints for 35 minutes. Carefully transfer finished jars to a cooling rack or a towel on the countertop. Allow to cool overnight without disturbing the jars.

If the jars have sealed, the center of the lids will be tight when pressed gently. If the seal has failed, it will pop down and then back up when pressed. Any jars with failed seals should be stored in the fridge until used. The rest of the jars can be stored in a cool place such as a cupboard or basement for up to a year.

Homemade V-7 (not 8) Garden Vegetable Juice Blend

Make your own garden vegetable juice that wallops the dang out of storebought. This is so easy to make even if it is a little time consuming. Since you control the sodium in the juice, it's a far healthier option than the one on store shelves!

Ingredients

24 pounds tomatoes
1 pound carrots, scrubbed and diced
1 head celery, scrubbed and diced
1 cup diced onions
1 large bunch parsley, washed (This can be found bundled at the store if it is not in your garden. If you grow it, firmly pack a measuring cup with washed parsley still on its stems.)
1 Tablespoon Kosher or sea salt, optional
Bottled lemon juice (use the best stuff you can afford here.)

Instructions

Wash the tomatoes and slice a shallow wedge out of the top, stem-end of the tomato to remove the core. If they are small or average size tomatoes, cut into quarters. If they are large, cut into eighths. Add a couple cups of the chopped tomatoes at a time to a large, non-reactive (glass, enamel, and stainless steel are all good choices) stockpot over medium-low heat. Lightly break it up with a large spoon or potato masher. Continue adding tomatoes and breaking them up after each addition until all the tomatoes are in the pot. Add the carrots, celery, onion and parsley to the pot and stir to combine. Raise heat to medium high and bring to a boil, stirring frequently to prevent scorching and sticking. Lower heat and simmer for about 35 minutes, or until carrots and celery are mostly tender.

Position a strainer over a large bowl or another large, non-reactive stockpot. Ladle the vegetables and their juice into the strainer. Once everything has been strained, return the liquid you’ve collected to the (rinsed) stockpot. Juice the remaining vegetables (or process until smooth in a food processor or food mill.) Strain over the stockpot to remove seeds and peels. If using salt, stir it in now.

Add 1 Tablespoon of bottled lemon juice to each sterile* pint jar and 2 Tablespoons of bottled lemon juice to each sterile* quart jar you will fill. Ladle the hot juice into the jars leaving 1/4? of headspace. Wipe the rims of the jars and add the lids, then tighten the rings just until resistence is met.

*If you need help learning what this means or how to sterilize your jars, click here!

http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/2009/09/21/homemade-v-7-not-8-garden-vegetable-juice-blend-wallops-the-dang-out-of-storebought/

Recipe printed from Foodie With Family | Rebecca Lindamood http://www.foodiewithfamily.com