Getting Started in Canning

I made another batch of salsa yesterday and intended to photograph the process, but it was just too awkward. The last thing I wanted to do was drop my camera in a huge pot of boiling salsa. Instead, I decided to take some pictures of the equipment that is needed for canning and give you a short and sweet "how-to" with links to sites that will give you safety information, recipes, and detailed instructions.

My grandmother used to make apricot jelly and prickly-pear jelly. Whenever I'd visit she'd send me home with a jar or two and I loved the fact that she made it from scratch and with love, even picking the apricots from the tree and the fruit from the cactus herself. My choice for my first canning project was blueberry jam and it turned out great!

The first thing you'll need is a Ball Blue Book, which will guide you step-by-step through the canning process. This information is also available online, There are two methods of canning food: The water bath method and the steam pressure method, which uses a pressure cooker. I'm going to talk about the water bath method today.

You'll need a big pan, which will be filled with water that has been brought to a boil. This is the water your filled and capped jars will go into for the water bath. This pan is 21-quarts.

This rack fits inside the pan. After the jars are filled and capped, they can be put into this rack and then lowered into the boiling water. The rack keeps the jars off the bottom of the pan and gives you a safe way to submerge and retrieve the jars. 

After the jars have been in the water bath for the proper amount of time and you've taken them out of the pan, they should be set on top of towels. The towels provide an insulation between the jars and your counter. If you set a hot jar on a cold counter, or onto a counter that had water sitting on it, there would be chance for breakage. You'll need pot holders and an oven mitt so you can hold the hot jars. And, you'll need a wet, clean dishcloth to wipe the threads and rims of the jars after you've filled them and before you place the seal and bands on the jars. Wiping the threads and rims will ensure that no food particles will interfere with the sealing process.

This is a pair of tongs which is a handy way to move hot jars. The yellow part of the tongs is rubberized to help prevent breakage and it also allows you to get a good grip on the jar.

You'll need a ladle for filling the jars. After the jars are filled, run a small, thin spatula around the inside wall of the jar to get rid of air pockets. The green item is a lid retriever... simply a plastic handle with a small magnet on the end. This is handy for retrieving lids that are in hot water, which softens the seal so it will better adhere to the rim of the jar.   

A wide-mouth funnel makes it easy to fill the jars, which can be a messy process (at least in my kitchen)!

And, finally, you'll need jars, which you can buy in 4 ounce, 8 ounce (1/2 pint), 16 ounce (pint), and 32 ounce (quart) size. Jars are available either in the regular, or wide-mouth variety. You'll also need lids, which are the flat discs in the picture. The bottom of the lid is rubberized so it will seal to the jar. The rings are put on after the lids and hand tightened before the jars go into the water bath. The rings are removed before storage to prevent rusting.

All of these items can be purchased in kits like this. Take a look at Ball's "Intro to Canning" and you might just find yourself in the kitchen preserving food from your garden or whipping up some homemade jams and jellies for the neighbors at Christmastime!

Zucchini Salsa

It wasn't a very good summer for our garden. Because of rains last spring, we planted two weeks later than usual. We got early spinach, lettuce and radishes, which was nice for salads, but when we should have been picking ripe tomatoes, we were sitting on the deck wishing for warmer weather and a longer season. We got plenty of zucchini, but not the quantities that we've had in years past, and maybe that's a good thing! It would be nice to have ripe tomatoes to eat all summer long, but it was a ripe one here and an almost ripe one there that my gardener would bring into the house. It didn't take long to eat them up. Our temperatures dipped the second week of this month and we covered the garden at night for a few days, then harvested everything that was left and tilled the garden.

We've been busy making sausage, too. We made 12# of Jalapeno Summer sausage and 15# Cracked Pepper & Garlic Summer Sausage. We use ground venison along with some ground pork and use a kit like this that includes the seasonings and the casings. After the casings are stuffed, into the smoker they go (each log is 3#). These are delicious sliced up and served on crackers with cheese and a glass of wine! 

My kitchen is lined with bowls and bowls of green and pink tomatoes, a few zucchini on the counter and a few small jalapenos and bell peppers. I already made several jars of piccalilli using green tomatoes and went looking for something different. I found Zucchini Salsa at allrecipes.com. Despite thinking "Eww... zucchini in salsa??", it got such rave reviews and I decided to give it a try. It turned out absolutely delicious and you'd never know there was zucchini in it! I'm going to make a few more batches using green tomatoes. We opened a jar at breakfast the other day and by the time we'd finished, half the jar was gone!

We went antelope hunting earlier this month and I got to take some pictures of this beautiful country, which I'd like to share with you. Oh, yes, we got an antelope and I saved the heart and liver, so I'm going to have a couple special posts for those soon. And yes, I've got the Zucchini Salsa recipe for you, but first, a few pictures...

October Sunrise in Montana

Another view of the sunrise

A few cattle.

A few more... my friend, Rhonda told me that there are 3 cows to every person in Montana!

A couple of trees out in the middle of nothing but rolling hills.

It takes a lot of hay to feed all those cattle in the winter!

Old fence posts.

Mountains

Ok, on to the salsa... this recipe got a 5-star review from 85 people and in reading the reviews, it was no surprise to see that everybody made theirs just a little different, adding this and leaving out that according to their tastes, which is exactly what I did with the original recipe. 

We both loved this salsa, so another couple batches will be made next week. I'll still make a few changes to the recipe below by adding a few more jalapenos and leaving out the tomato paste, which I thought gave the finished salsa too much of a canned tomato taste. I think by leaving it out, we'll end up with a fresher taste.


I plan to do a blog post on canning soon, but there is lots of information to get you started here.


Edit 10/23/11: I made another batch of salsa with the following changes: Omitted green peppers and tomato paste. Used a total of 10 jalapenos with seeds. This made a hot salsa, which we prefer. If you prefer spicy, find that recipe here.

PRINT RECIPE

Zucchini Salsa - adapted from Food.com

10 cups peeled and grated zucchini
4 large onions, chopped
4 green peppers, seeded and chopped
¼ cup plus 1 T Kosher salt, divided use
5 large jalapenos, seeded and pureed in food processor
2 T dry mustard
1 T granulated garlic
1 T cumin
2 T red pepper flakes
1 T black pepper
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup lemon juice
5 cups chopped red or green tomatoes
12 ounces tomato paste

Day one: In a large pan combine zucchini, onions, green pepper and ¼ cup salt. Mix well, cover and let stand overnight. Do not refrigerate.

Day two: Transfer vegetables to a colander and let drain for one to two hours. Return mixture to the pan and add pureed jalapenos, mustard, garlic, cumin, red pepper flakes, black pepper, vinegar, lemon juice, 1T salt, tomatoes and tomato paste. Mix all ingredients well.

Cover pan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and immediately ladle into sterilized jars and seal. Process in a water bath for 20 minutes (for altitudes between 1000 and 6000 feet).

Clementine-Brandy Marmalade

It's Clementine season!  A cross between a sweet orange and a Chinese mandarin, many people refer to them as tangerines but they are a different variety, entirely.  With a thin, tender skin, these almost-seedless beauties are a delight to peel and eat.  Don't pass these up at the store - the season is almost over!

I wanted to do something with these other than just peel and eat them (although I've done my share of that, too!) and found a recipe for Clementine-Brandy Marmalade.  Marmalade may be an acquired taste and as a child, I remember disliking it.  Orange marmalade seemed to have a bitter taste and I didn't like the texture of the peels.  Maybe I was too used to eating grape jelly - a staple in the 50's for making PB&J's.

This recipe uses about 10 Clementines, which made three, eight-ounce jars.  First step is peeling them and removing the white pith.  I used a carrot peeler and it did a pretty good job of getting only the outer layer of skin.

The peels are sliced into thin strips then placed in water and boiled gently for about 30 minutes, then drained.

The next step is rather labor-intensive.  The Clementine segments are separated all the white membranes must be removed.  By the time I peeled these, separated them and removed the membrane, I was done for the day!

I put the boiled and drained peel and the prepared fruit into plastic bags overnight.  The next day I cut up the fruit, added it to a pan with sugar, lemon juice, water, brandy, and the cooked peel.  This mixture was boiled until it reached a temperature of 220F, which took 35-40 minutes.

All that was left to do then was to fill the jars and process in a water bath.  This stuff is candy in a jar!  It's sweet and sticky with none of the bitterness I remembered marmalade having when I was young(er).  It's great on toast and I think it would be a wonderful glaze for chicken or pork, too.

Because this was a fair amount of work, I was tempted to rename it "Once in a Lifetime Marmalade", but I'll definitely make this again.  Next time I'll double the recipe and use four-ounce jars... perfect for gift-giving!

I found this recipe here, but you can PRINT RECIPE HERE.