Preserving Your Food

There are different ways to can and freeze your produce and foods. You may also consider dehydrating foods. Personally, if electric goes out and you lose power to keep your freezers going, I’d suggest canning and dehydrating.

When canning, you will need appropriate size jars for your needs. If you are feeding just a couple of people, buy pint jars. Larger families will probably require quart to half gallon size jars. Buy the lids and rings that fit the appropriate jars – usually when you buy the boxes, those will automatically come with it. You will need either a canner or large pan to completely submerge filled and sealed jars In boiling water. You can either buy a Ball canning guide or search the internet for temperature and length to cook the jars. Just follow instructions on how to can or freeze each thing you want to preserve.

In years past, I had jars to do canning. Let’s start with green beans. Remove the stem ends of each bean and destring if they are varieties of string beans. You can snap to desired bite size or can whole. Wash the beans and drain water. Stuff the jars tight until you reach the rim of the jar. If desired, add salt – usually 1/4 teaspoon per pint or 1/2 teaspoon per quart. Fill with boiling water or really hot tap water. Wipe the rims to clean any residue and seal with the lid and ring. Different areas require how much pressure to use and for how long when using a pressure canner as well as how long to boil in water to water bathe.

I canned beans at about 15 pounds of pressure for 15 minutes. Tomatoes and juices can be canned either at 15 pounds for 10 minutes or 10 pounds for 15 minutes. Check your books and internet for your appropriate poundage and times for your area.

Some water bathe. That is completely submerging your filled and sealed jars of whatever you are canning and water cooking on a safe solid flat canning rack. This rack will keep the direct heat of the bottom of the pan off the jars to prevent jar breakage. This process takes longer because it compared to pressure canning is like salt and pepper. It’s just a different way to process.

Different produce naturally takes different steps to prepare. Tomatoes can be washed and frozen whole, dehydrated, or blanched in scalding water a few minutes to loosen the skin to peel. After skinning, you can blend, chop, or whatever you desire to can or freeze them. You can find recipes and make salsa, bbq, pasta sauce, or even juice. Fruits such as pears and nectarines can be peeled by this same method.

The older methods included using squeegeeing and colandering, which is using pressure objects to squeeze the juice out, but now there are special fast and pulp creating blenders to use. This method is so much faster and less work.

Some fruits such as the apple and pear have to be washed and physically peeled with a knife or an automatic peeler of sorts. I can pears, peaches, and apples, but you can also freeze them in whole pieces for pies. We usually freeze these and unfortunately this year, ole frost and freeze has killed most. You can still purchase and buy these items at fruit markets and such.

Sometimes we freeze and dehydrate peppers for use in pizza or chilies. Just be sure to follow guidelines and wash all of your produce or fruit thoroughly. Dehydration requires using your oven or a dehydrator at a certain temperature for a length of time to literally take the moisture out but preserving the product. It will shrink the product down a lot. To use, you can put these pieces or chopped dehydrated pieces in chilies and salsa to rehydrate. Search the internet for dehydration processes.

I could probably write a book on this, but since there are so many resources online and books to purchase, it will be a quicker resource for you. Give this a try, you will appreciate the natural flavors and non GMO’s or additives that some products have when you buy from stores. Buying fresh will also help to avoid preservatives. Good luck and eat healthy!