Preserving Is A Family Affair

As our children have got older we've had to start putting more food away to last us longer. 

Luckily they all love helping and the last few weeks there's been quite a few times with  us all sat round a table prepping a harvest to preserve it. 

Smalec - Polish Pork Dripping

There was a lot of fat on the pigs when we were processing them at the weekend, so gets added to the sausages but there was still a lot there. 

One of the guys was Polish and wanted to make smalec. This is basically like dripping but with pork fat instead of beef and the fat is flavoured. 

It was simple to make. We first minced up a good amount of fat. 

 It was then rendered it down on the hob until it started to separate.

 Then an onion cut in half was added to flavour the fat, he did this on sticks so he could stir it round.

 He took this outside to cool for a while then once it was cold enough to pour into plastic containers he broke up the onion and shared it between three tubs.

 Once cool it solidified.

 Apparently they spread it on bread instead of butter with a sprinkling of salt and fresh onion on top.

I tried it on some fresh bread (without fresh onion - no way can I eat that) and a bit of salt, it was lovely, a great alternative to butter and one worth remembering encase things ever got harder and dairy products were harder to get.

Stores for a long time as well as fat is basically a preserve.

Apparently they sometimes flavour the fat with apples instead of onions. I think I still prefer beef dripping but this is genuinely good to eat. The girls liked it as well!

Who else has tried this or something similar?

Chilli's Ripening - Recipes Please!

I have a good selection of chilli peppers ripening at the moment. I think I planted about 10 different varieties with different degrees hotness so I'm looking forward to trying them all out, maybe I'll get some friends to play a chilli roulette! 

One thing I have been loving this year is a hot sauce to add to stirfrys, chips, pizzas and anything else that takes a sauce. By adding some once it's cooked it means that the children (and wife) can have it quite mild and I can ramp up the heat a bit more.

What I'm really after is a good recipe that I can preserve my harvest with, I want a good shelf life - and I don't mind canning it. I'm already planning on sweet pickling some like I have done in previous years but doing each jar with a mixture of different chillies in it this time.

What's your favourite chilli preserve recipe?

More Meat Canning

This is a post I should have written a few weeks ago, but I didn't get round to it.

I recently came into some very cheap beef (but still from a trustworthy source).

I had to process it fairly quick though as I had a fair amount to get through. 

I decide to eat some, freeze most of it and can some. 

I called Kirsty and she came round to help with the canning (and took some for some eating as well!). 

We tackled it in the usual way, although this time we were doing it at my house and it must be said that my kitchen is nowhere near as good as Kirstys for this type of thing.  In fact I learnt a very important canning lesson on that Monday night - don't start too late.

The meat took a while to prepare, then it took ages for my hob to get the canner boiling to sterilise the jars, then at about 10.30 at night I said to Kirsty to go home as everything was taking so long. The pressure canner took ages to vent the steam, then ages to get up to pressure. I then had to wait the hour and twenty minutes it said in the canning book for it to process and then another half hour for the pressure to reduce enough for me to remove the cans out of the canner. 

I managed to get to bed just after two! 

And for what?

Some jars of dog food by the look of it! 

I have to admit the meat looks less than appetising sat on the shelf  but I'm sure it will taste fine when added to a stew or something. Still interesting to can more meat, I wonder how much we would all have to do if we didn't have freezers as our main way of long term meat storage. 

Anyone else done raw pack meat canning? What does it taste like or shall that be another surprise I've got in store!?

Chilli Apple Chutney & Raspberry Jam

It's been a couple of very wet days here and to make matters worse the little one has been under the weather. Nothing serious but she's been a bit clingy and not wanting to go outside as much as normal. So while she's napped I've started to do a bit more preserving of this years harvest. 

The first thing I did was to make some jam, just 7 jars but it's a start. These was using some raspberries I'd picked earlier in the year and some of the left over cooking apples from canning the other day. Jam making is so simple and we eat much more of it than we used to! In fact we were down to just one jar left! See previous posts on raspberry jam here and here.

Then the next thing I made was some chilli and apple chutney. 

Although I froze a load of chillies I still had some on the plants that I didn't know what to do with and I fancied something spicy to make cheese sandwiches a bit more interesting over the winter. 

I need to let this mature for a month before I try it, so please don't copy the recipe yet but I'm going to write it here incase it's any good and then I'll be able to copy it at a later date.

600g chopped onions
1 kg chopped apples,
300ml of malt vinegar (I think cider vinegar would be better but I had none!)
12 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon of turmeric
2 teapoons of ground ginger
275g demerara sugar
Chillies - I used a few Sotch Bonnet, half a dozen cayennes, one Aji Crystal (really hot), and about eight cherry bombs.
Rasins - You can add these if you like but I hate them in chutney so never do!

I then cooked the onions until soft, added the apples and garlic and did the same before adding everything else and cooking until I could see the bottom of the pan when I pulled the spoon through.

Pour into sterilised jars and keep for a month before eating. I made five jars.

when I tried a bit the hotness was a growing sensation! Not too hot but it builds over time. Really looking forward to trying this when it's matured!

Anyone else made any chilli preserves lately?

Sweet Pickling Peppers

One of the goals I set myself this year was to try to grow some chilli peppers and preserve them in a way similar to my favourite band of pickled peppers, who will remain nameless. I could eat a jar of those peppers a week!

 So this year I went for broke and grew some chillies I had been told were quite similar, Cherry Bomb. They've grown well and each plant has loads of shiny red peppers on, they're not as hot as I would have liked, you can pop a whole one in your month and not feel it too much, but they certainly look the part.

Trawling through the Internet back in June I came across Dani and her amazing blog Eco Footprints - South Africa as she had a recipe for making what I was after.

 The recipe is really simple and can be found on her blog here. The pickling liquid is a mix of vinegar and sugar so it should preserve them for a long time!

Left to soak in salt water over night before the pickling!

Four jars full, they look a little too good - I can't see them lasting long!

I can't wait to try these out! they look just as good as the ones you buy in a shop. My only disapointment is how many peppers you need to fill a jar. To get enough for me to have them every day I'd need hundreds of plants. These four jars are ripe chillies off ten plants! 

Anyone else ever used a really sweet pickle?

Fig Jam

A glut of figs isn't something I've had to deal with before, but luckily we've got some friends in the village who have three huge fig bushes in front of their house and they don't really like figs!

 I picked a good sized bag full and then set about making some jam. I never bother looking at a recipe, just weigh the fruit once it's been topped and tailed and then add the same quantity of sugar (2 1/2lb of each). I did add a large cooking apple to give the mixture a bit of extra pectin to help it set and make it go a little further.

A Rev Wilks apple - a good early cooker

 

The finished bottles

It reached setting point pretty quick and wasn't a difficult jam to make. I have only tried a bit of it so far but its got a lovely subtle taste to it. It made five jars but it still helps keep our jam stocks up! 

Anyone else made jam with something that wasn't run-of-the-mill lately?

Sticky Bloody Labels!

Some labels just peal off after a short soak in warm water, leaving nothing behind.

Some, however, need to heated and reduced back down to sand and then remade into a glass jar to remove that sticky residue that's covering half the jar.

Is it wrong that with really tricky jars I just put them in recycling instead of getting frustrated trying to remove a label that's harder than an engraving? Either that or any secret tips or short cuts to success?

Pears in syrup

This is just an experiment from something I read on the Internet (I say that far too often) so don't try this until I find out if it works or not. 

On Tuesday I preserved some of our "less nice" eating pears from a tree that I planted at my parents farm some years ago. I did this in a sugar syrup and it was relatively easy, but so much so I'm not sure if it will preserve them or not.

Picked the pears

 

Help picking

Peeled, quartered them and removed the core

Boiled them in a sugar syrup made up of 2 cups sugar to one water (American measure but it was an easy way).

Once they were poached I put them in some hot kilner jars (out of the oven) and then rested them upside down to check they were sealed and to sterilise the tops

Trying the goods - they tasted pretty good!

Bottled up ready to go in the cupboard - I hope they last as I made up three jars!

So that was simple but quite time consuming. I know it's not "proper" bottling but I think they should last and the website I found it on (which I can't seem to find now!) said they should last for six months like this.

Raspberry And Apple Jam

I used to think making jam was a big deal.

Now it's something to be done on a Sunday night with a spare half hour! 

 Picked some of the last of the autumn raspberries on Saturday. They aren't as sweet as they were at the start of the season and they don't keep very long in the fridge. Making jam with them is a good way to preserve them and by adding a couple of apples to it makes it go a bit further (I also think that it helps with setting the jam as raspberries have low petin).

I just mixed equal quantities of fruit, weighed it, stewed it and then added just under the same amount of sugar before boiling to setting point.
This has to be one of my favorite jams, it just tastes so good!
Toying with the idea of selling my jam in the honest box - What is homemade jam worth and will people buy it?

Poor Mans Capers

Everything I grow in my veg garden is edible and this includes the flowers (but maybe except a few of the weeds).

Picking nasturtium seeds

 I grow nasturtiums every year. They look and taste good in salads and they're as great sacrificial plant for bugs to attack instead of your prise winning veg. They also look fantastic and makes me look a far better gardener than I am by having clumps of these brightly coloured flowers growing in every corner.

Showing daddy what she'd had picked didn't quite go to plan!

 But I read some time ago that you can pickle the seeds and make "poor mans capers" from them. We use capers at least a few times a month with a great pasta dish that my wife cooks called "whores pasta". It's a cheap dish anyway but it would be cheaper if we didn't have to buy capers, and if we could make our own substitute it brings us a tiny step closer to self sufficiency.

Picking up nasturtium seeds (from the floor)

 I found a simple recipe off the Internet (although I can't find it to reference now) but it involved: Picking the seeds
Smash the bowl (having your little girl smash the glass bowl your picking into is an optional extra in this process, but it's the route we decided to go down).
Then leave these seeds in a brine made up of 50g of salt to a pint of water (good mix of imperial and metric measurements as well - can you tell I'm a carpenter?)
Leave to soak for 24 hours
Strain and place them in a jar
Boil up some vinegar and pour over the top
Leave for a month to mature

The finished "capers"

I only made these the other night so I've no idea if they taste any good but it's got to be worth a try for such a short recipe - I'll let you know what they're like in a months time!
*Update - see later post for the verdict.

English Peach Jam

I'm still working at the same house I was last last year and I remember I commented on how nice the peaches were last August. This year there seems to be even more in their greenhouse, but many have bugs in and so many are just falling to the floor when they're ripe.

 I decided to go and gather these up at the end of work on Thursday so I could try to make some peach jam. I've only ever tried it once in Thailand on our honeymoon and I remember it tasting pretty good!

 I had about 3lb of fruit by the time I took the stones out, cut away the bad and skinned them. Many were so ripe that the skins just fell away from the fruit. To this I added the same amount of sugar, the juice of a a lemon and an apple to help with the petin.
I boiled it rapidly for 30 minutes until it reached setting point, which was quicker than I thought it would be as I'd no idea if it would set or not.

The jam went a lovely golden colour and tastes very peachy (who'd of thought). I doubt I'll have many opportunities to make an English jam out of this semi exotic fruit. I think I'm going to have to build a wall just to have a peach tree growing against it now!