Yes, I Canned
November 4th, 2009No Bailout Money Was Used in the Writing of This Blog Post
I tried the pickles I made. I’m not sure whether they’re a success. The pickling solution is just about perfect, but the pickles themselves seem slightly off. I think they have a little too much salt in them.
The recipe I used called for 9 cups of cucumbers and 3/4 of a cup of salt. You salt the sliced cucumbers and let them sit for three hours, and then you rinse the salt off. Seems a little odd; maybe the point is to suck water out of the cucumbers. Anyway, a lot of the salt stayed in the cucumbers. I assume it will leach out over time.
The recipe may also need additional sugar, but not a whole lot. The pickles are acceptably crisp, but next time I’m using calcium chloride to improve them.
Canning is really easy. I’m surprised. There’s a certain amount of work involved, but it’s not tricky at all.
I may throw out my first efforts. The peppers, not the pickles. I am not totally sure they’re okay. And the last two jars came out a little weird. While the canner was cooling, I pulled the pressure regulator off to see what would happen. I think the stuff in the jars boiled and shot out of the jars, because the level of the liquid is considerably lower than it was when the jars went into the canner. They sealed okay, but some of the peppers are exposed to air.
I had a funny idea for dehydrating food. I was thinking I’d put trays of food in the oven and put a heat source in with them. Maybe a small space heater or a very weak blow dryer. That would blow warm air over the food, and I wouldn’t have to turn the oven on. The minimum baking temperature is 175°, and that would cook the food.
Peppers dehydrate just fine without a machine. I slice them open and thread them on strings and hang them until they dry up. Seems to work. If this pans out, making smoked peppers will be a cinch.
I’d like to make cayenne sauce and can it. My Home Depot cayennes are phenomenal. They taste like hot cherries. If you grind them up and cook them with sugar, garlic, and oil, you get a magnificent sweet paste sort of like Chinese chili paste, but it’s much better.
I could also can fermented chili sauce. The canning process should arrest the fermentation and kill the germs. This stuff is wonderful.
I should buy some store mangoes and work up a chutney recipe. Next summer, God willing, my trees will bear, and I won’t be able to eat all the fruit. Chutney is great if you make it sweet enough and hot enough.
Kim chi…that would be a gift from heaven. How can cabbage taste that good? I don’t know if it’s possible to can it. Maybe cooking ruins it.
I still have to make canned sausage. I noticed that ground pork is very cheap, as are Boston butts. The advantage of a butt is that I could brine it in baking soda before grinding it. That would kill the boar taint and result in superior sausage.
I found a cheap source of calcium chloride, so I bought a pound. I have Damprid, which is calcium chloride, but I don’t know if it’s food grade.
My goal is to be able to feed myself in grand style without ever spending money on anything, except for vacuum bags and Ball jars.
Perhaps I am a tad idealistic.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:00 PM
How about pickling your own eggs? Or are you sufficiently scared of them now?
November 4th, 2009 at 12:57 PM
When you pulled off the pressure regulator, the pressure droped in the unit and allowed the contents of the jars to “boil over” and you should have seen some discoloration of the water in the canner when you opened it up. Provided you kept everything at the propper temperature for the propper time at the propper pressure before you took off the regulator, everything should be ok. the contents will probably discolor, but life is too short, open them now and use them or give them to people telling them to use them within a short time.
November 4th, 2009 at 1:46 PM
Alton Brown dehydrates stuff with a box fan, furnace filters and bungee cords:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5912487412723519389#
November 4th, 2009 at 3:06 PM
“How about pickling your own eggs?”
Or pigs’ feet!
November 4th, 2009 at 3:20 PM
Aren’t pigs’ feet flavored by manure?
November 4th, 2009 at 3:33 PM
“Aren’t pigs’ feet flavored by manure?”
only in the middle-east.
November 4th, 2009 at 4:23 PM
Your pickles taste “off” because they haven’t had time to pickle yet. Give ’em a couple of months. Not everything in life is instantaneous. Especially pickles.
Gerry N.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:19 PM
Where did you read that sweet pickles take two months? The stuff I’ve read says 24 hours minimum, with improvement over the next couple of weeks.
November 4th, 2009 at 10:46 PM
I’ve never read about any pickles, my Mom and Gramma put up hundreds of quarts (and pints) of every kind of fruit, veggie and pickle you can think of every year, including chutney, sweet pickles, dill pickles, pickled green tomatoes, pickled watermelon rinds, pickled crab apples, pickled herring and salmon, pickled asparagus, and cauliflower. No pig’s feet, though. None of the pickled or canned stuff was touched for at least two months. Mom’s watermelon pickles were to die for as were her pickled green tomatos. The only pickles I never cared for were mustard pickles. Gramma swooned over ’em though. They did this from before I was born (1944) until my mom died in 1979. I just last year ate the last of her watermelon pickles. They were exquisite. Both Her and Gramma would have a fit if someone wanted to open a jar of pickles too soon. Have some patience, it builds character. Those two lived to can. If it was crunchy when raw, they’d pickle it. Pickled celery sucks big time. Canned rhubarb is wonderful and makes strawberry rhubarb pie that should be outlawed. The people next door had an enormous Rainier cherry tree they gave us free run of so Mom and Grandma put up at least fifty quarts of those cherries every year.
One time my Dad hooked me into a run to the dump. The guy next to us was tossing out a pickup load of Ball and Atlas jars. Dad and I loaded most of ’em into the station wagon. Our stock went up a couple hundred points that afternoon when we got home.
See what happens when you put a nickle in me?
Gerry N.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:52 AM
How did you make your fermented chili sauce? It sounds good.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:59 AM
I ground peppers into a paste, added a little sugar and a spoonful of yogurt, and left the result in a covered container on the counter. I suppose it would be safer to heat the peppers and cool them before adding the yogurt, to kill any weird bacteria that might be on them.
November 7th, 2009 at 8:33 AM
What kind of salt did you use? My Grandmama says to never use anything except pickling salt…you’ll find it in the grocery next to rock salt