Preserving

[Airgead]

With heaps of cheap fruit around over the last few months we have been reviving the ancient art of preserving.

We have -

Quince Conserve (fantastic.. the colour.. the colour)



Plum and sherry jam (yum)



Quinces in Syrup (uber yum)



Spiced Peaches (drool)



Brandied Apricots (from dried fruit not fresh... a year or 2 to age and they are fantastic)



They are all hot bottled into the jars and form a vacuum seal so they should last for years.

Anyone else make their own jams and conserves?

With the bread, beer, cider, mead, vege garden, fruit trees and now this, I feel like I'm in an episode of the Good Life and Felicity Kendall will walk through the front door any moment.

Cheers
Dave

 

[capretta]

oh she was so hot! i remember watching that when i was 8 and wanting her bad! didnt know what for but...

so how do you do it? conserves that is. at least provide one recipe!

 

[Airgead]

oh she was so hot! i remember watching that when i was 8 and wanting her bad! didnt know what for but...

so how do you do it? conserves that is. at least provide one recipe!

Ok... Here's the quince conserve

4 Quinces
5 cups cold water.
Sugar

Wipe quinces and leave whole. Place in saucepan with water. Cook until soft.
Lift out quinces and reserve juice.
When cool, peel, core and chop quinces.
Measure fruit and juice together.
Allow 1 cup sugar for every 1 cup fruit and juice.
Place fruit, juice and sugar in large saucepan. Bring top boil and boil briskly until the jam gives a setting test. Essentially you drop some on a cold plate and see if it jells. This is the black magic part of jam making. If you get it wrong you end up with syrup (too little, or toffee (too much). The difference can be a few seconds either way.
Pack in hot jars and seal.

And the brandied apricots -

Pack a jar full of dried apricots.
Make a syrup of equal parts sugar and water. Boil till it is dissolved. Let cool till its about the temp of hot water out of the tap.
Half fill the jar with the syrup.
Fill the other half with brandy.
Put a lid on.
After a day or 2 the apricots will have soaked up some of the liquid. Top up with more syrup and brandy.
This one relies on the brandy to preserve not on sterile jars and a vacuum seal.
These just get better and batter with age.

Cheers
Dave

 

[leiothrix]

Where do you get the jars from? And I take it you're filling them hot, putting on the lid & tipping upside down, rather than pressure-canning?

Rob.

 

[Airgead]

Where do you get the jars from? And I take it you're filling them hot, putting on the lid & tipping upside down, rather than pressure-canning?

Rob.

You can get preserving jars from coles. They used to be made in Italy and worked really well but they are now made in china and the lids haven't been sealing properly. We are looking at some online preserving jar suppliers for next time.

Yep they are bottled hot - jar goes in the oven at 120 for at least an hour. Whatever it is we are preserving is boiling when it goes into the jar. The lids are soaked in iodophor before going on and the jars are inverted while the stuff inside is still near boiling to really get them bug free.

Once it cools it forms a vacuum and seals it tight. If the lids work properly that is. We had a 50% fail rate this year which was really annoying.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Fourstar]

SWMBO and i made quince jam a fortnight ago, ended up burning the shit out of my hand. anywho, wwe (she) added way too much water and sugar so after boiling down for a while i began to ladle out some of the quince syrup, ended up with a beautiful, mildly cloudy quince jelly. awesome additions to sauces and great to use deglasing pans. :icon_drool2: i might roast a chicken and base it with it sometime soon.

pics will follow when i get a chance.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I live in East Melbourne.... every second bugger has an ornamental cumquat tree in their front yard. So I go on midnight raids, steal a kg or so of cumquats and make marmalade. Its easy & delicious.

I have no doubt that the neighbors would give me as many cumquats as I could carry - but the jam tastes better when the fruit is stolen.

Our neighborhood is great for street foraging - hanging over peoples fences are

Cumquats
Lemons of course
Grapes and vine leaves
Kaffir limes and of course the leaves
A few different sorts of plums (but you have to be fast to beat the possums)
I think I have spotted a lychee or longan tree in hanging over someones back fence into an alley. I don think it'll fruit in Melbourne though.
About 4 or 5 different types of rosemery
Thyme
Mint
and lots of other things that I am sure are herbs that I don't recognise.

and thats all without having to reach... an arms length (and a moral decision) further are a moderate assortment of veggies and some apples... I am a good boy and haven't touched them though.

 

[katzke]

Well this is one thing we have you beat on. One can get all kinds of canning items at just about any store here in the USA. Used to be able to find new lids at yard sales for 25 cents a dozen, that supply has dried up at the same time the store is asking a premium for them.

One this we do different is use a hot water bath for fruits and a pressure canner for things that require it. Oven canning is not longer recommended for any type of food. I wonder if a water bath would increase your sealing rate?

So with all those great fruits does anyone dry them? My favorite is plums and pears.

 

[Airgead]

Well this is one thing we have you beat on. One can get all kinds of canning items at just about any store here in the USA. Used to be able to find new lids at yard sales for 25 cents a dozen, that supply has dried up at the same time the store is asking a premium for them.

One this we do different is use a hot water bath for fruits and a pressure canner for things that require it. Oven canning is not longer recommended for any type of food. I wonder if a water bath would increase your sealing rate?

So with all those great fruits does anyone dry them? My favorite is plums and pears.

Canning and preserving is much bigger in the states than here. Most of our supplies come from the states. Our home jam making scene pretty much died out here in the 50s/60s when Cottes produced the first commercial jams. They were so successful that they pretty much wiped out home jam making. The guy who pioneered the commercial jam industry here was my father. He was chief food scientist for Cottees and was in charge of their jam making for years so my family is responsible for the death of home jam making here in Oz. Sorry. He did invent Passiona and GI cordial though.

We are using a bunch of old books handed down from my MIL which she bought years ago when they owned a hobby farm with a small orchard. She never actually used them. I suspect they are well out of date. We will try a water bath in future. I can use by boiler and burner so that's not a problem./ We need to find a better source of jars and lids though. The ones we have just do not seal at all and would let water in.

Can you use a water bath for jams? I suspect the extra cooking in the water batch would over set them. For jams I think you have to fill boiling jam into hot jars.

I have done some drying before but not recently. Must dig the dehydrator out again.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Leigh]

have been making jams and preserves for at least 12 years, learnt the art of my parents and their parents before them...

Usually jam or preserve around 100kg of fruit each year.

Fowlers Vacola equipment is by far the easiest, most reliable and cheapest way to preserve. This is a "water bath" method of cooking/sterilising and sealing. Get a kit off ebay/trading post and all you need to buy is the rubber seals.

The "house" jams are apricot, raspberry, blackberry and strawberry

The house preserves are apricot, peach, nectarine, pear, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, tomato, onion and will be trying corn next year (recipe/method supplied here on AHB).

 

[katzke]

Ouch I looked at some prices for canning supplies down there. No wonder the demand is low.

I am not a jam expert. We just follow the recipe in the book. As I recall you fill the jars hot and then put in a water bath canner. Just like you do in the oven so the set would be similar. The only difference is the predictable temperature of boiling water for better food safety. Meat and veggies need to be pressure canned at a higher heat to make sure and kill all the potential bugs. Note I said veggies need to be pressure canned. Just looked it up and the current advice is no vegetables can be water bath canned.

PM me and the next time I find a used canning book I will pick it up and send it to you. Will not have all your fruits in it but I bet you will be able to make use of it. If you want to look up some info do a search on US extension service canning and I bet you will get lots of hits. I would try it only I bet we would get totally different results as the search engines seem to take your IP address into account in tailoring the results.

 

[TasChris]

I have a vacola setup that I use and mainly do tomatoes, tomatoe sauce and pickled beetroot and when the cherries come on line I poach a couple of kilos of cherries in sugar syrrup and freeze.
I recently bought a book " Year in a bottle" by Sally Wise which has acouple of interesting recipes, the Chilli Tomatoe Chutney is very good. Will do some jams next season. Gives me time to collect some jars.

Chris

 

[drsmurto]

Leigh - how do you go preserving nectarines?

My HLT is my mothers fowlers vacola preserving urn

I make plenty of jams each year - strawberry, apricot, plum and fig.

I also dry apricots and figs.

I preserve apricots.

Normally make tomato sauce and chutney and leftover tomatoes get pureed and bottled as per the italian tradition. And i raid the prunus plum trees that line my street to make plum sauce.

Katzke - no water bath used in jam making. Jam is made on the stove in a big pot and once it reaches the setting point its poured into hot jars and sealed. Job done. I didn't know there was any other way to do it. My mother taught me, her mother taught her etc etc. Keeps for years.

 

[katzke]

Katzke - no water bath used in jam making. Jam is made on the stove in a big pot and once it reaches the setting point its poured into hot jars and sealed. Job done. I didn't know there was any other way to do it. My mother taught me, her mother taught her etc etc. Keeps for years.

My mom used to pour melted wax on top of the jam to seal the jars. Less costly then new lids. Old methods of canning were the oven method, as well as putting the jars in the dish washer. Have not seen bricks of paraffin in the store for must be 20 years now.

I guess people being inherently stupid is why now the only recommended way to can jam is to use a water bath. Takes any possibility of infection out of the process. If what you do works then keep doing it. For people wanting to start putting food up in jars I would recommend the current standards. As brewers we know how inviting sugar is to bugs.

It could be that either it is harder to sue someone for giving poor advice or you do not have research on improving the process like we do. Basic scientific advice is free and plentiful in the USA on how to can just about anything safely. It goes beyond pure science and includes the long term taste and quality of the food.

Using a water bath is not a big step in the process. If you are putting up many jars it does slow the process down.

 

[katzke]

Katzke - no water bath used in jam making. Jam is made on the stove in a big pot and once it reaches the setting point its poured into hot jars and sealed. Job done. I didn't know there was any other way to do it. My mother taught me, her mother taught her etc etc. Keeps for years.

My dad grew up when they hung rabbits out front of the butcher shop with the feet still on them. They had pickle barrels in the shops also. I never got to ask him but did ask one other person of the same vintage if they missed all of that from the old days. He said NO, people were always down with something and thought it was just normal to be sick. He said they never knew they had some form of food poisoning most of the time.

A happy medium of technology and natural food is important. Using a water bath on jam for a few minutes to make sure all the bugs are dead is worth the time for me.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Water bath for other preserved foods yes - and I am not saying you haven't read that the water bath is the correct thing for Jams.. and it might well be. But it makes no sense to me that it is... the temperature of a jar full of freshly cooked jam is considerably hotter than the temperature of the water bath could possibly be... the water bath would actually be cooling it down.

Not saying you are wrong, just trying to understand how you could be right.

 

[drsmurto]

Water bath for other preserved foods yes - and I am not saying you haven't read that the water bath is the correct thing for Jams.. and it might well be. But it makes no sense to me that it is... the temperature of a jar full of freshly cooked jam is considerably hotter than the temperature of the water bath could possibly be... the water bath would actually be cooling it down.

Not saying you are wrong, just trying to understand how you could be right.

As usual my point was lost due to my incoherent (pre-coffee) babble.

Completely missed your point Katzke - when preserving fruits i add them raw to the jar, add syrup then put them in a water bath for 1-2h at near boiling. Same for veg.

Jam, no for the reason thirsty points out. Jars are washed, rinsed and drained then put in the oven at 120C. Jam added while jars still hot.

 

[Leigh]

Katze, We get clear plastic lids in Australia that are stretchy when wet, and vacuum seal onto the top of the jar as the jam cools, so no need to do the extra water bath step for jams.

Dr Smurto, Nectarines are a bit hit and miss. White nectarines tend not to have much flavour when preserved and turn a bit mushy (like over ripe apricots). I only preserve nice firm yellow nectarines, washed, split and de-pipped. Last years were average, but this years have sensational rich flavour in them. As with other pome fruit, I try to have them all consumed within 15 months as the flavour really starts to subside. Nectarines do tend to change flavour (and colour) a lot quicker than peaches and apricots.

tasChris, would love to hear your recipe for beetroot. Tried some about 8 years ago, but they just tasted loke vinegar!

 

[katzke]

OK last post as I see the horse is dyeing.

From what I have read in the posts. Australia does not have a big canning tradition like we do in the USA. Our fairs are full of home canned foods for judging. When I took in 1 of the 2 beers at our fair a lady was in line with over 100 entries of canned goods.

We have food labs where they are always looking at improving the quality and safety of food. Home canning is a big part of that as it is very popular. As I said in an earlier post we can buy canning supplies at almost every store in the USA. Want to learn how to can? It is much easier to learn how to can then to learn how to brew. To show you the difference we have special stores that sell home brew supplies and equipment. I am lucky and have one near me. Some states have only one store. You seem to have the stuff just about anyplace you look. It is the same with canning for us.

The current standard for properly canning jam is to use a water bath. Everything else sounds the same as what you are doing. Oven processing is no longer recommended as well as the once tried system of putting the product in the dish washer.

I can not say why water bath is recommended over any other method. I can only guess that it is safer and they say it produces a product that has better storage. I am sure it also reduces the problem of people not following directions correctly. In the case of jam, from what I have been reading to find out more, if a proper recipe is used there should be enough sugar and acid to keep the product from spoiling. The primary spoilers of jam are fermentation and mold. The problem with home canning is we have no idea what the characteristics of the raw foods are so there is no way to know for sure what the sugar and acid content is.

In the case of vegetables, fish, and meat the only recommended processing method is pressure canning. Some known high acid vegetables can be water bath canned. All of these foods can not only spoil, but get infected and kill you.

The recommendations to use a water bath canner for jam may not be 100% necessary and may be to keep the lawyers away. If you can find authoritative recommendations that say your method is safe then say so. Just because granny did it that way and lived to 100 does not say that everyone can. Put another way, just because one brewer using open fermentors may brew good beer, does that say we should all be doing it?

I am not trying to say what you are doing is wrong. It sounds like it works for those doing it. I am just sharing recommended standards from a country that has a healthy home canning industry. It sounds like you are in the stage of canning where we where in home brewing 30 years ago.

 

[TasChris]

tasChris, would love to hear your recipe for beetroot. Tried some about 8 years ago, but they just tasted loke vinegar!

will track it down and post
Cheers
Chris