When the girls were in elementary school they would
occasionally do something that was not quite to their liking and they would
say, “I made a mess-up.” (Probably all kids say that, but it was especially
cute coming from our two precious daughters.) I like the term and use it, not
only because it conjures up sweet memories of our children, but it also helps
soften my true reaction to a failed project, which is to scream, “S**T, another failure!!!” Most of our
attempts at preserving food have been successful and go unmentioned. It’s these
less than perfect results, these failures, which haunt me a bit. So, I need to
use this forum one more time (providing there are no more failures) to consider
and hopefully explain why each one of this month’s canning mess-ups occurred.
The peaches…a special trip to Lodi to buy them and an
afternoon of hot work in the kitchen to can nine quarts of the things, and what
do we have? Nine quarts of over-processed, brown-tinged Elberta’s in the
refrigerator/freezer. We managed to make every mistake in the book and then
some. The first lesson in canning: Focus, minimize all distractions. Not only
were we not focused and did not go over the recipe, but we were
preoccupied the entire time with taking photos (remember Ann, the reporter who
needed pictures for her article and the reason we were canning peaches in the
first place?). Next, we either didn’t remember from canning peaches last year
(yes, we’d done this before!), but once peeled they need to be placed in water
with lemon juice or ascorbic acid, which minimizes the browning from oxidation. Like apples, peaches will
brown very quickly if left exposed to the air. And they did! We were
cold-packing the peaches, which means the uncooked peaches are put into a hot
jar, a hot simple syrup is poured over them, a warm lid and ring applied, and
then the jars are placed in a boiling water bath canner and processed according
to the recipe. Verne had prepared several quart jars, both regular and large
mouth. I grabbed one of the jars and attempted to stuff the peach halves
through its “regular” mouth opening (kind of like stuffing a size 12 arse into
size 10 jeans). Not a chance for those extra-large peaches to go through a 3”
opening. It took a few jars of mutilated peaches before we went searching for
additional wide-mouth jars, which then had to be thoroughly washed and prepared
for canning. Time was ticking. When we were finally ready to process the jars,
everything was room-temp to cold…the jars, the simple syrup, the lids. This has
to explain our catastrophic results. They didn't seal! In fact, the syrup
bubbled over reducing its level in each jar by a good ½” and creating a sticky
bond between the lid and glass jar, which a less informed canner might consider
a seal…not me, though. I was not about to be fooled by a false (sticky) seal
and all of the jars went into the fridge. According to Lauren, an “epic fail”
as the peaches were for her! Here's the $50+ picture...
I’m scheduled to teach a class on jams and jellies in the
fall. My preparation has included several hours of research on the various
commercial pectins available as well as homemade pectin and, of course, the
slow-cook or reduction techniques to making a no-added pectin jam. Rather than
just research the topic, I decided to test each of these pectins/techniques by
using them to make a batch of strawberry jam. I chose that particular fruit
because strawberries are plentiful and inexpensive this time of year. Also, if
you remember reading my previous "canning mess-ups" blog, I had severe fruit float with
my new Pomona Pectin and assumed (bad idea to assume) that it was due to the
brand of pectin I was using. I ended the blog post by saying “the jury is still
out (on Pomona).” Well, the jury has returned with a NG verdict, Not Guilty. Every
jar of pectin jam I’ve made so far (four different brands) has had significant fruit float (solids at the
top, jelly at the bottom). I have yet to make my no-added pectin strawberry
jam, which is a slow cook reduction. However, I’d be willing to bet money that
it will be perfect with no fruit float. My theory is this: the quick cooking
time used with added-pectin jams does not sufficiently remove/release the air
from the fruit making it lighter than the jelled liquid in which it’s
preserved. It thus has a tendency to float to the top. A reduction jam is
cooked for 30-40 minutes, constantly stirring, until the mixture has reduced by
one-third to one-half. At the end of the cooking time, it is one cohesive glob
(technical term) and (this is my theory…you won’t find it in a food science
book) much of the air has been removed due to the constant stirring and the long
cooking time. Secondly, the liquid has jelled sufficiently to keep the fruit
particles suspended. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it!
We now arrive at our third failure in July: Pickles. I know
this sounds like an excuse, but by reading past blog posts you know that I
readily admit to my failures and shortcomings…It was a very bad recipe! I was so excited to be taking our second
big step in our journey into home food preservation…Making Pickles. I was
hoping for a pickle something like Claussen or Vlasic, but didn’t really expect perfect results from our first attempt.
Sadly, they didn’t turn out to be like Claussen or Vlasic or any other pickle
I’ve ever eaten and they were so bad, so salty they were inedible. No, I didn’t
expect perfection, but certainly was not prepared for total Failure. We tossed
the six-pint jars, spent an afternoon commiserating, and got up the next day
with a mission to find the perfect dill pickle recipe. We searched our cookbooks as well as
the Internet. With few exceptions, all dill pickle recipes call for large
amounts of salt. I’ve found one recipe by Ball that uses their commercially-available
pickling concoction that we’re going to try next. If we don’t have better results,
our plan is to put quick pickles on the back burner (pun intended) and move on
to fermented pickles for now…a much longer and more intimidating process, but
it does seem to use less salt. For
now, I’d avoid eating pickles at the Moser’s and just stick to the peach
margaritas!
No comments:
Post a Comment