Category Archives: food preservation

Dehydrating zucchini squash and celery

dehydrating, food preservation, homemaking

Today was a nice productive day.  I started off by cutting up all those pairs of jeans so I could easily store the needed fabric for whenever I get around to starting a quilt.  The pile is significantly smaller now, which is good, since I was feeling a little overwhelmed with the amount of clothes needing to be put away for projects.  Then I sketched out a couple of designs for quilts for the boys’ room, and asked my ds15 how he liked them.  It’s good to have a basic design worked out because you really have to have a plan before you start.  Last week I cut out a bunch of squares, but realized that I was complicating things for myself by not having the plan in place first.  Fortunately my dd found the graph paper (it was missing last week when I wanted to start thinking on paper regarding designs) so I was able to do that today.  It seems like the kind of thing that can be done in little blocks of time. 

Then I went to the hospital with the kids, then to the post office to mail some organic tea to someone who generously sent me some heirloom seeds for planting in this summer’s garden, and back home.   We got a bunch of inexpensive zucchini, so much that there’s no way to fit it into the fridge.  And it’s one of those perishable veggies that don’t last long outside of the fridge. 

So we sliced a bunch up in the food processor to dehydrate.  We did it once before and it was very successful – the slices were so thin that when we dried them, they were like crunchy chips.  They ended up getting gobbled up as snacks the first day we made them.  You can also brush the tops of the sliced zucchini with olive oil and spices, and they are delicious when dried!

I bought a few bunches of celery from the reduced rack with the intent to dehydrate them, and I’m going to slice a bunch of that up and dry it tonight, too.  I’ve seen how useful having dried veggies to use has been so far in putting together quick meals when prep time is short, and it will be nice if we can add celery to the list of things I have on hand.  It’s nice to have a way to prep vegetables in ‘bulk’ and use them later on when we need them, and it’s nice not to need to rely as much on my refrigerator to keep things useable. 

Avivah

Manual grain grinder

food preservation

Minutes before Shabbos, we got a knock on the door and found our mailman waiting with a package.  Because time was so tight, we didn’t open it until tonight, when we saw our new grain mill!  After having my electric one out of service for several weeks last time, it made me think how dependent I am on it to use my bulk purchased grains as planned.  I also thought about The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and how they spend all day grinding enough wheat for a small loaf of bread for lunch and dinner, because all they had was a small coffee grinder.  And so I decided that having a manual grain mill would be a useful addition to our pantry supplies.

The one we chose was the Family Grain Mill.  It’s not the cheapest, but it’s not extremely expensive, either – it was $120.  I wanted something that worked reasonably well but didn’t have a huge price tag attached, and this was the one that seemed to best fit my needs.  Tonight the kids all tried it out – for hours.  🙂  It was one child after another taking turns grinding, even the 2.5 year old. 

It’s certainly not as efficient as the electric grinder, but it produces a wider range of grinds (ie, coarseness/fineness).  They had lots of fun, and the flour is freshly ground and ready to be made into pancakes for breakfast tomorrow morning.  🙂  I think the pancakes will taste even better to them than usual, knowing all the labor that went into the grinding. 

Avivah

Making orange zest

dehydrating, food preservation, frugal strategies

When I got my dehydrator, I didn’t expect it to be so fun or so frugal!  For years I thought of it as a luxury item and couldn’t see a practical value in it, but I’m now enjoying proving myself wrong and finding new uses for it.

I bought these gorgeous navel oranges, with thick clean peels, and it occurred to me that maybe I could dry them to make orange zest that would be used for baking.  At first I sliced them into small pieces, since I didn’t want to make them so small that they’d fall through the spaces in the drying tray.  But even though things shrink substantially when dehydrated, they’re still a little too big to use as zest (funnily enough, my baby thinks these are a super treat!).  Then my dd14 put the next peels into the food processor with the ‘S’ blade, and put them on top of the paraflex sheet (that’s intended for making fruit leathers) that covers the regular dehydrator tray.  That worked perfectly, and the final result is a perfect orange zest, just like you’d buy in the store.  It’s a nice feeling, turning something you would have thrown away into something of value.

I don’t like to run the dehydrator just for a small quantity of something, because it seems to me an inefficient use of energy – I made these because there was one unused tray that afternoon that wasn’t needed when drying all the shredded broccoli stems that I experimented on the same day. 🙂  Those turned out great, too.

Avivah

How to can ground meat

canning, food preservation

>>How do you can ground meat? Do you cook it in a sauce or soup before caning? <<

I used to hear how complicated and dangerous canning meat was, and I’m really glad that one of the very first things I canned was turkey.  That way I did the ‘hardest’ thing first and I wasn’t intimidated by it because I had nothing to compare it to.    Some people will tell you to start out with fruits and jams and then work your way up, but it worked out well for me the other way!

Despite what people  may say, it’s really not hard or complicated to can meat.  It does require precisely following instructions, like any other low acid food (ie, not fruits and jams).  You MUST have a pressure canner and follow all proper safety guidelines.  Fill with water up to the water line (marked inside the canner), and fill up the jars you’re going to use half way with water.  While you prepare the meat, your jars will be sterilizing, and then the  jars will be ready to be used at the same time the meat is ready to be packed. 

Before preparing the  meat, you have to decide what you’re going to later use it for.  I decided I wanted to cook it up as crumbles that could be added to stews, pot pies, etc because that has the most possibilities.  (I considered making patties and then decided against it, but it is possible to make little meat balls or burgers and can them.)  I sauteed the meat in its own juice and broke the chunks up into crumbles.  It’s suggested to drain off the fat since it could interfere with the seal. 

I removed each jar, poured out the boiling water, and filled it with hot meat.  Then cover it with boiling broth or water, leaving 1″ headspace.  Make sure there’s no air space in the jars.  Wipe down the top of the jar, so that there’s no residual grease that might keep it from sealing later on.  Put the heated jar lids on, screw on bands, and put back in pressure canner.  It needs to process at 11 pounds pressure for 75 minutes for pints, 90 minutes for quarts.  Exhaust the canner for ten minutes with the steam steadily rising from the vent hole, then put the weight on top and wait for it to get up to the proper pressure.  Start timing the process from the point that it’s at the proper pressure. 

You have to keep it at the right pressure the entire time.  If it gets a little high, that’s okay, but if it drops below 11 pounds pressure, you have to restart timing the canning all over again (to prevent possibility of botulism).  So don’t let it drop!

So far in the meat department, I’ve canned beef cubes, beef stew, turkey pieces, ground chicken, ground beef, broth, and meat spaghetti sauce.  The only problem I had was with jars that failed to seal because I didn’t drain the fat enough, so when it reached the high temperature inside the canner, it boiled over the jar lid, and then the lid couldn’t adhere.  I put those in the fridge and used them right away, but they could have been reheated it, and then reprocessed. 

If you start canning and do some meat, please share your experience!

Avivah

Homemade Strawberry Jam

canning, food preservation, recipes

We made a delicious experiment last week that was so simple that I had to share it with you, a sugar free strawberry jam! It’s slightly softer than a jam, so maybe to call it a fruit spread would be more accurate.

Here’s the proportions we used:

  • 3 lb. frozen strawberries (you can use fresh, too)
  • 1 can frozen apple juice concentrate
  • 1 box powdered pectin (use the pectin intended for low sugar recipes)

Put the strawberries and concentrate in the pot.  Cook on low, covered, until the strawberries are soft.  Mash the strawberries using a fork while keeping them in the pot.  Add the pectin, thoroughly mixing in so that there are no lumps.  Cook on medium-high for another few minutes, and then pour into jars.  It won’t look as if it’s at all jelled by this point, but don’t worry about it – it will continue to set after it cools.  If you cook it until it looks thick, it will be overdone and hard to spread once it cools.  (That’s what happened to our first batch.)  This recipe yields 7 half pint jars of jam.

If you’re not going to be canning it, you can store it in glass jars or empty peanut butter jars.  We canned ours in 1/2 pint jelly jars, processing for five minutes in a boiling water bath.  Once it’s canned, you won’t need to keep it in the fridge or freezer.

For one batch, we added blueberries; for another we used a different flavor juice concentrate.  All of the batches turned out well.  I think if you keep the basic proportions the same (7 c. fruit to one can concentrate), you’ll find you can successfully experiment with different fruits.

Avivah

Dehydrating frozen carrots

dehydrating, food preservation

When I last went shopping, I got a huge amount of frozen vegetables.  One of the things I ordered for the first time was frozen diced carrots, and when I got there to pick up my order, the woman in charge of the frozen section told me that I was in luck, since the manager told her to mark the frozen carrots down fifty percent that morning.  And even though I placed my order the week before, that applied to my carrots, too.

That made the diced frozen carrots 25 cents a pound, which is very, very cheap, especially considering that the peeling and chopping has been done for you.  When I saw them marked down, my first instinct was to buy a bunch more than the case of 24 pounds that I already had ordered. But my rational brain took over after taking a second look at the industrial sized cart she had wheeled my order out on, and I wondered what I could possibly do with more, since as it was I didn’t have room in the freezer for everything.  I briefly considered canning them, but I prefer not to can vegetables and knew that I would be creating a lot of time pressure for myself if I had to can everything before it defrosted.  So I reluctantly stuck with just 24 pounds.

Then later that night, eight hours later to be precise, it occurred to me that I could have bought them and then dehydrated them.  I felt like smacking my forehead when this occurred to me, but there was no way I was driving two hours in each direction just to go buy some more!  I had never tried it before, which is why it didn’t occur to me in the store. 

I was very lucky in that the weather has been so cold that nature has been keeping several cases of veggies frozen for me, so I didn’t have to rush to deal with them. But I can’t rely on it staying this cold forever, so I decided yesterday would be a good day to dehydrate some.  My dd8 and I did this together – it was pretty easy since there wasn’t much prep work, just separating the pieces that froze together after she took the bags out to defrost and spreading them evenly on the trays.  We took out three bags of 4 lb. each, and that was one load in the dehydrator.  It took most of the day (I’m estimating about twelve hours, though I wasn’t watching the clock), since there was so much moisture from the ice that had to melt first – I turned it off before I went to sleep and the last of them were finished by then.  It always amazes me how compact everything becomes once it’s dehydrated.

Today, I plan to do another load, since there’s no advantage to keeping them frozen over having them dehydrated.  In fact, the opposite is true – they will take up lots less space when dried and free up freezer space for something else.  Since I plan to use them in stews, chili, pot pies, etc., they’ll be rehydrated as a natural part of cooking and dehydrated works just as effectively as frozen for my purposes.

Avivah

Dehydrating pickled fruit

dehydrating, food preservation

This past autumn, I shared with you about the wonderful free fruit that we picked and preserved.  When I started canning fruit, I stuck to the basics: fruit of one kind in it’s juice, and applesauce.  But there were so many appealing looking recipes to try that I finally succumbed, wanting pantry shelves filled with all of those beautiful looking jars, and made a number of interesting looking things.

Well, it’s several months later, and I can say that was a mistake.  We really like just plain fruit – not chutneys or pickled fruit.  Plain boring applesauce, compote, or stewed fruit.  We have hardly touched any of the other stuff.  I hate all the work that went into it being wasted, but I don’t want to compound the situation by wasting the food and not eating it, too.  And the jars are taking up space that could be taken up with something useful.  So yesterday it occurred to me that we could try to dehydrate the many quarts of pickled apples and pickled pears, and see how that turned out. 

My son did this today, and so far, the jury is still out on how they like the dehydrated pickled fruit slices.  Only three kids so far have tasted it, and two think it’s great, one thinks it’s terrible.  I tasted it and thought they were fine – different from the plain dried apples and pears we preserved, but still tasty.  The consistency is more chewy (the others were crispy), but fine.  They would probably also be good in some kind of pie or cooked, if I wanted to do that, but I probably wouldn’t.  It’s the keeping things simple thing, again.  🙂  

One immediate advantage is that dehydrated fruit takes a lot less space than all of those full jars – I didn’t count how many jars there were that are now empty (17 or so??), but however much it was, it will all fit into two quart sized jars by the time it’s all dried. 

Edited to add: my son discovered that when blended up, the pickled fruit makes fantastic fruit leathers!  Now I don’t feel all that time and effort was wasted, since everyone is enjoying these so much!

Avivah

Making fruit leather

dehydrating, food preservation

These past several days, a couple of my boys have been motivated to make fruit leather and dried fruit.  Since we got the dehydrator, dehydrating has been the hobby of my oldest son, but this week, my 9.5 year old got involved as well.  He was feeling like doing something one afternoon, and asked if I would mind if he dehydrated apple slices.

Mind?!?  No, not at all.  I love when my kids do the work and think that I’m such a nice mother for letting them do it.  It’s a good strategy, don’t you think?  🙂  I actually needed bananas dried more than apples, but he wanted to do apples, so I agreed.  These apples are such an amazing snack when they’re dried (they’re the Honey Crisps I told you about before) – they become apple chips, with a very concentrated flavor. 

He also did a few trays of banana chips at the same time – they come out with a leathery consistency.  Also very tasty, but hard to compete with the apple chips. 

My ds15 is the fruit leather expert around here. This week I had about a case of bananas that I bought a couple of weeks ago that was getting very ripe.  We discovered the first time he made fruit leather that bananas are an important ingredient.  It adds a thickness to the texture, and a natural sweetness that goes well with other flavors.  I suppose you could use other things, too, but when he made plain plum fruit leathers, the consistency wasn’t smooth and they cracked.  So to use up the bananas before they went bad, he made plain banana, banana-orange, and banana-orange-apple fruit leathers.  He’s found a nice way to package them – he puts them between two pieces of parchment paper, cuts them into equal size pieces with a scissor, and then stacks them together before bagging them. 

Last night I asked him if he would be able to whip up another batch before he went to sleep, so we could get the last of the bananas out of the way before Shabbos (they need  about 15 hours to dehydrate, so we turn the dehydrator on before we got to sleep).  Even though it was late and he was planning to go to bed, he agreed – he’s such a good kid.  He knows that he could say no to something like this.  There are times I tell my kids to do things, and I expect it done without complaints or argument, but then there are times that I ask them, and that means that a yes or no is equally fine.  He whizzed up a bunch of bananas and some apple in the food processor, so it was pretty quick, especially for him since he’s got the process down.  We didn’t have this processor when he made the first batches a few weeks ago, so this definitely makes the mashing and preparing process faster and simpler. 

Oh – to do this, we spread the fruit mixture on special paraflex sheets that we purchased when we bought the dehydrator. I think you could probably fit pieces of parchment paper over the regular dehydrator rack and it would work fine, but I haven’t tried it so I can’t vouch for how comparable the results are to the paraflex sheets.

Avivah

Kashering used glass jars

canning, food preservation

Several weeks ago, I got 16 dozen free canning jars, most of them quart sized.  I was thrilled, since this is the size I use the most often, and you can never have too many canning jars – especially when they are free!  Even if you can find them in the stores, they are pretty expensive and it takes quite a while to amortize that cost.

Some of you have asked me, knowing that I keep kosher, how I am able to use jars that may have been used for non-kosher food.  Firstly, glass has a status that is different from let’s say, china or plastic.   This is a very important factor, the most important factor.  We were told that we could kasher (the term for making kosher) these used jars after making sure they were spotlessly clean, regardless of what they had been used for, by doing hagolah (boiling).  They then have to be toiveled (ritually immersed) and can be used without any further steps.

Because some of you have asked your rabbis and were told it wasn’t permissible to use second hand jars, you wanted to know who I asked.  I don’t generally share this kind of info, because I think everyone has to ask their own rabbinical authorities who they know and trust.  But because I don’t want people to think I’m relying on lenient interpretations of Jewish law which makes it possible for me to get inexpensive jars but puts it out of their budget, I’ll share that we asked Rabbi Moshe Heinneman of the Star K in Baltimore, and this was what he told us to do. Anyone who knows him knows that he is not lenient at all, and is very, very knowledgeable about Jewish law and particularly the field of kashrus. 

So this is what I’ve been doing today, kashering dozens of glass jars.   I’m satisfied with the number that I finished today, and will toivel them tomorrow.  It’s more work to do them all at once in some ways, but makes keeping track of what state of usability each box of jars are much easier!  I might have finished kashering all of them before going to sleep tonight, which would have been very nice, but I have some late night canning to do. 

This afternoon I took several packages of turkey pieces from the freezer to make room after ordering a bunch of chicken wings  (they’ll be here tomorrow).  At 99 cents a pound and with kosher chicken prices being what they are, I couldn’t not get some, right?  I ordered 40 lb (using all but the last dollar I had left in the food budget until the 15th :)) and will pick it up tomorrow.  Even though canning the turkey pieces means more work for me now, I really appreciate having the ability to take advantage of sales that I would have passed on for lack of space in the past.  I chose to can the turkey pieces instead of chicken wings, because the pieces are meant to be stewed or sauteed, so the canning process is perfect for them.  Canned chicken wings didn’t sound appetizing to me, though. 🙂

Avivah

Dehydrating herbs

dehydrating, food preservation

Last week, I finally turned my attention to the herbs that were still waiting to be harvested from my garden.  Honestly, I am such an irresponsible gardener – I plant things like herbs with no plan how to use them, no idea when to harvest them, and just let them sit there for weeks.  After doing some reading on herbal healing these last couple of weeks, I was inspired to pick them, since I realized that unbeknownst to me, I had medicinal herbs growing right in my garden all this time!  It’s so true what Hippocrates said, about, “Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food” – particularly with herbs, they are one and the same.  I got them picked just in time – later that night, we had our first snow.

All you really have to do to dry herbs is tie them together loosely and hang them upside down, but with eight kids home all day, I have enough visual clutter I’m constantly trying to keep at bay without having little bundles all around my kitchen, dropping little pieces all over my floor and counter!  Since I now that I have a dehydrator, I have a neater solution!

The Excalibur dehydrators come with a setting for drying herbs, and after instructing the child picking the herbs to be very careful to keep them all separate, I asked another child to rinse them off and put them in the dehydrator.  Sometimes I kick myself for forgetting to give a child a reminder that would have saved time and aggravation, and the next day was one of those days.  Because I neglected to mention to the child putting the herbs in the dehydrator that each kind should go on its own shelf – it seemed self explanatory to me, but that’s because I’m an adult.  🙂

So when I removed everything from the dehydrator, I saw four or five kinds of green leafy herbs mixed together on the trays.  Do you know how similar herbs look when they’re dried to the untrained (read: my) eyes?!  Anyway, we sorted them through as best as we could, leaving all of those that we couldn’t figure out in a pile, and after crushing that pile, called it Italian herb blend.  🙂

It wasn’t a huge amount of spices, but it’s nice to have our own organically grown parsley, basil, thyme, oregano, and sage on hand!

Avivah