Yes, this could be my plan for the weekend in one sense and I’m not denying that there’s likely an alcoholic beverage in my future. But this has nothing to do with a party. Instead, its my canning plan for the weekend and I’m super stoked. I’ve got a pretty big goal for the weekend: six quarts of marinara, at least six pints of sliced pickles and 18 pints of Harvard beets. Oh, and a first for me – a big jar of my own paprika.
Now, a plan like this is quite ambitious and candidly, this is a ton of work. There is the prep, the actual canning and then the massive cleanup. (Think three Thanksgivings’ worth of dishes.) But the result? Immense satisfaction and a stocked basement with preserved food for the winter.
The first question you may ask, though, is why this weekend? Straight up? I didn’t pick this weekend. Mother Nature doesn’t wait. She sets the timetable and you’re either ready for her or you’re not. When I was working full-time, this was a huge source of pressure. I was often scrambling to keep up with Mother Nature. That’s one of the reasons why I had 15 gallon bags of frozen tomatoes in my freezer. These days, I’m more prepared but I still have to work on her clock.
So, today is my prep day. The first thing I had to do was clean the house – particularly the kitchen. The rest of the house will not even receive a glancing blow of housekeeping for the rest of this weekend. So, where I get to today is where I leave it for the weekend. It’s either done or not. And the kitchen being cleaned is critical. One of the most important things to keep in mind when doing home preserving is that you need to keep things as sanitary as possible. What you fail to clean up now can become bacteria which spoils your food.
That leads to the next step: I’ve got to clean jars. Now, most of what I learned about canning I got from my mother and my aunts. Possibly some of it also came from my grandmother, but I don’t really recall any lessons there. Instead, it was likely that my mom and aunts were mimicking what their mother did just as I mimic my own mom. However, this is one area where we differ. My mom used to wash her rings and jars in hot, soapy water and then boil for a few minutes to make sure they were sterilized. I’m a yuppie – I use the dishwasher. However, just like my mom I do use only new lids and I sterilize them in boiling water before sealing my jars. I also use a traditional water bath like my mom and that’s probably because it’s really the only way I’m super comfortable canning. I know what ingredients to use to make it safe and how long to put the jars in the water bath to make sure they – and my food – are all safe.
Next in the prep process is the gathering of new supplies. I am almost always buying lids, but today’s supply purchases are also going to include a few new things. First, I found this “pickle crisp” ingredient to add to my pickles to help them stay crunchy. I’m excited to give it a try. I also need to buy more quart jars. Up until recently, I haven’t made a lot of marinara that I’ve preserved. Instead, I’ve made enough for a meal and been done with it. Lately, though, I’ve really enjoyed the convenience of having home-preserved marinara at the ready. And because of that, I’ve expanded my need for quart jars. Additionally, I like to share the literal fruits of my labor so invariably, I don’t always get 100% of my jars back. Every year, I typically end up buying some sort of jar to replenish the stock.
Next, of course is the actual food preservation. I’m not going to lie: this weekend is my most ambitious attempt ever. But, I’m feeling Mother Nature’s pressure. There are cucumbers and beets loading up in the garden and our refrigerator and the 50 tomato plants in the garden are super heavy with fast-ripening fruit. There needs to be freezer space for tomatoes when they’re ready to be stored and not when I’m ready to do it.
Additionally, the new wrinkle of paprika is an interesting challenge. I’ve never done it before. But, we bought a food dehydrator and we have frozen chopped red peppers from 2017 which are just begging to be put to use. Rather than risk losing them to freezer burn or just a frozen death in the back of the freezer, it’s time to try my hand at paprika. If I’m successful, I can add paprika to the growing list of spices that I self-generate each year.
Of all of the things I intend to can this weekend, the pickles are the easiest. Put a little garlic and dill in the bottom, pack the pickles in tightly, add more garlic and dill on top, sprinkle in the pickle fresh, top with the salt water and vinegar brine and pop into the water bath for 10-15 minutes, depending on your altitude. (Yes, altitude, not attitude.) Et voila! Pickles.
Beets are next. Beets require cooking first so that the skin peels easily off. Once you peel off the skins, slice with a mandolin and tightly pack jars. A different brine of saltwater, vinegar and sugar go on top, leaving the same inch of space at the top of the jar but completely covering the produce to allow air to expand. These go in the bath for 30 minutes as they are not as acidic as pickles.
Marinara, of course is the hardest. You have to chop garlic and onion and sauté in olive oil. Then, add in all of the tomatoes and let them cook down until you can blend with an immersion blender. I typically add in dried basil, oregano, salt, pepper and a couple of bay leaves once the tomatoes are completely liquified. If you’ve got paste tomatoes in the mix, you don’t need tomato paste. If you don’t – and I don’t this time – you need to add in a small jar of paste. Cook for hours and hours until the smell makes you so hungry for spaghetti and meatballs that you just can’t stand it. Then, load up jars adding either lemon juice or citric acid to increase the acidity to safely preserve. These then go in the hot water bath for 50-55 minutes, just to be safe.
Now, the paprika is basically a crapshoot. The peppers are already chopped but since they’re frozen, they’re also likely to be very wet when thawed. I have to assume that it makes sense to dry them as much as I can before putting them in the dehydrator and letting it work its magic. When they come out, I plan on grinding up their little shriveled shells with either my Ninja Bullet or the mortar and pestle that we have in the house. This hopefully winds up being the easiest of them all.
But that’s my weekend plan. Today, I prep and by the end of today, I’ll have sterilized jars waiting on clean towels in my clean kitchen for tomorrow’s bounty. Tomorrow, I will prep and cook food, shooting to get at least the marinara and pickles done and the paprika in the dryer. Sunday, it will be all about those beets – and I like big beets. Sunday night, I’ll clean.
And on Monday… . ah, Monday. First, I’ll go back to work to catch up from the weekend. But I’ll also take my little haul of canned food into the basement and fill up some of my canning shelves and I’ll bask in the satisfaction.
It’s a canning weekend here down on our plot of land. The central air, my stove and I are all about to get a workout. I can’t wait.
The Yuppie Homesteader 