You want to can. You want the look of all of those gorgeous rows of preserved fruit, salsas, sauces, and jams. They make you drool. You want to freeze. You want to go to your freezer in the dead of winter and pull out berries so sweet and delicious that they remind you of summer as soon as they enter your mouth. And yes, you’d rather like to dry things too: homemade teas, dried fruit for snacks, perhaps even some jerky.
Then you look at all of the work involved in this process, shake your head, and laugh at the impossibility of it all.
You can do it.
I am no domestic goddess. However, I am highly motivated by food. Food is something that makes me happy daily, at least three times a day and maybe more. If I can have delicious food that I’ve sourced and preserved myself, so much the better. It’s cheaper to buy it in bulk in the summer too, and I know what’s in it. This is why I love to can, freeze, and dehydrate food.
What supplies do you need if you are going to embark on a food-preserving adventure?
Freezing is possibly the easiest of the three, and it’s probably the most nutritious too. You need a freezer, and you need to make sure that it works very well. There is nothing worse than a freezer that fails, trust me on that. You also need freezer bags. Just about everything else is optional. If you’re freezing strawberries or cherries, I’d recommend a huller or a pitter, just to make your life easier and your hands less tired.
Canning is a fair bit of work. You need to process the food, clean the containers, and make sure that the lids are sealed in a hot water bath. You need jars, lids, a canner, and a device to extract the jars from the water. Ideally, you also need a day to do each type of preserve.
However, if you like preserved sauces and jams and you want to control the amount of sugar in them, this is an excellent way to do that. I also can because I like to give away preserves as gifts. I cheat, though. Instead of using heat to can many of the foods we preserve, I wash the jars and make quick and easy freezer jams and sauces. This eliminates many of the steps of canning, and the food is still good to give as gifts. It just needs to go in the recipient’s fridge or the freezer and it should be eaten promptly if it is placed in the fridge.
Dehydrating is rather new to me. My daughter loves dried fruit, and it’s fun to dry leaves for teas and spice mixes. Again, these make great gifts. You’ll need a good quality dehydrator like the Excalibur. My trick? I share it with a friend, so it doesn’t take up space here all of the time and we share the expense of buying a higher-end dehydrator.
Do you preserve food? What are your essentials? What’s the easiest or most rewarding way of preserving?
Image courtesy of turbidity at Stock Exchange.