Canning, anyone?

[TahoeDirtGirl]

BG- fess up how to do the apple butter in the crockpot!

I wanted to try and learn how to can this year, but I figured I'll go easy and just freeze stuff. A guy at work convinced me to just freeze the tomatoes I'm about to pick out of my landlady's garden (she left a bunch behind and told me to 'have at em') which the guy told me how to do. Next year, if I'm staying put, I will canning a shot. I would love to make my own jam but I have no clue on how to. I still have to get that Animal, Veg, Min book I keep hearing about...

anddddd you people in Mass have Concord grapes growing EVERYWHERE! I smell them when I'm riding! All over the place...if I only could find time to make jam...

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

BG- fess up how to do the apple butter in the crockpot!

ok...

First, you cut up a whole SLEW of apples and cook them in a big spaghetti pot for about 45 minutes or an hour with an inch or so of water. Stir and mash occasionally....and you get apple sauce. Add a little sugar if its too tart.

Then, to make that into apple butter, you take batches of apple sauce you just made and continue cooking it on LOW for hours with the top propped open a little, to let it evaporate and get thicker. I use slow cookers for this, about 6 qt size ones. Be sure to leave at least an inch of space at the top when you fill the crockpot with apple sauce.
After about 12 hours in the crockpot on LOW, with an occasional stir every few hourts, it's brown and thick but tastes like very concentrated apple, not burnt at all. It should be stiffer than apple sauce. I then add some sugar and a little allspice and cloves (I prefer this to the usual cinnamon)....to give it a hint of spiciness. You could try coriander or mace too. At the end if it's too chunky, I give it a quick zap with my hand held blender stick to make it a bit smoother than my chunky apple sauce.
Let cool and pack into containers and freeze.
Note: Unlike stovetop cooking, you can safely leave your crockpots cooking on LOW overnight if you place them on a safe surface and prop the lids open a crack with a metal teaspoon handle. They need to be open a crack to allow the apple butter to thicken while cooking.

[OakLeaf]

My tomato plants, such as they were, didn't produce much this year, so I won't be canning and drying , though there may yet be some tomato sauce and paste.

I have a few pints of black raspberry jam left in the pantry from this summer.

After the first frost I'll put up a mess of applesauce.

Those are about all I bother with - sweet or acid foods that get canned in a boiling-water bath. I have a pressure canner, but rarely use it - once every few years for tomatillo salsa, or if I grow shell beans.

[smilingcat]

please be careful when canning tomatoes. USDA now considers tomato as low acid. so you do have to use a pressure cooker to can the tomatoes. Some heirloom tomatos are okay.

Freezing tomatoes will cause it to lose its flavanoids (flavors) and being high water content, it will only be good for sauce.

If you do deicide to dry, brush bit of vinegar to retard mold and bacterial growth. You can also freeze the dried tomatoes. It was yummy in tomato sauce, on pizza ...

I would love to get back to canning but we just don't grow enough. Peach, pear, apricots we would have to buy. Same with berries of any kind.

[wildhawk]

I love canning! We always grew a huge garden when I was a kid and I would stay up all night helping my Mama with the canning and preparing the veggies. Now that I am in Florida I haven’t done much, but this summer we put in a raised garden and I am going to can some tomatoes first chance I get. We are setting up rain barrels too and everything is organic. Yummy! We are hoping our next property will have enough acreage to grow fruit trees - I would love to have a peach tree and some apple trees!! It is a great thing to get into and can save you so much too. And not to mention how great those veggies taste in the winter! Have fun!!

[bmccasland]

I have some blackberries in my freezer waiting to be made into jam. When the berries were ripe, it was just too bloody hot to cook. Fortunately hurricane season hasn't put me out of power for very long - thus ruining my berry collection.

I tend to make jam more than anything else. I don't own a pressure cooker, so haven't canned vegetables the way my grandmothers used to.

[Deborajen]

We have a cherry tree that produced 62 pounds of cherries this year. It had a lot of "pent up energy" - we hadn't gotten any cherries the last two years due to late freezes, and three years ago we'd gotten about 25 pounds, which had been the record.

Needless to say, lots of picking and pitting this year. I ended up making jam, jelly and freezer jam, plus fresh pie, several batches of frozen pie filling, more frozen cherries, and I'm trying making wine for the first time.

I've canned jalapenos in the past as well as strawberry jam, etc., but it's been a few years.

Deb