Can it! Start Canning and Preserving at Home Today. Jackie Parente

Can it! Start Canning and Preserving at Home Today

they don’t contaminate other packages with their dripping juices.

Ask neighbors if they have some room to spare in their freezers. If they do, pack up your wares in a cooler with ice and transport them.

Once your freezer is working again, check the freezer temperature and the temperature and condition of the food. According to the USDA, the food will be safe to eat (and can be safely refrozen) as long as it is partly frozen (still has some ice crystals) and is no warmer than 40 degrees Fahrenheit—the average temperature in your refrigerator. Unless your freezer was not working for a long time before you discovered the outage—one of the reasons for checking the temperature on a regular basis—you will probably be able to salvage most, if not all, of its contents. However, you must throw out any food that has been warmer than 40 degrees Fahrenheit for more than two hours or any food that has been touched by raw-meat fluids.

FREEZER CONTAINERS

Many years ago, when the kids were young and I wanted to try to earn a few extra coins but couldn’t work days (they didn’t have telecommuting back then), I sold products for a well-known plastic-container company. The gig didn’t last long, but I ended up with a ton of sturdy, square freezer containers, which I would never have been able to afford. That was more than three decades ago, and I still have many of them today. The point? It’s worth the investment to get good containers in which to store your frozen foods. While you can freeze in just about anything—plastic bags and wrap, foil, old margarine containers, carry-out containers, even the foam tray that the food was packaged in—the food will not fare as well during storage and will be less appealing when you use it. Here are some of the features you’ll want to look for in your containers:

Sturdy. Look for something that will last and hold up to repeated washings in your dishwasher without warping. Cheaper plastics will warp and crack.

Moisture- and vapor-proof. Containers should “lock out air and lock in freshness.” Sounds like a commercial, but it’s true. If your containers aren’t sealed well, you risk loss of moisture, which leads to freezer burn or ice-crystal formation.

Free from Bisphenol A (BPA). While there’s a fair amount of controversy about how safe BPA is in food storage containers, I’d stay clear of it until it’s resolved. Several government agencies have issued studies and warnings about its safety.

Stackable and shaped suitable to the product that you’re freezing. Square and rectangular containers are the most versatile, but other shapes can come in handy for specific uses.

Standard and convenient sizes. Look for freezer containers that are sized in volumes you tend to cook with (8 ounces, 16 ounces, 1 quart, 1 gallon).

Straight and wide. Avoid any containers—especially glass ones—that have narrow necks at the top. If you misjudge the amount of headspace you leave, you risk cracking the container. If you want to use glass containers, stick with those that were designed to go into the freezer and have straight necks (though not recycled mayonnaise and pickle jars).

These freezer containers are especially good because they are clear, have tightly locking lids, and can be easily stacked.

Allow Sufficient Headspace

Headspace is the distance between the lid of the container and the top of the food. When liquids freeze, they expand. So for foods that have high water content, you’ll need to anticipate this expansion. It won’t matter as much with dry-packed fruits and vegetables, but for soups, stews, juices, and fruits packed with syrup or other liquids, headspace is important. If you don’t allow sufficient space, the frozen food will pop the top off of your container. Be especially careful with soups, stews, and juices and avoid narrow-topped containers. Only use containers with tops the same width or wider than their bottoms. Foods with high water content will expand more when they freeze than those with low water content. If you put them in a narrow-topped container, they may break the container as they freeze and expand.

Use these general guidelines for headspace:

Dry-packed fruits and vegetables: allow a ½-inch headspace for all containers

Liquid-packed fruits and vegetables, soups, stews, juices, and so on: allow a ½-inch headspace for pints and 1 inch for quarts with wide openings. For containers with narrower openings (such as standard canning jars), leave ¾ inch for pints and 1½ inches for quarts.

This illustration shows the kind of jar you’ll use for water-bath and pressure canning, but the same principles apply to freezer containers. Keep this image in mind as you read about headspace in chapters 4 through 6.

PROCESS OVERVIEW

We’ll go into specific differences between freezing fruits and vegetables in a bit, but the process is similar enough that it’s worth giving you the step-by-step just once.

1. Get your produce (either picked or purchased). Look for varieties that are known to freeze well. Make sure whatever you choose is fully ripe and in great condition. If necessary, let it ripen for a few days until it’s at its flavor peak.

2. If you can’t freeze your produce immediately, refrigerate it.

3. Prepare your workspace. An important part of that preparation is making sure that everything is as clean as you can make it. Keep in mind that freezing doesn’t kill bacteria; it just keeps them from growing.

4. For fruits only: Decide whether to dry-pack them, wet-pack them with sugar, or syrup-pack them. (I’ll explain this in a bit.) This will influence the type of freezer container that you will use. All types of freezer containers are suitable for dry packing, but syrup packing works best with rigid containers—preferably ones with straight sides (not tapered) and screw-on tops.

5. For fruits only: if syrup-packing, make your syrup and let it cool (see page 50).

6. Gather and thoroughly clean all equipment and utensils.

7. Work in small quantities—just a few freezer containers at a time—to ensure the highest quality.

8. Examine and wash your produce carefully, changing the water frequently. Prepare the produce as described in the sections to follow (remove stems, seeds, and pits, and cut as desired).

9. Treat your produce to prevent darkening, if necessary. Generally, this is only for light-colored fruits such as apples, peaches, apricots, nectarines, pears, and bananas. See “Treating for Discoloration” in the appendix.

10. Blanch all vegetables as well as the fruits that you want to soften or remove skin from. (See “All About Blanching” in the appendix.)

11. Pack the produce according to instructions, leaving sufficient headspace if packing with liquid. (See “Allowing Sufficient Headspace” on Скачать книгу