Seasonal ERE: Preserving/Pickling/Freezing

[SustainableHappiness]

Preserving through various methods is a very appealing concept for me since it requires a bit of time up front, but it leads to easily edible and delicious food for days/months to come. Since going semi-RE a few weeks ago I've been improving my water bath pickling skills (i.e. can now do it comfortably), but I know the world of preserving is vast and degrees of difficulty vary dramatically.

I'd like to crowd source some of the most efficient methods for preserving food (efficiency measured in terms of time/money trade-off).

1) What items do you preserve on a yearly basis?
2) What times of year do you do most of your preserving? (so far I've only tapped Fall/Late Summer for squash/carrots/beets)
3) What are your preferred preserving methods and why?
4) What's the most technical/hardest preservation you do? Why do you do it?

Any insight is appreciated!

[jacob]

Not much to say, here.

1) Whatever there's too much off. This year it's cucumbers.
2) Fall is crunch time($).
3) Whatever works(*). Blanching/freezing. Canning. Pickling.
4) Tomato canning.

($) Starting July and going to about October, I make it a point to cook/use as much as possible straight out of the garden. This usually minimizes the need for preservation. Our garden is not productive enough to feed us year round, but it's good for a couple of month's of food.

(*) We've owned no less than two electric dryers historically. They seem like a good idea in theory, but not in practice. Just couldn't get into it.

[vexed87]

Rather than sending them to recycling, I have saved commericial jam/sauce jars for reuse for canning bulk production runs of tomato based sauces, e.g. pizza, bolognaise, chilli, passata etc

That's not really the same as long term preservation as most were used within a few weeks and required storing in the fridge anyway because I couldn't pasteurise without specialist canning equipment without risking food poisoning.

I have pickled mixed veg using white vinegar, which was much simpler, just as a learning exercise, there's all sorts you can do to flavour you pickles, I didn't go that far. You can buy big jars which you just dump your cleaned and chopped veg in. Next step is to learn how to produce suitable vinegar myself, so I'm not dependent on supermarket supply chains. This would be my main motivation for learning the other forms of preservation too.

We freeze a lot of stuff before it goes off and is wasted. This is my least favourite form of preservation as it wholly relies on uninterrupted grid power which is sort what I'm hoping to guard against.

Like jacob, out garden isn't productive enough to warrant large scale preservation, but I hope to get there soon.

[fiby41]

1 Sour mangoes
2 Autumn
3 Pickling
4 Getting the right mix of spices and salt to taste

[SustainableHappiness]

Hmmm... revealing of myself on the ERE-Wheaton scale. I asked this with what produce I could purchase from a farmers market by season in mind, the answers were relative to how productive and large your gardens were. Thank you for your insights!

Secretly, I think I was hoping someone would've talked about the 1 moose they kill every year and how they preserve that...

[George the original one]

1) What items do you preserve on a yearly basis?

razor clams, salmon/steelhead, blueberries, potatoes, onions, tomatoes

2) What times of year do you do most of your preserving? (so far I've only tapped Fall/Late Summer for squash/carrots/beets)

spring (razor clams)
late summer (blueberries)
fall (potatoes, onions, tomatoes, salmon/steelhead
winter (salmon/steelhead, razor clams)

3) What are your preferred preserving methods and why?
storing in cool location (potatoes, onions)
freezing (razor clams, salmon/steelhead, blueberries)
drying (tomatoes)

4) What's the most technical/hardest preservation you do? Why do you do it?
none of it is hard, which is why it gets done

[jacob]

I asked this with what produce I could purchase from a farmers market by season in mind...

Commercial freezing or canning is so cheap to make the cost close to zero if not negative. Just buy the organic frozen or canned versions at the supermarket when it's on sale instead then.

[Pkate]

I have a large garden and lots dietary restrictions so cook from scratch all the time. When I was living in the city with a tiny garden saving for our current home I learned to can, blanching and freezing, and dehydrating before I planted my first large garden. Acquiring these skills before I planted a large garden prevented me from getting overwhelmed with the large amount of produce 3000 square feet of raised garden beds produces. It also allowed me to slowly acquire all the tools second hand or deeply discounted over a couple of years.

1) What items do you preserve on a yearly basis?
Pressure Canning: Stock, chili, chicken, stew, chicken soup. These days it is mostly stock but I want to get back into canning homemade convenience meals.

Water bath Canning: Pie filling, sweet relish, salsa, tomato sauce, and barbecue sauce. I sometimes make jams and fruit butters if I get free fruit.

Freezing: kale, green beans, peppers, snap peas, and pesto all from garden produce. I also buy meats buy the whole or half animal at a time so we have freezer chest. I also freeze butter when I hit a good sale.

Dehydrating: sliced fruits, mushrooms and herbs.

Fermenting/Picking: Hard boiled eggs, pickles, and sauerkraut. These are stored in my fridge.

Basement Storage: The home canned goods, honey, potatoes, onions, garlic, sweet potatoes and winter squashes.


2) What times of year do you do most of your preserving? (so far I've only tapped Fall/Late Summer for squash/carrots/beets)

I preserve foods all year round. During the winter I will Pressure can stock from the bones of various meats we eat. If I am batch cooking and have the energy I will also pressure can meals and meats. I also will can pie filling and jams from fruits that I prepped and froze over the summer. Canning heats up the house so I like to do it in the cold weather. I wash, cut and freeze the fruit in the summer to save time when the garden is in full production so I can deal with it later.

Late Spring I start dehydrating herbs, mushrooms, and greens. It is easier to do this in small batches over the entire growing season instead of all at once. This way I can keep the plants from going to flower till later in the season and insure I will get some production in case the critters wipe something out before I get to it.

Freezing I do this in batches starting with snap peas and strawberries in spring and kale and Hubbard squash in the fall. I keep frozen chunks of ice in plastic containers so I can easily blanch a batch of whatever needs it when it is ripe. I use quart sized freezer bags to make meal sized portions, label them and store them in a gallon sized freezer bag. this reduces freezer burn, and makes finding stuff in the freezer chest easier.

Water bath canning generally runs primarily August to November. Pie filling takes longer since the fruit is in the freezer. You can't wait on cumbers. They need to be processed when they are ready. Tomato sauce can wait. I clean and cut up the tomatoes and put them in the freezer till I have enough to do a full batch and the temperatures drops.

Fermenting largely happens in the fall when I have a abundance of produce or when my local farm stand has a good deal on something that failed in my garden that year.

Basement storage works great in my cold wet climate. I can keep butternut squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, garlic, and storage onions till spring, Other winter squashes don't hold up as long but I still can keep them for months with no effort. One day we hope to build a root cellar/walk in refrigerator in our basement so we can store more home grow food as fruit trees start producing and we expand the gardens.

3) What are your preferred preserving methods and why? I prefer different methods for different foods. My methods work for how I cook, what I can produce or locally source, and the time required to do them.

4) What's the most technical/hardest preservation you do? Why do you do it?
Pressure Canning I love it for canning stock. I try and buy most of my meats from local farms that pasture raise their animals. I will save the bones in the freezer and make large batches of stock and pressure can it. This way it can sit on a shelf and have it on hand for cooking. I cook with it all the time.

Most time consuming is pressure canning meals like chili, broth based soups, pulled pork, and other meals in a jar. Between the prep work and long canning time is an all day project.

I am still trying to get the hang of lacto fermentation. It is something I want to get better at but it will have to wait till the garden is full production again.

[7Wannabe5]

@Pkate:

Excellent suggestion regarding freezing with intention to otherwise preserve or process when the kitchen is cooler. Also makes sense because it is easier to freeze in very small quantities.

Have you read "The Kitchen Ecosystem" by Eugenia Bone? It's on my buy list.

[Pkate]

I hadn't heard of The Kitchen Ecosystem before. I will need to take a closer look at it. The premise of the book looks very much what I do already. What ever we don't eat goes to the chickens, worm composting bin, or the regular compost depending on what the food waste is.

[Pkate]

Thanks. I do have 2 freezer chests and I also do a lot of succession planting so I get harvests over a longer time span of time so I am not overwhelmed at any given point. I also have the luxury of being a housewife which gives me the time to do all of this.