Easy Jalapeño Jelly

May 18, 2014May 18, 2014Caitlin 7 Comments

Last week in canning class we teamed up to make four different soft spreads, and I had made three of the four already, so I chose to work on the jalapeño jelly. This recipe is actually one from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (thanks class, helping me with my challenge!). It uses pureed jalapeños, rather than actually making juice out of them, making it a quick and easy jelly that is still really pretty and delicious. And has a nice bit of heat to it!

Ingredients:
12 oz (350g) jalapeño peppers
2 cups cider vinegar, divided
6 cups granulated sugar
2 pouches liquid pectin

Here’s how we made it:

Stem, cut and seed the peppers. Wear gloves! You really do want to do the peppers by mass for this recipe, it’s kind of hard to do a pepper volume. Take the chopped peppers and puree them in a food processor or blender with one cup of the vinegar.

Prepare your canner, jars and lids. This should yield about 5 half pints, but we put it in the cute little 4oz jars.

Combine the pepper puree, the sugar and rest of the vinegar and bring to a boil over high. Maintain a boil for 10 minutes and stir constantly. When 10 minutes are up, add the pectin. Yes – 2 full pouches. Boil hard for another minute, then remove from heat and skim foam.

Fill the jars, leaving a 1/4 inch head space. We discovered when we were out of ladles that pouring jelly with a pyrex measuring cup works great. Wipe the rims, apply the lids, and tighten the bands finger tip tight.

Place the jars in the canner, ensuring they are covered by at least 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a full rolling boil and process for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes remove the canner lid, wait 5 minutes, remove the jars to a hot pad or towel and listen to the ping ping ping of them sealing.

Cool 12-24 hours, remove bands, wipe, label and store. Later enjoy the jelly perhaps with some crackers and cheese. We tried goat, which if you are into the taste of goats you may enjoy, but I think I’ll try cream cheese or something a little milder next time, as Ball suggests. Deeeelish!

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

April 21, 2014Caitlin 10 Comments

Strawberries and rhubarb are perfect for each other – a delicious match of sweet and tart! This recipe calls for a 1:1 ratio of strawberries to rhubarb, but you are welcome to do a little less rhubarb if you want. I love the tartness of it though, and would actually recommend doing this with a reduced sugar pectin and less sugar to really let the rhubarb shine. Here are the ingredients as written in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, but the low sugar sure jell does 6 cups of berries to 4 cups sugar, so I think I’d go for that level of sweetness next time.

Ingredients:
2 cups crushed strawberries
2 cups chopped rhubarb
4 tbsp lemon juice
1 package powdered fruit pectin
5.5 cups granulated sugar

Step one for this jam is preparing the canner, jars and lids. It’s another pectin recipe so is a quick one. This will yield about 6-7 half pints.

Mix together the crushed strawberries, rhubarb, pectin, and lemon juice in a deep stainless steel saucepan. Measure out the sugar and set it aside so it can be added all at once.

Bring the jam to a boil over high heat. Stir, stir, stir! Once boiling, dump in the sugar and return to a boil. Once at a full boil, maintain for one minute, remove from heat, skim foam and fill jars.

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Fill the jars, leaving a quarter inch head space. Wipe rims, apply lids, and tighten bands finger tip tight. Place filled jars in the canner, covered by at least 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a full rolling boil, and process for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, remove canner lid, wait 5 minutes and remove the jars to a hot pad or towel. Cool 12-24 hours, remove bands, wipe clean, label and store.

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Such a beautiful and delicious jam!

Strawberry Jam

April 13, 2014June 12, 2014Caitlin 2 Comments

Strawberry Jam is the very first recipe in The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, page 8, and for good reason. It’s a delicious, but simple recipe and a great place to start if you are just learning to can. Most fruit and berry jams with added pectin are done very similarly to this, so it’s definitely a great first recipe. We actually had a first time canner with us on this adventure and I think it was a great success – we made 30 jars for wedding favours for Kiki’s upcoming wedding! While Oregon berries aren’t ready just yet, California ones are coming in hot!

Ingredients:
8 ish cups whole strawberries
7 cups granulated sugar
4 Tbsp lemon juice
1 package regular powdered fruit pectin

Here’s how we made it:
Prepare the canner, jars and lids. This recipe will yield around 8 half pints. Doubling jam isn’t usually recommended because it can affect the set of your jam, so we did multiple batches of this jam instead, one with added vanilla for a fun twist!

Measure the sugar into a bowl and set it aside so it can be added all at once when it is time. Does this sound like too much sugar to you? Ya, me too. Luckily Ball and other companies also have low and no sugar pectin. Get a jar of that and follow those directions for lower sugar jams. The Ball one at least works for anywhere from no sugar to a half cup per two jar batch. So 1/4 cup per half pint jar. But it’s flexible which is super awesome. The instructions work for anywhere from 2-10 jars and sugar is adjustable. Those delicious local berries really don’t need much added sugar so being able to add it to taste is great.

Rinse the berries, and hull them. One layer at a time, mash the berries with a potato masher, and pour the mash into a liquid measuring cup. You want 5 cups of mashed berries total. Crazy Kiki didn’t have a potato masher so you can also use the blender. But you DO NOT want a puree. You want a chunky mash, so just do maybe a cup of berries at a time and give it a quick pulse.

Once you have 5 cups of mash in a large pot add your lemon juice, and whisk in the pectin to dissolve. If you want a fun modification of this recipe, you can add a half of a vanilla bean at this point to make strawberry vanilla jam. Just put it in now and remove before filling the jars.

Turn the burner on to high, and bring the mixture to a boil. Stir frequently to prevent sticking. Once at a full rolling boil, add the sugar all at once. Return to a full rolling boil that you can’t stir down. Time one minute of boil, stirring constantly. After one minute, remove the jam from the heat, and skim off any foam. This jam tends to get quite foamy so it’s actually worth it to skim.

Remove the hot jars from the canner, and fill each jar, leaving a quarter inch head space. Wipe the rims, apply the lids finger tip tight, and place the jars in the canner covered by at least 1-2 inches of water.

Process the jars for 10 minutes, starting the time when the water is at a full rolling boil. After 10 minutes turn off the heat, remove the canner lid, and wait 5 minutes before removing the jars to a hot pad or towel. Leave the jars undisturbed for 12-24 hours, check the seals, remove the bands, wipe clean, label and store.

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Rhubarb Orange Jam

April 9, 2014April 14, 2014Caitlin 5 Comments

I’ve been itching to can with the warm weather we’ve been having, but there is not too much in season quite yet. One thing that is ready to go though is rhubarb! So I cracked open my Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, looked up rhubarb in the glossary and found this rhubarb orange jam recipe. I went full sugar for this recipe, since rhubarb and orange sounded like quite the tart combination, but you rhubarb lovers are welcome to pick up a box of low sugar pectin if you so desire. It’s really quite a delicious combination of sweet and tart. I enjoyed my little bit of leftovers on an English muffin.

This recipe yields 7 half pints.

Ingredients:
2 oranges
5 cups finely chopped rhubarb
1 package fruit pectin
6 cups sugar

Here’s how it’s done. This is a nice and easy pectin jam, and dang is it delicious!

First prepare your canner, jars, and lids. This recipe is a quick one.

Finely chop the rhubarb. Peel one half of one of the oranges and chop the peel finely. Juice the two oranges and measure the juice. You want at least a full cup, so if you don’t have quite enough top it off with a bit of water.

Combine the orange juice, rhubarb and pectin in a large pot. Stir to dissolve the pectin.

Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently. Once at a full boil add the sugar all at once. I let it boil a minute or two before adding the sugar, just to get the rhubarb nice and soft.

Bring the mixture back to a full boil. Stir constantly to prevent burning. Once at a full boil, time one minute of hard boiling. Remove from heat.

Fill the jars, leaving a quarter inch head space. Wipe the rims, apply the lids, and tighten the bands finger tip tight. Place the full jars in the canner, covered by at least one inch of water. Bring to a full rolling boil and process for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, remove the canner lid, wait 5 minutes and remove the jars to a hot pad or towel.

Isn’t that a gorgeous jam!?

Let the jars cool 12-24 hours, check the seals, remove the bands, label and store. This jam is delicious and so easy! If you have the canning itch too, make it, you won’t regret it.

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Cherry Marmalade

March 17, 2014April 10, 2014Caitlin Leave a comment

The next recipe for my Ball canning challenge was cherry marmalade, which we actually made while the Seville Orange Marmalade was cooking down. I realize it’s not cherry season, but I had some in the freezer already pitted that I had intended on making into cherry pie. However, they’d been there all winter and since it was a marmalade kind of day I thought, heck, let’s make another one! This one is page 102 in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.

Ingredients:
2/3 cup chopped seeded orange (peeled)
4 cups pitted sweet cherries
4 tbsp lemon juice
3.5 cups granulated sugar

Here’s how we made it:

In a large pot combine the cherries, orange and lemon juice. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium high, then reduce the heat, cover and maintain a boil, stirring often. Boil for 20 minutes or so until the peels are softening and the cherries are breaking down a bit.

After 20 minutes add the sugar, maintaining a boil. Continue to boil hard, stirring frequently for about 30 minutes, until gel stage is reached.

Fill the hot jars leaving a quarter inch headspace. Remove bubbles, wipe the rim, apply the lids and tighten the bands finger tip tight. Place the jars in the canner covered by at least 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a full rolling boil and process for 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes, turn off the heat, remove the canner lid, wait 5 minutes and remove the jars to a hot pad or towel. Ping, ping, ping – marmalade! Wait 12-24 hours, check the seals, remove the bands, wipe, label and store. Deeeeeelish!

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Seville Orange Marmalade

March 16, 2014March 25, 2014Caitlin 1 Comment

OK – so if you read my post on Friday, you know about the epic challenge I am undertaking – that I plan to can my way through the entire Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. So here is my first post for that challenge, page 97, my first traditional marmalade.

Ingredients:
2 1/4 lbs Oranges
2 Clementine oranges
2 lemons
12.5 cups hot water
11.5 cups sugar
1/3 cup brandy (optional)

Here’s how we made it:

We didn’t 100% follow Ball on how to do step 1 just because we wanted really thin slices of peel, so you can decide which method you prefer. We peeled strips off the oranges with a potato peeler, then peeled off the rest of the peel and juiced them in an electric juicer, reserving the juice. The rest of the peel/rind, seeds and pulp goes into a cheesecloth bag. The other way you can do it is by halving your oranges and lemons and squeezing the juices out into a cheesecloth lined bowl. Then scoop out all the rest of the pulp and seeds into the cheesecloth. If you like the orange slices thick then no problem, follow Ball and now slice those peels as thin as you like them. We just wanted really thin slices. Whichever way you do it, reserve the juices, and tie the pulp, peel and seeds up in a cheesecloth bag.

Combine the juices, peel slices, pulp sack and hot water in a large pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and continue to boil gently. The goal is to get the peel nice and soft, and reduce the total volume by nearly a half. This will take about 1.5-2 hours.

After the hour and a half or so you’ll remove the cheesecloth bag. Try and squeeze it out pretty well back into the pot, or set it in a strainer so you can add those tasty juices back. At this point you want to check that you have pretty close to 10 cups of liquid remaining. If you have more left (like we did) this can affect the quality of your set. So if you are still well over 10 cups you can either discard some or let it boil down a little longer.

Time to prepare the canner, jars and lids. This recipe will yield 11-12 half pints.

Bring your juice back up to a boil, stirring constantly. Slowly add in the sugar. Maintain a hard boil for 15 minutes or so while stirring occasionally, until gel stage is reached. Once it reaches gel you can add the brandy if you are using it.

Fill the hot jars with marmalade, leaving a 1/4 inch head space. Wipe the rim, apply the lid, and tighten the band finger tip tight.

As you can maybe tell, our marmalade was a little thinner than it should have been. I’m pretty sure this is due to us not making sure we had 10 cups of liquid, so definitely don’t skip that step. It also did set more and more throughout the week, so if it’s not perfect at first don’t panic.

Place the jars in the canner covered by at least 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a full rolling boil and process for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes, remove the canner lid, wait 5 minutes, and remove the jars onto a hot pad or towel. After 12-24 hours when they have cooled, check the seals, remove the bands, wipe the jars, label and store. Wait a few weeks to eat them for the best set.

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~ An Epic Canning Challenge and a Book Review ~ The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

March 14, 2014March 25, 2014Caitlin 2 Comments

The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving is a book that every canner should have in their collection. I don’t know why it has taken me this long to give you a review of it since it’s basically the first book you should refer to when you decide, “I want to can today!” But first – the epic canning challenge! When I started canning with my friend Kiki, we joked that we should challenge ourselves to can everything in Ball, a.k.a. my canning bible. Alas, something was holding us back… and it’s name was marmalade… chutney….and a few other preserves. The chapter on soft spreads has some downright weird sounding recipes in it. However, last week we conquered two marmalades (recipes coming soon) and I’ve decided, the challenge is on. We are going to can EVERY recipe in the book! This could take a while, but I’m in it for the long haul. Bring it on Ball!!

So let’s talk about the book for a minute. It’s not called the “complete” for nothing. This book has 400 recipes in a broad range of categories, and has TESTED and TRUSTED recipes. This should be the book you check when you read a recipe elsewhere that doesn’t sound quite right. Remember, anyone can write a canning book or blog, but Ball’s recipes are ones that you know you can trust. They have lots of nice tips in the columns also, and a good section on getting started.

In the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving you will find everything from jams and marmalade, salsas and chutney, to pressure canned soups and stocks, condiments and pickles. So get this book now, canning season is just around the corner and it’s currently only like $13 on amazon. It is definitely worth that! So get it and follow along as I can and blog my way through the entire book!

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Pickled Carrots

February 5, 2014March 25, 2014Caitlin 2 Comments

A few months ago I made pickled carrots with my very last garden harvest of the season. Taking these tasty morsels to a ladies night recently reminded me I still haven’t posted the recipe. Pickling is one of the easiest things in canning, yet so satisfying and cost efficient if you love pickled goodies. I highly recommend it. If you have that winter canning itch right now then heck, get some carrots from the grocery store to make these bad boys, ain’t no law against that!

This recipe comes from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preservation, with some slight additions to the spices. Remember, you can change the spices to suit your taste, but don’t mess with the vinegar to water ratio of tested recipes.

Ingredients:
5 pounds carrots
6 cups white vinegar
2 cups water
1/2 cup pickling/canning salt
8 cloves garlic
Dill – fresh heads are great if you have it, or seeds
Hot pepper flakes
Mustard seed
Whole Peppercorns

Here’s how it’s done:

Carrots obviously grow underground, so the hardest step is getting them clean. Buying a cheapo nail brush was definitely worth it! Especially if you grew your own and they are caked with mud.

Well hello there good lookin’.

Chop them up into the size you prefer. We did sticks but you can certainly do coins if you prefer. Don’t do them too thin or they can get soggy, but this recipe has a pretty short canning time so they don’t get really soft which is nice.

Prepare the canner, and about 7 or 8 pint jars. While that is heating, combine the vinegar, water and salt in a large pot and bring to a boil over medium high heat.

Grab a hot jar, and add whatever spices you like. I didn’t really measure my spices out, but did a clove or two of garlic per jar, along with a few shakes of dill seed, peppercorns, mustard seed and hot pepper flakes (around a half teaspoon of each). Combine whichever flavours you like the best. If you have fresh dill, do two heads per jar. Then pack in the carrots nice and tight, and pour in the hot vinegar mixture, leaving a half inch head space. Remove any bubbles trapped between the carrots. Wipe rims, place lids on the jars and tighten the bands finger tip tight.

Place the jars in the canner, ensuring they are covered by at least 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a full rolling boil and process for 10 minutes. When the ten minutes in up, turn off the heat, remove the canner lid, wait 5 minutes and remove the jars to a towel or hot pad. mmm mmm pickled carrots. Wait 12-24 hours for them to cool, remove the bands, check the seals, label and store. Wait a few weeks for the full pickled goodness to permeate the carrots, then enjoy.

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Zesty Zucchini Relish

September 4, 2013March 25, 2014Caitlin 2 Comments

If you have zucchinis growing in your garden, by mid summer you are probably desperate like me for new and exciting ways to use them up. This zucchini relish, modified from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving is a delicious way to do just that. I am not a huge fan of the sweet commercial relishes, so tried a small batch of this at first, but it is so good (not sweet, it has a nice ZESTY flavour). I had to make more! Awesome on hot dogs or sausages!

Ingredients:
12 cups finely chopped zucchini
4 cups chopped onions
2 red bell peppers, finely chopped
1 green bell pepper, finely chopped
1/3 cup of canning salt
2.5 cups granulated sugar
2.5 cups white vinegar
1 tbsp ground nutmeg
1 tbsp ground turmeric
1 chili pepper, including seeds, chopped

The recipe also calls for 4 tbsp prepared horseradish, but I find horseradish’s flavour screams “Hi I am horseradish, I am ALL you can taste,” so I leave it out. If you like it though, it could be a nice addition to the recipe. Makes about 5 pints.

Here is what I did:

Finely chop the zucchini. 12 cups took me freaking forever though, so I might recommend trying to whip this up in a food processor. I just like the little cubes, but it was a lot of chopping.

Chop the green and red bell pepper, onion and mix them together with the zucchini and the salt.

Cover and leave in a cool place overnight (12 ish hours).

The next day, rinse the mixture off in a colander. Squeeze out as much moisture as you can. Get your hands in there and squeeze a handful at a time, and put it in a pot.

Add the vinegar, sugar, chili pepper, turmeric and nutmeg (and if you want horseradish) and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

Continue to boil the relish over medium heat. After about 45 minutes or so it should be a pretty good consistency.

While the mixture is boiling down, prepare the canner, jars and lids.

Fill the jars, leaving a half inch heat space. Debubble the jars, wipe the rims, place on the lids and tighten the bands finger tip tight. Processing time is 15 minutes for this recipe. Place the jars in the canner covered by at least 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a full rolling boil. After the 15 minutes, turn off the heat, remove the canner lid and wait 5 minutes before removing the jars to a hot pad or towel. Listen to the delightful ping of the jars sealing!

Mmmmmm relish.

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Best Ever Salsa!

August 26, 2013August 18, 2014Caitlin 4 Comments

Tomato season is here at last, and that of course means salsa season! So yesterday I grabbed my good pal Kiki, picked all my red tomatoes and set out to make some salsa. I first made this salsa last year and it was so delicious it had to be the first thing I used tomatoes for this year. This recipe is from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. Warning, if you make this salsa you will never want to eat store bought salsa again!

The recipe as listed below makes around 5 pint jars of salsa.

Ingredients:
7 cups peeled, chopped, cored tomatoes
2 cups coarsely chopped onion
1 cup coarsely chopped green bell pepper
8 jalapeño peppers, seeded and finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 can (5.5 oz) tomato paste
3/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup cilantro, loosely packed and finely chopped
1/2 tsp ground cumin

Reminder: salsa is one of those foods that can be borderline acidic enough for hot water bath canning, so never alter the ratios in a recipe. It is not safe, for example, to add extra peppers because they reduce the overall acidity. Adding more vinegar for acidity can compensate, but never “guesstimate,” look for a trusted and tested recipe if you like a different ratio of ingredients in salsa.

How to make it:

Keeping true with my large batch style of canning, I picked every single red tomato in my garden for this canning session. I have an array of Roma varieties ready and had around 27 pounds when all was said and done. After peeling and chopping we had 33 cups of tomatoes! So we did about 4.7x the recipe as written, which it turns out is pretty much the capacity of my stock pot. To simmer the mixture I actually ended up spreading it out over a couple pots and mixing it all back together at the end.

The biggest task for this recipe is to peel and chop the tomatoes. This is exponentially easier if you first blanch them. If you want, cut a small x in the bottom of the tomato.

Toss them in boiling water for 30-60 seconds.

Then into ice water. The skins on these Roma’s came off so easily, which makes for a happy canning session.

Chop the tomatoes, onions, peppers and garlic. Make sure to wear gloves to chop the jalapenos! A little bit of jalapeno seeds really go a long way in this recipe so I like to leave the seeds and veins aside and add them in to taste when I get all the ingredients together.

Mix all the ingredients in a large stock pot. I am actually not a huge cilantro fan, so I leave it out of this recipe or add a little parsley instead.

Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes or so to cook the veggies and thicken the mixture.

While the salsa is cooking, prepare the canner, jars and lids. I like to use wide mouth pints for this because then I can easily dip a chip right into the jar. When the salsa is done, fill the jars leaving a half inch head space. Wipe the rims, place the lids on, and tighten the bands finger tip tight.

Place the jars in the canner covered by at least 1-2 inches if water. Process jars for 20 minutes, beginning the timer when your hot water bath canner reaches a full rolling boil. After the 20 minutes, turn off the heat, remove the canner lid, wait 5 minutes then remove your jars to a cloth or hot pad on the counter, leaving at least a couple inches between them. Listen to all the jars sealing!

For this giant batch of salsa, we ended up with 22 pints, plus a half pint left over for eats. This took 3 canner loads because only 8 wide mouth pints fit in my canner, so just keep the salsa simmering in between if you do more than one load.

Enjoy any little bit left over! Mmm. Although, I think if you leave it a couple weeks for the flavours to commingle it tastes even better. Deeeelish!

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the babbling botanist

a blog about food preservation and other botanical adventures – because plants are cool!

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

Easy Jalapeño Jelly

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

Strawberry Jam

Rhubarb Orange Jam

Cherry Marmalade

Seville Orange Marmalade

~ An Epic Canning Challenge and a Book Review ~ The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

Pickled Carrots

Zesty Zucchini Relish

Best Ever Salsa!

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