2017 Canning Notes
Coming home in
late October, we found a bumper crop of apples, made juicier and sweeter by
some light frost. Then found local,
organic cranberries for sale in town. I couldn’t resist taking a
few “snow days” to turn this harvest into a year’s worth of
family-style treats.
For those who only care about rocket mass heaters: The only connection is that I did use the barrel top to
simmer a few of the applesauce batches over our evening fire, before taking it to the kitchen for canning. You are now free to leave this blog entry for something more interesting, like this:
For those who love cooking, canning, eating, homestead harvesting, and in particular if you're into doing these things with little or no added sugar, read on.
All Fruit: I don’t
use sugar or honey, so these recipes are sweetened with fruit juices
and juice concentrates. For safe canning,
I work from recipes in the Joy of Cooking or Fanny Farmer, using the natural substitutions they have tested (fruit juice in place of sugar syrups, lemon in place of citric or other canning acids), and their recommended batch times and head space.
My tastes also run a bit to the tart side. I enjoy eating sour fruit
“relishes” with meat or cheese, as well as sweeter jams and
spreads.
If you like your
treats sweeter, feel free to drizzle on some honey or maple syrup,
sprinkle with brown sugar, cinnamon-sugar. Or adjust to taste when
cooking these into your own desserts or barbecue sauces.
Here’s what I’ve
made so far.
Pink Applesauce:
Ingredients:
Apples (mostly
Gravenstein),
Apple juice
(organic)
White grape juice
(concentrate)
Lemon juice
lemon zest
cinnamon
May contain
additional water*
Suggested uses:
Eat it – try with
breakfast or dessert (cottage cheese, yogurt, pancakes, crepes),
Great with pork
(chops, roast, sausage)
Bake with it (look
for applesauce cakes, muffins, strudel)
Apple Slices with
Cranberry
Ingredients:
Apples, apple juice,
cranberries
Suggested uses:
Eat it (as for
applesauce)
Great with pork,
turkey, or brie cheese
Quick Brie and
Compote Snack-wiches:
On your favorite
bread or crackers, (I like English muffins), spread a layer of apple
slices with cranberry, top with about ¼ inch of Brie cheese. Toast
lightly in a toaster-oven or under the broiler; enjoy warm.
The juice left in
the jar is good to drink, or for fruit punch, or for sweetening up a
vinaigrette for a fancy salad. (There are a lot of good salads with
fruit, nut, and cheese over seasonal greens – like arugula, pear,
bleu cheese, and pecans, or you can do something similar with apples,
walnuts, and cheddar on a young mustard-greens blend. Or a regular
chef salad with ham, egg, and bleu cheese over lettuce.)
This juice, or the
Cran-Orange goo from the next one, might also be good in
harvest-themed cocktails. Try as substitute for the simple syrup in
a Whiskey Sour, Apple-Tini, or Old Fashioned.
I’ve been making
cider-lemonade with the leftover apple or grape juice between
batches. It’s not exactly lemonade, and not exactly cider, but
it’s tasty.
Cranberry-Orange
Relish / Sauce:
Ingredients:
Cranberries (fresh
and frozen, organic)
Orange juice
concentrate (organic)
Zest of orange
and/or lemon (organic)
May contain white
grape juice concentrate
Suggested uses:
This is a very tart
version of cranberry sauce. Add honey or other sweetener to taste.
Great with roasts or
sandwiches (turkey, chicken, duck, Brie or cream cheese, or use it
like marmalade)
Try it with plain
yogurt or ricotta, or eat it with a spoon.
Blender Cran-Orange
Julius:
¼ to ½ cup
cranberry relish, 1 to 2 cups cream or milk, 1 banana, 1 tsp vanilla,
½ to 1 cup ice (shaved or small cubes). (Add 1 raw egg for the
traditional version, optional cinnamon or nutmeg to taste). Blend
until smooth and thick, enjoy immediately.
(Servings: 2 to 4
small cups. To share with more people, use the larger amounts, and
add some orange juice concentrate and fresh berries.)
Apple Butter:
Ingredients:
Apples, apple juice
(organic)
lemon juice,
lemon zest,
cinnamon,
cloves,
allspice,
may also contain
grape juice concentrate, port or red wine, ginger, and/or additional
water* (varies by batch)
Suggested Uses:
Eat it with a spoon,
on toast, or with your favorite breakfast foods (see “applesauce”)
Use as base for
sweet-and-savory sauces
Quick Apple-Butter
Barbecue Sauce
Combine equal parts
fruit-sweetened apple butter and Worcestershire sauce.
Season to taste
(some cooks may wish to add a hotter pepper sauce, white vinegar,
salt and pepper, anchovy paste, garlic or onion. If you have a
favorite barbecue sauce recipe that starts with ketchup, try using
the apple butter as a substitute, and work from there.)
Apple [Pie] Sauce:
Ingredients:
Apples, apple juice,
white grape juice concentrate, cinnamon, salt. May contain
additional water*.
This is a cross
between applesauce and apple-pie filling. It is a little on the tart
side; depending on your family’s tastes, you might sweeten it up
before serving, or offer a cinnamon-sugar shaker at table.
Suggested Uses:
Eat it with
breakfast, with pork, or as a snack (see “applesauce” above).
Especially good with
hot, buttery biscuits: like apple pie for breakfast, but less work.
Use as the filling
for apple pie, cobbler, or crisp
Apple Pie:
1 quart (2 pint
jars) Apple Pie Sauce.
For a “proper”
pie filling, you need the thickeners we omitted for canning. You
could mix them in before baking, or try this method – like making a
‘roux’ except quicker.
Melt in a large
saucepan or skillet:
2 to 3
tablespoons butter
Stir in:
2 to 3
tablespoons flour (or starch such as corn, arrowroot, or
tapioca),
(Up to ½ cup
white or brown sugar if desired)
Stir in the Apple
Pie Sauce, keep stirring over medium heat until just bubbling, then
remove from heat and set aside. This is your Pie Filling.
Pie Crust: You can
use a storebought crust, or your own recipe, or add cheddar cheese or
butter and cinnamon sugar on top, if you like. This is the pie crust
I usually make. It’s strong enough to serve as a ‘handle’ for
cold pie for breakfast, but tender enough to please most eaters.
Flour Paste Pie
Dough: (from Joy of Cooking, circa 1975)
Mix together in a
largish bowl:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
Remove 2/3 cup flour
mixture into a second bowl (cereal bowl or 2-cup size).
Into this, mix about
½ cup water** to make a smooth paste.
(**In the humid
Willamette Valley, Mom reduces the water to ¼ cup. In the semi-arid
Okanogan Highlands, I often add ¾ to 1 cup of water, making the
paste more of a soup to hydrate the whole batch of very dry flour.
This variability
is probably why Joy of Cooking
no longer includes this recipe. It takes a baker’s “feel” to
get it right, and not everyone has time to practice and adjust a
recipe anymore. If your dough is too dry to hold together at the
end, you can fetch another ¼ cup of very cold water, and dribble in
a little at a time until it comes together. Make a note of how much
you use, in case you want to do this again sometime: it does come out
better to include all the water in the paste stage.)
Now back to the
larger bowl. Grate in using a cheese grater, tossing occasionally to
integrate with the flour mixture:
2/3 cup chilled
butter (1 and 1/3 sticks)
(Notes: Easiest to
do with frozen butter.
Or use 1 stick
butter + 2 to 3 tablespoons lard, for a lovely flaky crust.)
Mix the butter
lightly into the flour, just enough to ensure there are no massive
clumps. (The original recipe called for “grain the size of small
peas,” and I could never bring myself to stop before it was
cornmeal-grain sized. Little chunks of butter or lard will make it
flakier, so don’t over-work it.)
Now make a well in
your buttery flour bowl, and pour in the flour paste. Fold and mix
it briefly, by hand or with a large spoon, just until it clumps
together into a dough. Roll out on lightly floured cutting board.
Makes 2 crusts: enough for 1 covered pie, or 2 open-faced pies.
Baking: since the
filling is pre-cooked, pre-heat the oven to 350F, load the filling
into the bottom crust, and cover with a pricked or lattice top crust.
Bake for 30-40 minutes, until the crust is well browned and the
filling is bubbling.
Fanny Farmer’s
Apple Crisp:
Mix with a fork
(works best if you melt the butter):
¾ cup flour, or
alternative
(Or: ¼ cup oats, ¼ cup powdered milk,
and 6 tablespoons flour.
Or: 1 cup corn flakes,
smashed. )
1 cup sugar (white
or brown)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup butter
¼ teaspoon salt
Spread over the
apple filling. Bake at 350°F
until the crust is brown (up to 30 minutes).
Serve with cream,
whipped cream, or ice cream.
Apple Grunt:
Spread the apple
filling in a pan, top with your favorite biscuit recipe, such as:
Baking Powder
Biscuits:
Sift together into a
mixing bowl:
2 cups flour
[1 to ] 2 teaspoons
double-acting baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Work in with your
fingers:
2 [to 4]
tablespoons shortening (I use butter, and I like to freeze it and
grate it in for easier mixing)
With a fork, quickly
stir in:
2/3 [to 3/4] cup
milk
Add more milk,
little by little, until the dough is soft and light but not sticky.
(Because flours
differ, exactly how much milk to add is your judgment call. Some
recipes call for ¾ cup, some for 1 cup, others for the baker to
adjust by feel. If you go too far and it gets sticky or soggy, you
have ‘drop biscuits’ that can be spooned onto the apples instead
of rolling them out, and they still bake up lovely.)
Turn out onto a
floured board, pat down, knead a couple of times if needed. Roll
lightly ¾ inch thick. Shape with a biscuit cutter (or upside-down
cup), cut into diamonds, or use the whole sheet as topping for Apple
Grunt.
Original baking
method: put the apples and biscuit topping in a deep baking dish, and
put this baking dish in a larger dish filled with boiling water.
Bake hot enough to keep the water boiling, adding more from a hot
kettle if needed to keep the water within 1 inch of the top of the
dish.
Bake/boil for up to
1 hour, until the biscuit topping is golden brown and cooked through.
Serve with
heavy cream.
(Fanny neglects to
specify an oven temperature; and you probably don’t need to bake
this long with pre-cooked apple filling. I suppose you can watch to
keep the water boiling, if you’re into “active oven management.”
You might try between 350 and 450, and see what works. Based on
similar recipes like apple cobbler, I’m going to try 425 for 30
minutes.
For a quicker result
with less guesswork, bake the biscuits alone, at 450 for 10 to 15
minutes, and then split open and serve with hot apple filling and
cream.
(Like a hot, apple
version of strawberry shortcake.)
*What does this mean “may
contain additional water”?
I really enjoyed the
pink color and rich flavor from the peels and cores of this year’s
apples. (The Gravensteins responded to our fall frosts by turning
“winesappy” - they filled their cores and sometimes all the way
to the skin with juice, to the point where they became translucent
and intensely flavored – very similar to the extra-sweet and aromatic flavors you get in an “ice wine” made with super-cooled grapes.)
However, even though the cores
and peels do have great flavor, I don’t love pushing soggy cores
through a food mill after stewing (to remove the seeds, stems, and
seed-guard-shell-thingies, and most of the stewed peel).
This year, I
processed a lot of the apples using a peeler-corer, started the main
batch of applesauce or apple butter with the clean white chunks.
Then I stewed the peels and cores with water and a little lemon juice
(for anti-browning), to extract some of their color and flavor. As
both batches softened, I pressed out a pinkish “apple juice” and
sometimes a pinkish pulp from the peels. This was delicious by
itself, but usually I added it back into the main batch of apple
butter or apple sauce to boost the flavor and color. I also ate a
fair amount of the stewed apple peels as my late night snack after
removing the last batch from the canner.
I am tempted to do
“apple strings” in the dehydrator – coated with cinnamon, long
spaghetti-like apple peelings might be a fun winter treat. Or a base for "instant apple fritters" (really just some nutritional justification and structure to hold a deep-fryer batter or donut dough).
Or fun to
turn into crafty things?
Or just overkill?
