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Wondering What to do With Your Bountiful Harvest?

© Pier Jones

The height of the garden season is upon us. And, whether you grow your own vegetables, or can't pass up a roadside produce stand, you can easily end up with more fruits and vegetables than you could possibly eat within a day or two. Preserving your produce allows you to have access to summertime goodness all year long. There are a number of methods for food preservation: canning, pressure canning, dehydrating, and freezing, to name a few. Each method requires special tools, some more elaborate than others. Some methods require a significant investment of your time; but, the knowledge that the foods you will be eating and feeding to your family will be of superior quality, and, most important to me, free of additives, makes it well worth the effort involved.

High acid foods, such as fruits, including tomatoes, jams, jellies, and pickles, you need only to process in a boiling-water canner (or water-bath, as I have always heard it called). This is the easiest of the canning methods. With high acid foods, your main concern is to prevent spoilage by killing molds, yeasts, and enzymes present in the food; these can be destroyed at a temperature of 212 degrees F. For this, you need jars, lids, rings, a boiling water canner with a rack (to keep the jars off the bottom of the pan) and lid, and various other utensils, that we will discuss in a later article that deals specifically with water-bath canning.

Pickled foods are processed in the same manner, with the same equipment, as high acid foods. In pickling, whether it be the common cucumber, other vegetables, fruits, or meat, the acid content of the food is increased by fermentation of the food in a brine (salt), or by packing the food in vinegar to assist in preservation.

For low acid foods, such as vegetables, meats, and combination recipes (soups, stews, etc), the processing must be done in a pressure-canner. Steam pressure canning allows temperatures to rise to 240 degrees F, which is necessary to ensure that the spoiling microorganisms are destroyed. At first, I thought this information to be a bit daunting; however, once I decided to try it, with successful results, I realized it was not only fun and rewarding, but not nearly so difficult or confusing as it first seemed. This can be an expensive investment initially, but once the pressure-canner, jars, and utensils are purchased, the cost is minimal for years to come.