Shiny Cooking» canning and freezing

strawberry freezer jam-boree

Amy — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:27:27 +0000

I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never had to learn how to make strawberry freezer jam. I’ve been even more fortunate in that I never even tasted store-bought jam until I was practically an adult.

As a result, I’m spoiled. Spoiled rotten. I turn up my nose at Smucker’s, and even those fancy top-shelf brand jams can’t satisfy.

I never had to learn how to make strawberry freezer jam because every year I saw my mom make it right in front of me. Sis and I got drafted to help pick strawberries in our grandparents’ strawberry patch. I recall crouching low, pushing through the leaves, and searching for the elusive strawberries Grandma insisted were still there even though we were sure we’d gotten them all.

Nowadays we buy our strawberries already picked from local growers. Rhode’s Strawberries, run by “Captain Bob” Rhode of Chesaning Showboat fame, is always our first choice. Most area growers this year, though, complained of small harvests and we wound up going about 35 miles away to find reasonably-priced berries.

let’s make strawberry freezer jam!

Making strawberry freezer jam is a snap because there’s no special recipe. In fact, deviation from the standard recipe is frowned upon because it will likely result in failure of the jam to set up properly. Just clean one quart of strawberries per batch of freezer jam. Have one package of Sure-Jell or other pectin on hand for each batch. Then chop up those berries. You could briefly, carefully whirl them in a food processor, or use a potato masher, but I find the chopper to be my favorite.

Oops, you can’t really see the chopper in that pic. Here’s a better one! See, it’s like a biscuit cutter, but darksided.

Add the sugar to the chopped strawberries. I’ve got a double batch going in this picture; that’s why there’s so honkin’ much. You can totally double batch it, but don’t even think of triple or more batches at a time. That’s crazy talk.

At this point in the process, if you’re gonna be snapping pictures, you’d better have someone else around, because the stirring and the pouring and the stirring again and the zomg fill the jars before jam sets madness is going on and things are, if not exactly hectic, then not quite “Let’s stop and compose an artsy photo” conducive.

See, for the above, after the ~~lime went in the coconut~~ sugar went in the strawberries, the water went into the pectin, the pectin-water went into the strawberry-sugar, and the pectin-water-strawberry-sugar went into the adorable little jars. And all pretty quickly too, because if you lollygag, the jam will set up before you get it into the jars, which isn’t a tragedy but is a bit messy.

The strawberry freezer jam recipe is in every package of Sure-Jell, and I’m including it below as well, with tips and commentary Kraft simply does not offer. Oo la la.

strawberry freezer jam recipe

Every time I’ve made strawberry freezer jam, and every time anyone I know has made it, I’ve gotten more jam than the recipe predicts (5). I always wind up with 6 cups or 6½ cups. So be prepared with extra clean jars/containers. In fact, that’s always a good idea when canning or preserving. You don’t want to stop in the middle of something time-sensitive to wash jars.

yield: 5–6 cups
special equipment: chopper or food processor; funnel
time: 60 to 90 minutes, plus 24 hours

1 quart strawberries
4 cups granulated sugar
¾ cup water
1 box Sure-Jell fruit pectin

Wash 6 cups’ worth of containers and lids in warm soapy water and dry thoroughly.

Hull and wash strawberries. Chop strawberries until they’re soupy and contain chunks in the size you desire.

Stir in the sugar. It won’t all dissolve right away. Let stand for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. While waiting, set out jars/containers where you plan to fill them, and get a ladle and a funnel ready if you have one.

In a small saucepan, mix water and pectin and bring to a boil over high heat. Stir constantly. Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly and watching to be sure it does not boil over.

Remove pectin from heat and add to the strawberry-sugar mixture. Stir for 3 minutes or until sugar is dissolved. The sugar may not be entirely dissolved, but 3 minutes is all you need to stir, or less if the sugar dissolves quickly.

Immediately fill containers, ladling the hot jam through the funnel if you have one, leaving ½ inch head space to allow room for expansion in the freezer.

Cover containers with their lids and let stand at room temperature for 24 hours. Then the strawberry freezer jam is all ready to go into the freezer.

in which Facebook is vilified, and swiss chard is frozen

Amy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:19:20 +0000

To skip the Facebook rant and get right to the recipe instructions, scroll down to “Let’s freeze some chard!”

Hola, amigos. How’s it going with you? I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya. Okay, I’m channeling Jim Anchower, opinion columnist for the esteemed newspaper The Onion. I was confused as to why I wasn’t posting. Believe me, there are a few dozen recipes and pics piled up all ready to be tossed out into the intertubes, if only someone would write them up. After confusedly wondering for several days, but not actually making any attempt to figure out just what was going on, I actually focused my little pea brain on it.

And I figured it out. It all goes back to that bastion of evil, Facebook.

I hate Facebook. I loathe Facebook. I despise Facebook with the fiery passion of a thousand suns going supernova.

Now don’t begin unfriending me, friends and family types. It’s not personal. You’re all wonderful, beautiful people and I love you all.

But this medium you/we have chosen to “keep in touch” is the most personally invasive, confusingly organized, outright annoying site I have ever seen. (Also I hold a grudge against it because people forced me to sign up back in the day when you had to be a college student to use it, and my obviously fake name got purged at some point. Of course, Facebook is the Google of AOL these days, so fake names are perfectly fine now. But I digress.)

This thing you’re reading? I made it. All by myself. I made that picture up top. I coded the Wordpress theme from scratch. I wrote the CSS. Which explains why, if you actually know how to code and you view source, the code is a mess and probably half-cudgeled. But it works. I like to think I know my way around a website. Yet even for me, some supposed expert type, Facebook is nigh on impossible to navigate. I can never find what I’m looking for. Hardly ever. I was agog when I figured out how to create an event. Unfortunately for the invitees, I’ll probably never be able to find the event again. I hope they know what to do.

I’ve been able to keep my facebook interaction to the bare minimum…until recently. It’s all my cousin’s fault. Try Mafia Wars, he said. It’s fun, he said.

Nothing on Facebook can be fun, I retorted.

but it’s pleasantly addictive

But it’s pleasantly addictive! he cajoled.

I patiently explained my pattern with these sorts of amusements. Not content to simply plod along, I analyze strategies, read up on the best equipment, and generally try to min-max everything in an annoying power-player sort of way.

Long story long, I made the mistake of “trying” Mafia Wars. On the bright side, it’s not a time sucker. It’s quite simplistic for a game of its genre and I quickly learned the best strategies.

The problem is, and this is what I realized when I put my pea brain to the task, I’ve been playing Mafia Wars at the exact same time I usually write posts. I had to pull myself away from it to write this. Sad.

So anyway, join my mafia. Ha ha.

the post is about swiss chard

Grandma planted chard every year. I never tried it, and she never forced me to. I don’t think I ever tasted it until a few years ago. It’s in the leafy green family — that’s the technical term, honest…okay, it’s not. I know now why she grew it. It’s a great substitute for spinach, but it’s easier to grow, much sturdier, and weathers a light frost with panache.

Some people say chard tastes “almost as mild” as spinach, but I disagree. I think chard is milder than spinach. I dislike the squeaky coating raw spinach leaves in your mouth, that feeling that your tooth enamel is being stripped away while you chew. Spinach does that, and it’s quite unpleasant. Chard has no squeakiness, and while it cooks down like other greens do, it doesn’t go limp like spinach does. Cooked chard still is bright green and has a snap. I don’t think I’ve been able to make chard mushy.

I realized I could swap chard out for spinach in lasagna and elsewhere, so the past couple years we’ve been freezing it up in the fall for kicks. Here’s how we do it, but be forewarned: it’s a lot of time for little reward. I mean, we basically each got about 5-6 bucks worth of frozen spinach in chard form for like, four hours work. That’s not very good wages. It being fresh, home grown, and virtually organic is a bonus though. I guess if we’d bought organic frozen spinach you could say we froze about 10-15 bucks worth apiece. Oh well; it’s still pretty fun to do.

let’s freeze some chard!

Equipment:
- 1 or 2 stock pots. They don’t have to be huge, but they should be at least as large as a pot you’d boil pasta in. We’re going to be blanching the chard before freezing it, and blanching must be done in small batches anyway. We found a 2-pot system to work very well, and it made the blanching go twice as quickly.

- Strainer basket for the pot(s) or a large slotted spoon, for transferring the blanched chard from the pot to the ice water.

- Speaking of ice water, get a bag of ice. Get two if you have room to store leftovers.

- A cutting board and quality chef’s knives for each person.

- A salad spinner for drying blanched chard (preferable) or a large strainer.

- Freezer bags or small freezer containers. A short length of straw helps when you suck the air out of freezer bags, if you don’t have those cool vacuum kind.

- A kitchen scale for measuring out chard by weight when freezing. We froze it in 10-ounce increments, so a bag of chard pulled out of the freezer would be roughly equivalent to a box of pre-packaged frozen spinach.

- Several big bowls for working and for scraps. A five-gallon bucket is awesome for scraps, or you could even use grocery bags. Just realize you’ll be dealing with detritus. . I’m always, always wishing I had more large bowls.

1. Get someone to do it with you. Freezing should never be done alone, IMHO. There’s always enough to do to keep two people busy, and it goes twice as fast. Round up a friend, an aunt, or someone with a “Will Work For Food” sign you found on the street. Imagine their delight when they find out the food they are working for is frozen home-grown chard!

2. Get a lot of chard. As you can see, it cooks down a lot. From that giant pot of fresh chard, we got eleven ten-ounce bags’ worth.

3. Chard has tasty stems, but they develop an unpleasant texture when frozen. Trim the stem end up to where the leaf begins, and if the leaf is large and has a prominent stem structure, cut the leaf from either side and discard the stem part, or save to cook up later.

4. Also inspect the leaves and cut out imperfect areas and, if you have chard like mine, bug snack holes.

5. Wash the trimmed chard leaves in a sink full of cool water. You could actually do this before the stem-trimming, but we don’t because we have so much stem to cut off. Either fill both sinks and do a double wash, or run a stream of cool water and hand-rinse the leaves. This isn’t as bad or time-consuming as it sounds.

6. Chop the washed chard leaves into small pieces, about an inch square. I thought of using the food processor for this, but nixed the idea when I thought of the quantities involved — we would have been emptying and messing around with bowls so much that we decided to just chop it all by hand with our big santoku chef’s knives.

7. You’re ready to blanch! Fill the pot(s) with water, and get them to boil. Fill one side of your sink partway with water, and dump a bunch of ice into it.

8. Once the water is boiling, drop a large handful of chopped chard into the pot, maybe a few cups’ worth. The only thing to watch for is to not put in too much — if the water isn’t back to a boil within 30 seconds, you’ve got too much chard in there.

9. Blanch for 2 minutes. Remove the chard to an ice water bath to halt cooking. Leave in the ice water for 2 minutes (as long as you blanched it). It can remain there longer, but not shorter.

10. Drain cooled and blanched chard in a strainer or a salad spinner.

11. Package in freezer bags or freezer containers in 10-ounce increments.

12. Mix up a cuba libre and chill out.

pickles, to make you jealous

Amy — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:08:50 +0000

Truly, these pickles only appear before you because I’m dead tired. Been working on a house all week and I’m a tad unused to hours of physical labor every day. It’s a good tired, I guess. There’s overdone tired and there’s muscles kind of achy but in the well-used and getting stronger way, and it’s the latter.

But I think I’m just about ready for a few days’ respite for them to rest and repair.

Truth be told, I canned these last year. They’ve got a good crunch, and the recipe’s right out of the Ball Blue Book. The raw pickles just get covered in hot brine and processed in a hot water bath.

Well, soon we’ll have a visit to probably the only Japanese restaurant in a 100-mile radius, and a neat and fast bachelor chow dessert. Happy cooking.

millions of peaches, peaches for me

Amy — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:29:06 +0000

You can’t beat a home-canned peach. Store-bought doesn’t compare. Some other fruits handle store shelves pretty well, like pineapple and pears, but store-canned peaches are nearly flavorless in comparison.

If you can only one variety of fruit, can peaches.

Linda came over to do it with me, bearing a bushel of peaches from the local fruit market. After an aborted attempt at canning them — they weren’t ready yet! — we let them ripen for 3 more days. They were gorgeous. Firm, fragrant, and only one bad one in the bunch, discovered at the bottom of one of the boxes.

We got about 32 pints from that bushel, with about 20 peaches kept aside for fresh eating and baking. Here’s how to can your own.

how to can peaches

Adapted from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. It’s a canning bible. Seriously. I bolded the main parts, but really, the meat is in the unbolded stuff. Stuff like how not to shatter your jars, little things like that.

bushel yields: about 32 pints, with peaches left over for fresh eating
prep: 60 minutes
processing: 20 minutes

special equipment:
• boiling-water canner
• canning jars
• 2-piece lids.
• A canning kit is also really nice to have. It has a funnel, jar tongs, magnetic lid lifter — I do not know how I lived without this — and a couple other things I forget. Those three things are the most handy.

I’ve put together a bunch of canning equipment in the store too.

1 bushel peaches
4-1/2 cups sugar
10-1/2 cups water

For more detailed instructions, see here or view this tutorial prepared by Ball.

1. In a large saucepan, heat sugar and water to a simmer. You’ve just made the light syrup to pack your peaches in. Once all sugar is dissolved, keep syrup hot. Keep sugar on hand; if you have a whole bushel of peaches, you’ll need to mix up another batch of syrup.

2. Give peaches a light rinse if they’re dirty. You’re going to be blanching and peeling them, so if they’re clean-looking, you don’t need to do it.

3. Dump 4-5 peaches at a time into a pot of boiling water. Leave them in there 30 to 60 seconds. Remove and submerge in cold water. Do this until all the peaches are blanched, adding ice or changing water as necessary.

4. Peel and halve the peaches. One at a time, remove skins. (If the skins don’t slip off easily with just pressure from your thumb and fingers, the peaches probably aren’t ripe enough. Stop blanching now, make a bunch of cobbler with the blanched ones, and let the unblanched ones ripen another day or two.) Run a paring knife around the peach, beginning and ending at the stem. Slip halves of the peach from the stone, and drop into water treated with Fruit Fresh to keep them from browning.

Note: You could also do your peaches in quarters, which would be handy if you plan on baking with them later. We did a combination of halves and quarters.

5. Continue with step 3 until all peaches are halved.

6. Pack peaches in hot jars, cut side down. I like to use wide-mouth pints for this. The larger halves go in easily and it’s easy to flip that first peach over (they always want to land curved side down). You can get 4-5 halves into a jar.

7. Ladle syrup over the peaches, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.

8. Remove air bubbles by running a non-metallic thing around the inside of a jar. A plastic knife does the job. After removing air bubbles, you may need to add more syrup to some jars.

9. Wipe off tops of jars and put lids and bands on. Process pints 20 minutes, quarts 25 minutes in your boiling-water canner.

10. Remove, allow to cool on a towel for 12 to 24 hours. And enjoy listening to that pop! pop! pop! of the jars sealing.

look, we canned pears

Amy — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:10:18 +0000

Yup, we sure did.

I provided the kitchen and the canner and my aunt picked the pears, cleaned the pears, peeled the pears, cut the pears, packed the pears, and processed the pears.

I practically did it all by myself!

the canning stuff, yawn

Right there you see the basic canning setup on the stovetop. I began doing this a few years ago, absorbed in some weird home ec flashback. I say weird, because home ec was actually more about how to not kill yourself in the kitchen and how to hand sew misshapen stuffed animals made of highly-flammable polyester. And less about useful stuff like, you know, canning.

Since this stuff often hits Facebook, I bet some of you were in that 7th grade home ec class, or had one yourself. Did you honestly ever cook anything more involved than no-bake chocolate cookies? If that. But I digress, as I am wont to do.

We (she) canned 6 pints of pears in 2 hours. Of course, many pears do not make it into little jars, and instead find themselves eaten by nephews and ignored by super adorable kittens.

canned pears

Adapted from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. It’s a canning bible. Seriously. I bolded the main parts, but really, the meat is in the unbolded stuff. Stuff like how not to shatter your jars, little things like that.

makes: 6 pints
prep: 30 minutes
processing: 20 minutes
out of the canner: 2 hours, tops

special equipment:
• boiling-water canner
• canning jars
• 2-piece lids.
• A canning kit is also really nice to have. It has a funnel, jar tongs, magnetic lid lifter — I do not know how I lived without this — and a couple other things I forget. Those three things are the most handy.

I’ve put together a bunch of canning equipment in the store too.

Now, Linda did a cold pack in medium syrup. The recipe calls for a hot pack in light syrup. I’m going to share the recipe version.

6 to 9 pounds of pears
2-1/4 cups sugar
5-1/4 cups water

1. Prepare jars and lids: Wash all in hot soapy water and rinse. You have to keep the jars hot. Ball’s going to kill me, but here’s how I do it, and how my mom did it: Stand the jars in a cold oven. Turn on the oven to 200. No higher, and no turning on the oven until the jars are in there.

Or if you have a dishwasher, run them through the dishwasher cycle, and leave them hot in there until ready to use. Man, it would be nice to have a dishwasher.

2. Put lids (not bands, they don’t need special treatment besides washing) in a small saucepan, and cover in water. Heat to a low simmer (180 degrees) and keep that way until you need them. Don’t boil.

2.5. Fill the canner about halfway with water, and put on to boil. If it comes to a boil while you’re still prepping, turn it down to a low simmer.

3. Prepare the light syrup. Mix sugar and water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil. Simmer 2-3 minutes, or until sugar is dissolved. Keep hot.

4. Wash the pears. Just a little rinse is good; you’re going to peel them anyway.

5. Peel pears, cut into halves or quarters, and core. Put into a large bowl filled with water some Fruit Fresh to prevent darkening.

6. Add enough pears to the light syrup to cover the bottom of the pan in 1 layer, no deeper. Simmer lightly for 5-6 minutes, or until hot throughout.

7. Pack hot pears into hot jars. Ladle syrup over the pears, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. This is where the funnel comes in really handy.

8. Using a plastic knife or similar tool, remove air bubbles from the jars by running the knife around the inside of the jar. It may seem like it does nothing. Don’t worry; it helped.

9. Wipe the tops of the jars clean with a sponge or towel. Stuffing fruit into jars can get messy, and you want to make sure no bits or juice are clinging to the glass that the bands and lids touch. This can keep a good seal from forming in the water bath, which sucks because then you have to re-process.

10. Using the magnetic lid lifter, remove lids from the small saucepan and put them on the jars. Center the lids so the rubber seal is in contact with the glass. Don’t worry; this isn’t hard.

11. Twist bands onto the jars. Pay attention that the lids don’t get knocked too far out of whack. Tighten the bands only until you begin to feel resistance, to where they are on but they are not on tight. Tight bands before processing are bad.

12. Using your jar lifter, put your 6 pints of pears into the boiling water canner.

13. Bring the water to a hard rolling boil, then reduce to maintain a gentle rolling boil while processing. Once the water has come to a boil, process for 20 minutes.

14. After 20 minutes, you get to use the jar lifter again. Remove the jars from the canner and set them on a towel to cool. Don’t put them directly on the counter. Protip: a lot of these don’ts mean “if you do do this, your jars might shatter and create a huge mess.”

15. Allow them to sit on the counter for 12 to 24 hours. After this time has passed, check for the seal. Touch the top of the lid. If it gives, it didn’t seal and you must either refrigerate and eat within a few days or process again. If the lid doesn’t give, congrats! You’ve got pears!

Remove the bands before storing the canned pears. They aren’t needed and only tend to rust on the jars.

how to freeze sweet corn

Amy — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 02:15:47 +0000

Dad plants sweet corn for all of us every year, staggered a week or two apart so we have sweet corn for longer. I don’t know exactly how far apart; I’m sure someone will read this and correct me since I seem to get something wrong in every post.

It’s like when there’s a story in the paper that you were part of or know everything about. You read the article, and you find one thing reported incorrectly, then another, and another, and you come away wondering why you bother to believe anything you read or hear on the news ever.

Sweet corn is one vegetable that you want to freeze yourself if you can get hold of some fresh in season, because frozen store-bought just isn’t the same. Now, this isn’t true for all vegetables, as Mom and I concurred the other day. Yes, we talk about this kind of thing. We’re boring. We agreed that green beans, on the other hand, are pretty damn awesome frozen from the store. But sweet corn? Not so much.

no, she is not high

So get to a farmer’s market or a roadside stand right quick, get yourself some just-picked sweet corn, cajole a partner — you really, really want to do this with a partner — and set aside a few hours to freeze sweet corn.

I drafted my aunt for the job. Which works really well, because I like blanching the corn and she likes cutting it from the cob. Which is the two main jobs involved. She’s got a fancy-schmancy corn-off-the-cob-cutter and I have to say, it’s awesome. I thought it might cut too deep and get that fibrous stuff you can’t chew and then have to hope you’re discreetly spitting it into your napkin, but it’s adjustable.

We spent 2-1/2 hours from start — going out to pick and shuck the corn — to finish, including a quick trip to town to buy ice. This was to package 23 bags worth of 1-2 cups each, from about 40 ears to begin with.

how to freeze sweet corn

For us, approximately 40 ears yielded about 30 cups of cut corn. YMMV.

Before you begin, have the following:

One or two large pots
Two or more 7-pound bags of ice
At least two large bowls
Pint or quart size freezer bags
Colander
One cup measuring cup. A funnel comes in handy too
Corn cutter. Not necessary, but quicker and easier than hand-cutting with a knife
Container for used corn cobs
Straw, if not using hand-pump vacuum seal bags

1. Procure sweet corn. Either walk out back and pick some or get some at a farmer’s market or roadside stand. Buy it as fresh as possible.

2. Shuck sweet corn. Wipe away as much silk as possible. Break off the “handle” ends. If your corn is near-organic like mine is (like near beer?), there will be bugs trying to eat all that precious, precious starch. It’s likely the bugs have already made a dent in the tassel end of the corn. Solve that with step 3.

3. Cut off any ends with bugs on them. If an adventurous bug has wandered down mid-ear and begun chomping, cut out the bits where they’ve been. This part squicks me so I let other people do it. If you’re lucky, you’ll have an “other people” of your own to do it for you too.

3.5. Put water on to boil in a very large pot at some point in the shucking process. Now would be a good time.

4. Take the corn inside, and wipe off as much remaining silk as possible. Don’t worry about a bit of silk; stray strands will likely boil off when blanching, and if it doesn’t, well, more fiber for you.

5. Run cold water in a clean sink and add ice. You want the water to be icy cold. I’m anal about this. The purpose is to stop the cooking when you dump the boiling-hot ears of sweet corn in there. Keep it so there is always at least some ice in the water.

6. Dump 3-4 ears of corn into the boiling water. Boil for 5 minutes. Hey, now you’re blanching!

7. After five minutes, pull the hot ears out of the water with tongs, and transfer immediately to the ice bath in the sink. Allow ears to cool for five minutes.

8. While the corn is cooling, add 3-4 more ears to the boiling water. Now you’ve got a system going. One set of corn is blanching while the previous set is cooling.

9. After five minutes in the ice bath, remove ears and stand vertically in a colander so they drain well. Set the colander on a towel on the table where you’ll be removing the kernels from the corncobs.

10. Using a sharp knife or a corn cutter, liberate the kernels from the corncobs, either right over a large bowl, or transfer it to a large bowl when done. Don’t cut too deeply, or you’ll get a lot of unchewable fibrous material. It’s better to err on the side of caution here. If you use a knife, the corn will be more cream-style; if you use a corn cutter, the corn will be shoepeg-style.

11. Continue steps 6 through 10 until all of the corn has been cut from the cob.

12. Using measuring cup (and funnel, if desired — it makes things much less messy), portion cut sweet corn into freezer bags. For pints, put in 1 to 2 cups. For quarts, you can add up to 4 cups. I find that 2 scant cups of corn is a good amount when using it later for things like chili. However, it’s entirely personal preference.

13. Seal bags and remove air from them. If you’ve got the neat hand-pump vacuum seal system sold by Ziploc and probably other companies, you are rocking. If not, grab a straw, stick it in the bag, seal the bag around the straw, and suck as much air out as you can. Quickly remove the straw while closing the seal behind it.

14. Freeze your homemade sweet corn!

how to flash freeze blueberries

Amy — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:07:18 +0000

Skip ahead to to the blue text if you want the instructions without the incoherent babbling.

Flash freezing has been done in the food industry for ages to quickly preserve and seal in nutrients and freshness. It’s why nutritionists say frozen seafood, vegetables, and so forth are technically “fresher” than their fresh cousins you find in the grocery store.

Of course, if you’re practicing locavore-oriented shopping, you don’t have that problem now, do you? It’s not hard, and you don’t have to be a hardass about it. You’re just growing a garden, or befriending people who do, or participating in a CSA. Okay, I had to act like I knew what a CSA was. Hey look, it stands for Community Supported Agriculture.

Oh, wow. There’s one in my area. Crap, now you know where I live. No stalking!

Back to locavore stuff. You’re doing the above, and/or you’re looking for locally-grown produce at the supermarket, you’re befriending people with chickens for eggs, etc. It doesn’t have to be all intensive like the people who do “we’ll only eat anything grown within 100 miles” experiments.

So if you’re me, one locavore thing you’ve done recently is go to a local orchard and buy or pick blueberries. You picked a lot of blueberries. And you might as well throw some in the freezer for winter.

There’s something sparkly about pulling berries out of the freezer in the dead of winter, and making a smoothie, or cobbler, or pie. In like, February. You want to do this with your pretty local berries.

Note: This method can be used with nearly anything solid. I freeze tablespoons of tomato paste this way. Adobo chiles. Some people flash freeze lemon slices, or mushrooms. I don’t know if I trust frozen mushrooms, but they can’t hurt if being thrown into a lasagna or something.

flash freezing blueberries is easy peasy. Here’s how.

1. Wash the suckers. Dump the fresh blueberries into a clean sink filled with cool water. Slosh them around. Fish them out, and spread in a single layer on towel- or paper towel-lined sheet pans. Allow the blueberries to air dry.

2. Line the sheet pans with waxed or parchment paper. This will keep any berries that might still be wet from freezing directly to the pan.

3. Spread the blueberries in an even layer on the paper-lined pans.

4. Pop them into the freezer. Don’t stack them. The goal is to keep those little suckers as separated as possible so they freeze faster. My freezer is kind of scary, isn’t it?

5. Wait a few hours. Play Pandemic: American Swine to pass the time.

6. Pull the frosty frozen blueberries out of the freezer. Marvel at how they clink like marbles. Plot ways to shoot them at unsuspecting TSA agents.

7. Dump the clinking frozen blueberries into a freezer bag. Get a straw and suck, suck, suck the air out of the bag until you get lightheaded or pass out, whichever comes first.

If you have one of those fancy vacuum sealers, by all means use that instead.

8. Label the bag with what it is and the month and year. This cannot be stressed enough. Sure, you think you can recognize a damn bag of blueberries when you see it NOW, but next year? You’ll be wondering what the hell those dark lumps are. Example: Blueberries. 08/09. Do it. Trust me on this.

9. Pop the bag into the freezer and pencil blueberry pie in your calendar for January.

how to make red currant juice

Amy — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:31:16 +0000

Why would you want to make currant juice?

I can think of a few reasons, one of which is definitely going to show up here shortly.

One, to make currant jelly. Now, I’m a strawberry jam girl, so I don’t make currant jelly, but if you put some currant jelly in front of me, I won’t complain.

Two, to make currant pie. My grandma made a currant chiffon pie that used Dream Whip. I might see if I can natural that up. I wonder if you could use stabilized whip cream to do it.

Three, and this is the doozy, to make currant sorbet. Shocking pink, tangy, and sweet and icy. Perfect for a summer afternoon. And it’s quite easy. That one’s going to show up here soon.

By the way, these are red currants. You know, I’ve never even seen a black currant, though I’ve heard tell of them in weird cookbooks and dark recesses of the intertubes. I’ve got six currant bushes, though five of them tend to be kind of spindly. The spindly ones are up front near the white lilac and the peonies. The big bushy currant is back by the plum trees. And across from the gooseberry bush, said gooseberry bush never going to be a source of recipes here because they’re kind of a pain, and not interesting-tasting enough to me to care. Oh, why are they a pain? Why, thorns of course. The dumb bush is covered in little thorns. Yay.

Currants, however, have none of those horrid protrusions, and they have a unique flavor. They taste just as red as they look, but there’s nothing cloying about them. There’s this added level, almost a smoky kind of depth.

Great. I just described currants as “smoky.” You’re never going to want to try them now.

You don’t want to eat them by the handful off the bush; they’re kind of tart. But turn them into juice and oo la la.

So the second time picking, I spent about an hour here and got most of a big bowl full. Mom has currants at her house too, which I neglected to prune for her this spring. Bad daughter! Strangely, I was still in the currant-picking mood, so I went to her house to get some. In half an hour my bowl was just as full as it had been before.

Her currants are way bigger.

Anyway, enough yapping. If you’re lucky enough to have access to currants, PICK THEM. MAKE JUICE FROM THEM. Then make CURRANT PIE or CURRANT JELLY or CURRANT SORBET from them. Freeze the juice in 1-cup containers, and you can have a taste of summer in the dead of winter, always a plus.

Oh. Any ideas how to get Dream Whip out of the currant chiffon pie?

how to make red currant juice for recipes or freezing

servings: 1 quart currants = 1 cup juice
special equipment: ricer or chinois and pestle, or cheesecloth

I call for straining the juice using a ricer. Well, we call it a ricer. However, when I looked up ricers, I got cylinder-shaped potato ricer things. What I call a ricer is apparently more of a “chinois with pestle.” You can use cheesecloth to squeeze out the juice, but that’s boring and messy. Wouldn’t it be more fun to mush up the currant pulp with a wooden mallet thing? You probably know someone with a ricer like this one. Oh, they never TOLD you they have it. Ask around. Someone, probably an older neighbor, has one and will love to loan it out to get used.

currants, several quarts worth if possible

1. Clean currants by dumping in a sink full of cold water. Pull them out by the handful, rinse under running water, and toss into a large pan. You can go as small as a 2-3 quart pan (I used my Calphalon 2.5 quart saucier as a backup). Just remember smaller pan will equal more batches on the stove.

2. Don’t worry about stems. Try to pick out stray leaves and twigs and grass. Eh, ignore that; I’m probably the only one who winds up with freaking tree branches in my bowl of carefully picked currants.

3. When the pan is about half full of currants, put onto the stove on low heat. No, you don’t need to add water. They’re wet enough from the rinsing. Keep on low heat, stirring occasionally, until the currants are releasing their juices and the skins are mainly turning pink. Remember, we aren’t cooking the currants, just sort of nudging them into playing nice.

4. Now for the fun part! Pour the contents of the pan into the ricer. With the pestle, smash the skins about to get the rest of the juice out. As the pan beneath the ricer fills up, transfer the juice to another bowl. Clean the pulp out from the ricer.

4-1/2. Optional extra step: To get a really fine juice, run the currant juice through a fine mesh strainer. Trust me, the ricer worked really well, but there are little bits of pulp (that you’ll hardly notice) still in there. If you want to get fussy, which I did this year, try that.

5. Continue the warming/ricing process until you have loads of currant juice and lots of pretty in pink pulp. Measure it out in 1-cup increments into containers that can be frozen. Why 1-cup increments? Every recipe I know of calls for 1 cup of currant juice. Of course, if you’re making currant jelly, you want 6-1/2 cups, but that’s not my story.

6. Refrigerate the currant juice that you’re going to use within a few days and freeze the rest.

Nutrition information per 1 cup red currant juice: 63 calories; 0.2g fat; 0mg cholesterol; 1mg sodium; 16g carbohydrate; 4.8g fiber; 8.3g sugars; 1.6g protein; 1% vitamin A; 77% vitamin C; 4% calcium; 6% iron