(Photo from Chris Campbell’s Flickr photostream)
Attention all canjammers! The focus of the February Tigress Can Jam is CARROTS.
Got that?
Yes, carrots.
The Tigress and I made this choice with both excitement and trepidation. The excitement because vegetables are new territory for many water-bath canners; the trepidation because carrots are a low-acid food, and therefore come with certain rules. So. Let’s be clear. No matter what you find on the internets, you absolutely have to add acid to carrots to make them safe to can. In fact, a lot of acid. So much acid, in fact, that the Tigress and I strongly encourage you—nay, insist!—that you start off with a published recipe, and tweak from there. (If you have a home pH meter and/or are a master food preserver, you get a free pass.) Think pickles, relishes, and chutneys. Once you’ve found a recipe you like, feel free to tinker with the spices, the balance of salt and sugar, the exact combination of vegetables, etc. HOWEVER, be sure that you are not reducing the proportion of acid to the food.
Let’s give an entirely hypothetical (as in, don’t try this at home) example. Say you have a recipe that includes 5 cups of carrots, 2 cups of cauliflower, a handful of herbs, 1 T of salt, 1/4 c. of sugar, and 3 cups of vinegar. It would be fine to reduce the cauliflower to 1 cup and add 1 cup of peppers, throw in some mustard seeds, and add more sugar. It would not be OK, though, to just add a cup of peppers without adding more vinegar, because then you’ve lowered the acid content (that is, raised the pH).
Um, if this is at all confusing, that means you should stick with the recipe.
Have fun, be careful, and remember to post your fabulous creations between Sunday, February 14 and midnight, Friday, February 19.
Happy canjamming!
Carrots, huh? Huh. Guess I dig out all the books when I get home… And maybe find a ph meter. OK, then – into the breach! ;-D
Fun! I love pickled carrots. Now the creative part….. Hmmm.
I was hoping wishing and praying for carrots!! Yay!!!!
I can’t wait!
One question does anyone know where I can buy a ph meter for canning?
Oh no, this IS a challenge. I am going to have to get my hands on the joy of pickling…Have been planning to order it soon, but it just got bumped up in the queue…;-)
CARROTS?????
Really? I have NEVER canned carrots, not a big carrot fan so this will be a perfect challenge for me this month. Woodman and I will start the hunt for some recipes tonight, he already has ideas and I will let him rule on this! Happy canning!
Woohoo! I was so hoping you would pick carrots. Are we supposed to do a pickling recipe or can it be something else?
Buying a ph meter is a great tip! I need to get on that.
Back in November I needed a way to store my CSA veggies before the end of the growing season and made this cauliflower-carrot pickle. I liked eating it as a side with lentils and rice.
http://3.ly/iz3J
The USDA is a great source for canning safety tips:
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_06/pickled_baby_carrots.html
Where should I look to learn about pH-ing my own canned foods? I would like to be able to do that. But, I am sure that it is a little more complicated than sticking a pH meter into your jar of food.
Thanks!
So happy you chose carrots. I’m down to my last jar!
Wild Carrot Jelly has been on my “to do” list for a while now – I just never got around to it last summer. But since it is made from the flower heads, there is no way I will be finding the flowers in February in suburban Boston.
In answer to all the pH questions: well, as a layperson, I can’t in good conscience tell you to just stick a pH meter in your food. Besides the USDA, I’d recommend that you carefully read the materials at the National Center for Home Food Preservation Web site.
And Cathy, pickles are only the beginning! Just keep in mind that un-acidified carrots are not safe for water-bath canning. Personally, I’m thinking of exploring the wild world of chutneys.
Mmmmmmmmmmm! I already know what I want to make.
Whoot! Colette and I were bouncing around possible ingredients and thought carrots would be ideal!
I guess it wouldn’t be a challenge if it was all things I had already canned and loved… carrots I’m really going to have to think about. I do like the ideas of carrot jelly and chutney.
OMG. This, I think, was the worst that could happen. CARROTS? I like carrots, but only fresh ones and cooked. But pickled? Or in a chutney? Oh well, I’ll have to figure something out – it’s going to be a REAL challenge for me. If I can’t find anything that suits me I’m just going for ordinary pickled carrots and will find someone to give them to ;o).
Oh, as to the ph level: the National Center for Home Food Preservation says that everything that has a ph level of 4,6 or below is considered to be acidic. So, if you reach that level by adding lemon juice, citric acid, vinegar or something else, you should be safe.
I know just what I’m going to do, thank you!
Thanks for the tips! I have a recipe in mind (from a reputable source) and it does include acid. So I’m good to go!
The thing about checking your own pH is that you have to be able to assess the pH of the CENTER of what you are making. I’m no food scientist, but I think this would require making a slurry and taking lots of samples just to be sure of the entire jar. I do know that people have gotten botulism from pickled eggs, even though the pH of the brine is certainly well below the pH of 4.6, because the acidity of the inside of a hard boiled egg wasn’t the same as the outside, and it is anaerobic in there….this is the perfect set up for botulism – no oxygen AND low acid. It’s not just pH that’s important, it’s pH and food density.
Well, it’s definitely a challenge now. I was kinda hoping to work into this canning new things slowly. You just bumped up learning something new a lot sooner than I’d planned.
Here’s hoping I can find something that’s fairly easy as I’m a little nervous about all this following rules and botulism stuff.
Ooooh, I think I have a recipe floating around for carrots that I’ve been wanting to try.
Putting Up: A Seasonal Guide to Canning in the Southern Tradition by Steve Dowdney and Rick McKee has some good info about how to properly measure the pH of your canned foods.
I am SOOOOOO excited – great news and awesome ingredient! Thanks so much, excited to see where this all goes….
hmmmm….
still have jars of spicy pickled carrots from last year (AWESOME), going to head somewhere else though I think….
joel
I came upon the can jam way too late to be official, but I’m following silently – my penance for not canning enough last year. After searching through my cook books I found a rhubarb carrot marmalade that I’m going to try from the 1973 edition of Putting Food By. Gonna try to spice it up a little.
@mamaurchin – I’ve read “Putting Up” by Dowdney and McKee . It’s a lovely book, and they had some things in that book that aren’t considered food safe by USDA standards…however, I think if folks stick to jams/jellies/pickles they will be fine. Just find a USDA recipe you like and improvise safely from there….
Question…. when we post between February 14-19th, do we post here or on Tigress’s site? (Maybe it has already been explained on her site… I’ll double check there too.) Happy Canning! Melanie
Sorry, I can’t figure out how to edit my comment above so I’m posting again. I just re-read Tigress’s rules… we obviously post recipes & pictures on our own blogs, but my question is where do we post that we ‘finished our project’? Here (at the site that chose the veggie/fruit) or on Tigress’s site?
(This is probably clear to everyone else… sorry for not getting it!) Melanie
Melanie, If you have a blog (which you appear to!) and are on Tigress’s list, you don’t have to do anything “special.” The valiant Tigress will just check your blog for a post between 2/14 to 2/18 and take it from there!
Rose, do be careful with that 1973 recipe. As some of the other comments have noted, the USDA has changed some of their advice since 1973. Just be sure to double-check it against contemporary guidelines and adjust accordingly.
Yay, carrots! Great idea! I found these locally grown round globe baby carrots that would look hot pickled….I can’t wait to get started!
Very exciting! I’ve been having pickled carrots at various local restaurants that do their own preserving and I had decided to try to make some; never have before. Don’t know whether I’d get into chutneys though; my sweetie Jonathan certainly won’t eat tham, and we live in Toronto’s Little India, so making our own chutney kind of falls in the coals to newcastle department anyway… Off to think…
just a couple questions you guys can maybe answer…
1. is a pressure COOKER the same thing as a pressure CANNER? or are they different? i have a cooker and was wondering if i could use it, and if so then how?
2. why are carrot jams and chutneys safe? is the ph somehow lowered from sugar content?
Elle,
The Can Jam requires recipes that can be safely canned in a water-bath canner so.. pressure cooker or pressure canner (I assume they are the same thing) neither will qualify.
Sugar acts as a preservative for canned foods, but acidity is the key (and texture or density, as MK points out) to food canning safety. pH is a measure of acidity and the vinegar, lemon juice, apple juice, etc., that are typical acidic ingredients for jams or chutneys are what make a non-acidic ingredient like carrots safe for water-bath processing.
ah yes, you are right about the canjam’s hot water bath requirement… and i guess i didn’t realize jams and jellies have enough acid in them to lower the ph level enough.
but i am still left wondering if a canner and cooker are the same thing. mine does NOT have a gauge on it so i am guessing it is not the same?
Elle: First, to clarify on the jams. Not all carrot “jams” are safe. If you find a recipe in a recent book published by a reputable publisher, it *probably* is, because major publishers are concerned about liability. There are some carrot “jams” floating around on the internet that definitely do *not* look safe to me. Don’t freak out–the point is not to make you figure out how to make your own canning recipes. The point is instead to encourage you to experiment with recipes that you’ve seen and have been wondering about. So, if all else fails, find yourself a nice carrot pickle recipe (there are plenty of those!) and go for it.
As for pressure canner vs. pressure cooker. A pressure canner is a particularly large pressure cooker designed to hold and distribute heat in ways that make canning low-acid foods safe. You can use a pressure canner as a pressure cooker, but not vice versa. For more on this, with helpfully labeled photos, see my post on pressure cooking 101.
Whoo hoo! Can’t wait to get started with the challenge! Mmmmm, but a little concerned about the using local produce part. I *think* my Mom still has a couple of carrots left over from last year’s garden, but if not…..? It’s winter – in Minnesota!
And the farmer’s market doesn’t start until the 2nd week of July!
My first thought was a chutney, but I cannot find a carrot chutney canning recipe. Anyone have any thoughts were one could be unearthed?
RobbingPeter,
Try the Golden Gossip Chutney in the Ball Complete Book (also available on Bernardin’s website at http://www.homecanning.com/can/)
Carrots – hmmm…this is gonna take some pondering.
Robbing Peter, there’s an interesting looking apple-carrot chutney in Anne Gardon’s Preserving for All Seasons. Someone gave it to me, and I wouldn’t recommend buying it, but it’s worth tracking down at your local library.
Sounds great! I normally pressure can my carrots. So I’ll have fun coming up with a pickled recipe.
Silly me! I should have just read the post. My recipe-altering trepidation has dissipated.
Off to make my own carrot porn…
xxHipgirls (kate)
Thanks y’all. The Golden Gossip looks fantastic. My county does not have that cookbook – but I might be able to get it ILL.
Carrot Jam has been around for years – AND marmalade.
Read more in the World Carrot Museum.
hey,
those carrots up there look mightly friendly…
what are they doing?
Carrots will stretch me for sure – I’ve made giardiniera (from a safe, no-oil-added canning recipe) but the carrots are definitely not the main ingredient there.
Research and test micro-batches are some of the best parts of the CanJam!
Yipee for carrots! I have a shelf staple that needs to be replaced and I am also planning to try something new. Jars filled with orange are so nice to look at.
Check out my canning project for this month – Vietnamese Carrot and Daikon pickle:
http://motherskitchen.blogspot.com/2010/02/vietnamese-carrot-and-daikon-pickle.html
Just posted about my Pickle Carrots with Tarragon here
http://pixie-lou.livejournal.com/7671.html
I am a can jammer without a blog so I am posting my carrot addition here. I decided to make a chili pepper, garlic, mustard seed carrot pickle. I just took them out of the water bath and they are pinging as I type. I am hoping they will be reminiscent of the mexican carrot pickles, but I used baby carrots for mine. They look quite nice all lined up in the jars.
I also canned some clementine raspberry jam while I was at it. The clementines look great and I had raspberries from my yard last Fall. New to canning and working at practicing and building the pantry.
I love this can jam!
Posted my recipes for Carrot Salsa & Carrot Relish… carrots were fun!