Learning strategies for putting up food is more fun in a group. I know I’m still learning—never more so than when I teach. On June 10–12,  I’ll once again be teaching a three-day food preservation workshop on the peaceful grounds of the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. We’ll cover not only the basic techniques of water bath canning, pressure canning, dehydrating, and fermenting, but the ever-so-important questions of how to decide which technique to apply to which foods. We’ll talk about finding reasonable ways to integrate food preservation into our lives and share strategies for estimating amounts.

Registration is limited, so sign-up early! Click through for more details and registration information, or drop me a line at dorisandjilly@gmail.com for more information.

Which is not to say that my first attempt turned out perfectly. The duck came out a hair too salty; I think I left it to hang too long; and it’s really, really fatty. Nevertheless, I think I’m hooked. Making duck prosciutto (and presumably lots of other preserved meat products) is really as simple as dousing a duck breast in salt overnight, then letting it hang for a week. When you touch it, your hands come away smelling like high-end tapas. While duck breasts are hardly cheap (I paid $12.95/pound for fresh ones at Reading Terminal), duck prosciutto isn’t exactly something you can find in just any neighborhood deli. I like the idea of making it myself, using duck from a butcher I trust. I especially like the idea of controlling what goes in the cure mix. (No nitrates for me, thanks.)

Since everyone participating in charcutepalooza is playing along from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie, I’ll spare you the “recipe” (such as it is). I thought that, instead, you might want an explanation. I certainly did. How does this work, exactly? When people say salt acts as a preservative, exactly how does it do that?

Well. It turns out that salt curing works on a basic chemical principle. Systems seek equilibrium. The first step in most salt cures, including this one, is to submerge your meat in salt. If the font size in the diagram below represents concentration, and the dotted line represents the boundary between the meat and salt (on one level, skin; on another, cell membranes), the system might look something like this:

If the system had its druthers, all the different things in the system would distribute themselves equally, both inside and out of the meat. But, because of the boundary membranes, they can’t. Proteins, fats, and some bacteria are stuck inside, while water, salt, and other ions (potassium, calcium, etc.) have no trouble passing through. After about a day, your system might look something like this:

This is exactly what happens to a duck breast that’s been sitting in salt all night. Here’s mine, after its evening in brine:

Notice how flat it is? If you could touch it, you’d see that it’s already quite hard. It’s absorbed quite a bit of the salt from the outside, and eliminated some of its water. Although it seems counterintuitive, this is actually a kind of dehydration. The resulting combination of high salt levels and low water levels makes it difficult for dangerous bacteria to survive—making it safe for you to hang your meat for a week to develop further flavor.

Now, keep in mind that you can’t hang your duck breast just anywhere because the meat still contains other kinds of bacteria that you don’t want to encourage. Nor do you want random yeast taking hold. You want a spot between 50 and 60°F, and you need to wrap it up in something to keep it clean. I wrapped mine in muslin and hung them from the basement rafters:

And after a week, I had duck prosciutto. It’s like magic, except it’s not. It’s osmosis and dehydration. And even though it’s not perfect, it’s still pretty delicious.

So, how did yours turn out?

Then my dehydrator died.

Here’s my old Nesco, a “Snackmaster Express,” Model FD-61:

I couldn’t quite decide what to do when it died. Not only was it only a couple of years old, but the nature of its death left me with safety concerns. One night I put in several trays of halved cherry tomatoes. The next morning, I came down, and not only was the dehydrator not on, but the tomatoes were crispy. This was worrisome, as cherry tomatoes usually take a couple of days. My suspicion was that the unit had gotten hot, or perhaps had suffered some sort of electrical short .

So I called the Nesco Corporation. Just to be clear, I have never received any products or compensation from Nesco or any other dehydrator manufacturer. This is just me, writing as a consumer. The customer service rep on the other end of the line was less than helpful, telling me that they could take a look at it to see what went wrong, but it would cost me almost as much as a new unit, and she couldn’t guarantee that they would find anything. But what really ticked me off was that she didn’t seem concerned—at all—about the possibility of electrical problems or overheating.

At this point, I had two trays of half-dehydrated peppers, some crunchy cherry tomatoes, and a whole lot of things that needed to be dried floating around my kitchen. Should I step up and purchase a fancy Excalibur, expensive but reliable? Suck it up and buy another headpiece for the Nesco? Try a new brand altogether?

This is when I had a VHS/Betamax moment. The thing about Nescos is that you can purchase additional trays to fit under the same headpiece. It dawned on me that if I simply bought a new dehydrator, instead of a new headpiece, I would only spend $20 more and would end up with a massive, 10-tray dehydrator. And amazon.com had the slightly more powerful model for the same price as the one that had died on me.

I therefore became a participant in a phenomenon that historians of science and technology have been describing for a long time. I bought a new product that I don’t even like that much because it’s compatible with my existing components. Here’s the  new dehydrator, a “professional” model, FD-75PR:

And here’s my massive combo dehydrator:

I promptly used it to dry massive amounts of peppers, following the fantastic instructions at Well Preserved:

But despite the fact that I now have ten trays (exciting!), I’m still not sure how much faith I have in the safety and reliability of Nesco dehydrators. If any of you have had similar problems, can you please let me know? If there’s genuinely a safety issue, Nesco needs to be made aware of it.

I like so many things about this book that it’s hard to pinpoint just one thing. If I had to narrow it down, I’d point to the author’s focus on ingredients rather than method. There’s been so much excitement about canning over the past year—enthusiasm that I share!—that I think some people are missing the point. The point of canning is not just to assemble a pretty pantry, or to recover lost skills, or display hipster credentials. It’s definitely not about making life harder, contrary to the advice offered in one odd little not-quite-a-cookbook. Ultimately, we can to preserve food. And there’s the rub. Canning is not the only, or even the best, way to preserve many foods. Vegetables freeze well; peppers are terrific dried; cabbage was seemingly made for sauerkraut.

Once you get the hang of food preservation, you start to develop a sixth sense for what method might work best for any given food item. You also develop preferences for what you like to eat and how you like to spend your time in the kitchen. Unfortunately, most food preservation handbooks focus on technique, with long sections on water-bath canning, pressure canning, pickling, freezing, and dehydrating. This is great if you’re looking for an introduction to how to make pickles. It’s not so helpful if you’ve got 30 pounds of tomatoes and need to know the pros and cons of freezing vs. canning vs. dehydrating. Vinton’s section on cherries, for instance, includes instructions and recipes for frozen cherries, a sweet refrigerator sauce, a shelf-stable cherry bourbon infusion, dehydrated cherry leather, basic dried cherries, a savory cherry-walnut relish for canning (really a pickle), and cherry preserves. It’s really the most useful and versatile book I’ve seen for people who are dabbling in food preservation because they want to transition to a local foods lifestyle. And everything I’ve made from it is delicious.

My only complaint? It’s too short! I’m as excited about the next person about pickled ramps, but where’s the eggplant? And I do so sorely wish someone would break the ban on pressure canning in “mainstream” canning books. But these are small complaints. It’s really terrific, and if you don’t win the giveaway, you might want to buy it.

So about that giveaway? Leave a comment describing a new technique that you’ve explored this year by Friday, September 24. And—though it’s not required to enter the giveaway—it would really make our day if you could “like” us on Facebook! Just click through and join the party.

You’ve got three basic options: freezing, dehydrating, or canning. More ambitious folks can try fermenting, like I did with my bumper crop of bok choi last year. But let’s stick with the basics here.

Freezing Greens

This is the easiest, and probably the best, solution. It’s very, very easy to freeze greens. You just blanch them, cool them in an ice bath, and freeze. I’ve got step-by-step instructions and photos here. Assuming you’ve got a good freezer, these will keep very well for a year. We used ours all winter in soups, stews, pastas, dips, and even just sauteed with garlic. They shrink dramatically when blanched—plan on about a pound of fresh greens to make about two cups.

For most people, this is the way to go. If, however, you have limited freezer space, you live in an area that experiences frequent power outages, or are planning for a future without electricity, you need other options. Alas, they’re not great. But, you asked, so here goes.

Dehydrating Greens

Are you one of those people who likes to sprinkle seaweed flakes over your rice bowl at the local health food store? Then you might like this. Steam your greens just until they’re wilted. Transfer them to dehydrator trays and dry at a low temperature (say, 110ºF) just until they’re crispy. You’ll want to keep an eye on them—within two hours, mine looked like this:

Now what, you may ask, would you do with dehydrated turnip greens? That’s an excellent question. I rehydrated some with a little bit of room temperature water, and they looked pretty good. The problem was that they had no perceptible taste. In the end, I crumbled them up and stuck them in a spice jar:

I sprinkled an entire leaf’s worth of flakes over a bowl of roasted potatoes and couldn’t tell they were there. I suspect that they’re still fairly nutritious, though, so maybe this isn’t such a bad way to incorporate hearty greens into your diet. I guess.

Canning Greens

The things I do for science.

Yes, it is possible to can hearty greens. It requires a pressure cooker and a processing time of 1 hour, 10 minutes for pints and 1 hour, 30 minutes for quarts. Yes, you read that right. And after you’ve subjected these poor, innocent vegetables to 240ºF to more than an hour, you get this appetizing product:

(And that’s the glamor shot.)

The nutritional value of all of this is questionable. They taste about like you would expect them to. If, however, you have absolutely no other options and feel strongly about having a pantry full of shelf-stable vegetables, this technique will serve you well. But Lordy, do they smell bad. Here’s how you do it.

1) Bring about 3 quarts of water to a boil. You need 2 quarts for the pressure canner, plus some extra to pour over the greens.
2) Steam the greens until wilted. Cut them into manageable pieces.

3) Stuff the greens into canning jars. Add 1/2 t. salt per jar (optional) and cover with boiling water, leaving 1″ headspace. Don’t forget to remove the air bubbles. Adjust two-piece lids.
4) Transfer the jars to a rack on a pressure canner. Pour in 2 quarts of boiling water. Lock the lid into place, but do not place the regulator on the steam vent. Turn on the heat and exhaust steam from the vent for 10 minutes. Then place the regulator on the steam vent and bring the canner to 10 pounds of pressure. Start timing once the regulator starts rocking—70 minutes for pints, 90 minutes for quarts. (If this is confusing, see the step-by-step directions, with pictures, in this post.)
5) Turn off the heat and let the pressure drop of its own accord. When the pressure has dropped, remove the regulator. Now open all your windows. After waiting a few more minutes, open the lid away from your body. The pungent aroma of overcooked turnip greens will fill your house, and you’ll have all the shelf-stable greens you want. Plan on 2 to 5 pounds per pint, depending on the kind of greens involved. Um, yum?

Other ideas?

My favorite strawberry farm, Gaventa’s, no longer offers U-pick. Waaaah. My next favorite strawberry farm, Mood’s, apparently isn’t offering strawberries this year, but plans to open for other fruit picking in mid-June. That left Johnson’s, a weirdly tourist-y place in Medford that I don’t particularly recommend as a “farm experience” (enforced hayrides = bad, in my book), but the price was right ($1.75/pound for more than 10 pounds) and the berries were DELICIOUS. But here’s the kicker: they wanted $4.95 for pick-your-own cherries. Um, no.

For that, we headed over to Rowand’s Farm in Glassboro. Now this is a U-pick I can live with. The proprietors sit in lawn chairs and hand you plastic buckets. Sweet cherries are $1.65/pound. They also have strawberries, but I can’t vouch for them, having already gorged myself at Johnson’s. But there’s a catch: they’re closed on Saturdays.

Once you bring all that fruit home, then you have to do something with it. Some options and recommendations from last year’s blog:

Freeze it, individually (not particularly recommended, but convenient) or in sugar
Make endless jars of jam, including my favorite, cherry raspberry
Can it with rhubarb
Combine it with lemons for a marmalade
Stash it in syrup
Dehydrate it

Julia over at What Julia Ate highly recommends drowning fruit in alcohol and straining the remains to make liqueur. This is a new one for me, so no results yet. But I’ll keep you posted.

Happy picking and preserving!

On a whim, I cut one up and stuck it in the dehydrator. I cut them into 1/3″ strips and dried them at 105°F overnight. After 15 hours, about half of them were done; the other half needed somewhere between 4 to 6 additional hours. The flavor is a little odd. I sort of like them, but my husband thinks they taste like cardboard….coral cardboard. Some foods just don’t dehydrate well on their own—my attempts at strawberries and raspberries were equally weird. If I were to do it again, I think I’d blanch them in a sugar syrup first, and maybe dunk them in coconut. Because, you know, if you’re going to fall off the local foods wagon, why not go all the way?

I do love the idea of dried papaya. Any suggestions on how to make it better?

So let’s talk about it.

First, it’s true that, traditionally, food preservation was the province of people who grew their own food. Canning and freezing have long been the default choices of cash-poor farmers with lots of land and time on their hands. This description no longer fits most people who can, but it remains true that the cheapest way to preserve food is to grow it yourself.

Unless you’re living on a small-scale organic farm, though, this isn’t helpful advice. Fortunately, there are other options for city and suburban folks. In order of frugality, your best options are:

1) Pick your own. Prices at Mood’s, my favorite U-pick in South Jersey, range from $0.85 for peaches to $1.15 for blueberries. Hard to beat, but you do need time. And a car.

2) Buy seconds. “Seconds” are fruits or vegetables that aren’t quite perfect. You have to be careful—sometimes seconds are actively gross. Mostly, though, they’re perfectly serviceable. This photograph shows what someone at my local farmer’s market sold me when I asked her for $20 worth of seconds. She gave me about 57 pounds of slightly cracked (look carefully at the bowl on the left) but otherwise beautiful tomatoes—a steal at about $.40 a pound. If you don’t see any on display, ask. Often a farmer will have bushels of seconds stashed until a table or in a truck, just waiting for someone to ask for them. Other tips: show up early (beat the other canners!) and build a relationship.

3) Buy in bulk. If seconds aren’t an option, at least ask for a discount. To your left, check out the 50 ears of corn I lugged home last weekend. Ordinarily, corn sells at our market for the premium of $0.50 an ear. For a farm girl, this is borderline extortion. So, I simply asked: how much of a discount would you give me for 50 ears? The price dropped to $0.40/ear. Still pricey, but 20% less than advertised (and, incidentally, cheaper than at my grocery store). You can improve your odds by showing up toward the end of the market, especially on rainy days. Look around for whoever has lots of produce left, and make them an offer.

And remember, you don’t need to invest in fancy equipment. If you’ve already got a chest freezer, you’ll only need to invest in a solid stash of freezer bags. If you’d rather can, Mason jars and lids are all you’ll need. Once you’ve bought the jars and rings, you can reuse them indefinitely. You do need to buy new lids every time, but that will only put you back about $2 per dozen lids.

Now, what did I do with my 57 pounds of tomatoes and 50 ears of corn? A dozen pints of canned tomatoes, 9 pints of tomato sauce, 3 pints of roasted tomatoes, 6 half-pints and one pint of roasted tomato salsa, 6 pints of tomato-pepper salsa, 7 pints of corn relish, and about 15 quart bags of corn for the freezer. Not bad for $41.