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?

I kept a few aside for tacos—each one is just about exactly what you’d need for enough garnish for two hungry people—and decided to co-mingle the rest of them in a roasting pan with the brussel sprouts. If you’ve already got the oven on, this couldn’t be easier. The high heat brings out the cabbages’ secret sweetness.

Roasted Cabbage and Brussel Sprouts

About 1 pound of small red cabbages
About 1/2 pound of brussel sprouts
Salt
Olive oil

1) Preheat the oven to 425°F or whatever temperature is convenient.

2) Cut the brussel sprouts and small cabbages in half. If your cabbages are significantly larger than the brussel sprouts, cut them into fourths so everything will cook evenly. Douse everything in olive oil and some salt and arrange in a roasting pan.

3) Roast for about 25 minutes, stirring a few times to make sure nothing’s burning.

Enjoy!

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.

Update: It worked! Recipe and canning guidelines are here.

For those readers not familiar with it, kimchi is kind of Korean pickle subject to neary infinite variations. Traditionally it was made by groups of women and stored through the winter (sometimes underground) in clay pots. The kind that you’re most likely to find at your local Asian grocery or Korean restaurant will have some kind of Asian cabbage, garlic, some kind of hot pepper seasoning, and lots of salt. Like most traditional pickles, however, there are as many kinds of kimchi as people who make it. Sometimes it has daikon radish; sometimes it has anchovies. Some people use fish sauce; others use pine nuts.  As luck would have it, bok choy, with its big white stems and leafy greens, makes excellent kimchi.

I’m offering a recipe below loosely adapted from one in Linda Ziedrich’s wonderful Joy of Pickling, but I encourage you to experiment. Don’t mess with the proportion of salt, as you need a certain level of salinity to encourage the right kind of fermentation. Everything else, though, from the ingredients to the length of fermentation, is flexible. After six days my first batch was almost too pickle-y for my tastes, but the second batch came out absolutely perfect after only four days. Enjoy!

Bok Choy Kimchi

About  1 1/2 pounds bok choy (stems and leaves), cut into 2 inch squares
1 or 2 turnips, peeled and thinly sliced
1 to 2 T ginger, minced
1 to 2 T garlic, minced
6 scallions, cut into 2 inch pieces, then cut in half lengthwise
2 T hot or mild paprika (your choice: I liked it better hot)
6 cups water
4 1/2 T kosher salt (or 3 T pickling salt, if you have it)

1) Make your brine by dissolving the salt in water. Put the bok choy and the turnips in a large bowl and cover with brine. Weight the vegetables so that they stay submerged (see picture) and let sit for 12 to 24 hours.

2) Drain the vegetables, reserving the brine. Mix the remaining ingredients by hand, then stuff them into a large jar. I was able to make this batch fit into a regular-mouth quart mason jar, but you may need to use a bigger one, or use two, if you have more vegetables. Pour the brine over vegetables. Run a knife alongside the inside of the jar to release air bubbles and add more brine if needed. If you’re using a regular mouth jar and everything’s submerged up to the lid, just put the lid on. If you’re using a large jar and are having problems with things floating to the top, put a ziplock bag within the jar and fill it with brine. The goal is to prevent air from touching the vegetables.

3) Move the jar to a cool, dark place (ideally 68º: I used the basement) and let it sit for 3–6 days. After a day or two you should see bubbles rising to the surface. Taste it after a few days to see if it’s sour enough. When you’re happy with the pucker factor, stash it in your fridge, where it will keep for months (assuming you don’t eat it first).

Day 2: No added yeast: This time, I used the previous day’s blob as my starter. And lo! Beautiful bread:

And then, the next day, I took the starter and made tasty little sourdough hamburger buns:

The moral of the story is that you, too, can have amazing, pseudo-sourdough breads with very little effort, so long as you can stand the sight of an unwashed bowl and dough blob in your kitchen. By request, I’ve provided simplified instructions.

Jilly’s Hobo Bread, Simplified

1) When you make a batch of bread, pull off about 1/4 c of dough and throw it in your bowl. Add about 1/2 c of water and whatever flour is left on your counter to the bowl. Cover and let it sit overnight, or a day or two.

The night before or morning that you want bread:
2) Add about 2 1/2 c flour and 1 c of water to the bowl. Stir everything together and cover. Let it sit overnight or at least five hours. It should be quite large and bubbly.

3) Prepare a surface to work on by coating it with flour. Pour your dough onto the surface. If you’re planning on adding goodies, like herbs or nuts or seeds or cheese into the dough, remember to pull off the hunk of spare dough first. Work enough flour into it that you can handle the dough, then let it rest for about 15 minutes.

4) Shape the dough however you want. It’s not a terribly sturdy dough, so it will do better if it has support, like some sort of bowl or pan lined with a flour-lined shirt. It does have some spring, though, so you can definitely make rolls if you want. Let it rise about 2 hours.

5) A half hour before you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 475°, preferably with a cooking vessel, like a dutch oven or clay pot, inside. Then gently transfer the dough to the vessel and bake it until it’s done: generally about half an hour. Note that I baked the rolls dirctly on a cooking sheet, and they turned out just fine.

Now, the jar on the right is a true experiment, inspired by a recent post on Local Kitchen and another blog that I unfortunately have misplaced (if it’s yours, please speak up!). I’ve been told that you can make vinegar not only from fruit juices, but also from fruit scraps. So, last weekend when I made apple chutney, I saved all the peels and cores and stuck them in a giant jar with about a quart of filtered water. The first stage of fermentation (from fruit juice to alchohol) requires anerobic bacteria, so I’ve sealed the jar. Once it stops bubbling, I’ll assume that the alcohol production is done and will move to a cheesecloth cover, as the vinegar-producing bacteria—unlike the alcohol-producing bacteria—require air. This apparently may take many months, so stay tuned.