Early Spring Canning, A Few Jars at a Time
Tue, May 11, 2010
Author: Liz Bomze (4 Articles)
Liz Bomze lives in Brookline, MA and works as the Associate Features Editor for Cook's Illustrated Magazine. In her free time, she freelances regularly for the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, the Improper Bostonian, and Martha's Vineyard Magazine; practices bread-baking and canning; takes photos; reads; and watches baseball.
Last summer I decided I wanted to learn how to can properly. I’d dabbled in jam-making a few times before—it’s just saucelike pie filling, I always figured—and made some quick bread and butter chips, but I hadn’t ventured much beyond raspberries and cucumbers, and the whole jar-boiling process was still a mystery to me.
Of course, after I took a Saturday morning crash course in canning with food writer and cookbook author Eugenia Bone and did a bit of reading, I realized the whole operation is no big deal. Canning isn’t just something you do when you have bushels of overripe produce on-hand and a full day to spend stirring the pot; it’s perfectly reasonable—in fact, extremely practical—to put up just a few jars at a time. (Bone said she often cans while making dinner; after all, you’re already standing at the stove.)
Unless your backyard crop is busting at the seams or you have plans to go fruit picking, it’s nice to pick up just enough in-season produce that you don’t often get a chance to work with to generate a few jars, and do some experimenting. At the very least, you’ll end up with a terrific stock of handmade host/hostess gifts that are way cooler than that scented candle you keep around for emergencies.
In a Pickle
At this time of year, my produce of choice turned out to be rhubarb and ramps. The wild baby leeks don’t come cheap—between $12-$14/pound this season in my local markets—but a friend of mine had pickled some for a Kentucky Derby party last weekend, and I just had to make a batch for myself. She kindly shared her recipe—a riff on a Tom Colicchio brine, she said—which involved boiling a 1:1 ratio of white wine vinegar to water, ½ cup sugar, 1 T kosher salt, and small sprinkles of coriander, mustard, and fennel seeds; pink, black, and Sichuan peppercorns; and a bay leaf. The ramps should be trimmed and thoroughly washed; plunging them into a bowl of cold water works well, especially if you gently peel back the layers to release the bits of grit and dirt.
The recipe also suggests blanching and shocking them before pickling, which cooks them just a little and preserves their bright grassy color. The last step is easy: Pack the ramps into a mason jar and pour the hot brine over to cover. I didn’t actually buy enough to fill the tall jars I have, so these will be refrigerator pickles. No matter. They won’t last that long anyway. (Note: They’re great with really fresh hard-boiled eggs.)
Jammin’
As for the rhubarb, I get a little giddy when the first crimson-blushed, celerylike stalks show up in the market, and not just because I find odd satisfaction in slicing through the crisp, snappy stems, or because I have abnormal cravings for all things sour (Ever try munching on a piece of raw rhubarb? It’s more bracing than espresso beans and doesn’t leave that stale aftertaste on your tongue).
Rhubarb is arguably better for jams than it is for pies or tarts because it breaks down quickly, contains more than enough water (meaning you don’t have to add any to help it thin out), and combines well with just about any other fruit you want to add. Last year I used raspberries, this time I went with blackberries; their flavor is punchy and they dye the rhubarb a deeper shade of shocking pink.
Once the fruit is washed and sliced, the stove does the rest: Toss the rhubarb with a generous amount of sugar and heat it, stirring occasionally, until the fibers break down and the sugar dissolves; shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to soften and then another 10 or so to turn thick and jammy. I usually add the berries when the rhubarb is about 75 percent cooked down, taste for sweetness, and finish the lot with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice; even tart jams can use a little brightening, I think.
Watching the Pot Boil
Meanwhile, I have a tall stockpot that now gets more use as my jar-boiling vessel than anything else. The canning rules are few and simple: Boil enough water to cover the jars by at least 1 inch; fill each jar up to its neck and make sure no drips run down the sides (a funnel comes in handy here); center the lid over the mouth of the jar and screw on the ring until it’s just beginning to tighten—be sure to leave it loose enough so that air can escape; boil for about 10 minutes; and carefully remove them from the water to a cooling rack (People with steady hands and really sturdy tongs might be able to get away without a jar lifter, but I think it’s an essential tool for plucking the slippery jars from the boiling water without burning yourself).
Voilà, you’re done. The new jars joined the small crop accumulating on my kitchen mantle: pickled fennel, bread and butters, garlicky dills, winter fruit chutney, nectarine-plum-raspberry sauce, and apple-raspberry sauce. I’d say canning’s as easy as pie—but, really, it’s much simpler than that.
Tags: Liz Bomze
Hey, great article. Love the pictures!
Two questions:
How sweet should the mash taste when hot compared to how I want the final product?
And I’m a little confused with the jar-boiling process. So the water outside the jar should be an inch tall, and the water inside the jar should be up to the neck?
Hey! Thanks. Good questions.
I tend to taste the jam frequently as it cools (just for fun, mostly), and I adjust sweetness as needed. I think it’s a personal preference; it should be pretty close to done, but I always err on the tart side, since you can always add more sugar later (preferably while it’s still warm so the sugar can dissolve). Then tasting it again at room temp. is a good idea, too.
Jar-boiling: Yup, once the jars are in the pot, they should be covered by at least 1 inch of water. Inside the jar, the jam should come almost up to the top–where the jar has a bottom ring of glass at its neck, if that makes sense–and not have any drips around the edges. Also, it’s a good idea to try and work out any air bubbles in the jar. Take a chopstick or skewer and stir it around in the jam for a sec before putting the lid on.
Thanks! This helps. I actually hadn’t fully realized that you boil them with the stuff already inside. I thought we were boiling them with just water inside, then adding the mash. But of course this makes perfect sense. A few more questions:
Doesn’t the chopstick add bacteria to the mix, or does that not matter?
Do you add any salt at all to your sweet preserves?
Any idea how to do this as a way of preserving pasta sauce? I’m gonna have a ton of tomatoes all coming in at the same time this year. Do I just do it the same way as the jams?
Any concerns about the BPA in the lids of Ball jars?
I wondered that about the chopsticks myself, but it was something that Eugenia Bone suggested, so I took it at face value. I actually don’t have chopsticks lying around, so I tend to use a clean metal spoon or metal skewer, and sometimes I just tap the filled jar on the counter a few times. Seems to help.
I do add a pinch of salt most of the time, though I’ve definitely forgotten to do it before and the jams have come out fine.
In the canning class I took with Bone, we did can fresh tomatoes. An important thing to consider when canning is the acidity of the product; foods like pickles are plenty acidic enough to can safely. Tomatoes, she said, are right on the cusp of acidity for safe water-bath canning. (As I understand it, pressure canning, which requires a special pressure canning machine, seals the jar more thoroughly, and is necessary for very low-acid foods like eggplant, fish, etc.) Just to make sure there’s enough acid in the mix, she recommends adding either 1/4 teaspoon powdered citric acid or 2 tablespoons lemon juice per pint of tomatoes. Actually, I’d recommend reading her blog in the Denver Post about canning tomatoes–lots of good info there about processing and canning them.
http://blogs.denverpost.com/preserved/2009/08/12/about-tomatoes/
According to various news reports I just read, most canning jar lids do have plastic lining that contains BPA. The only recommendation I found at the moment was to use glass-lidded jars from Weck (http://www.weckcanning.com/).
Wow! You make it sound so simple. That pickled ramp recipe sounds awesome. Have you ever used it with other vegetables?
A couple questions: Do you need to sterilize the jars in any way? I once read that you should boil the jars first. Is this necessary? Just to confirm, after the jam/mixture is made and filled into the jar, the lid is secured then the entire jar is placed in boiling water?
Thanks!
It’s definitely easier than I ever thought it would be. I haven’t tried that specific pickling brine with other veggies; most of the time I do something simpler with plain white vinegar, sugar, salt, and a few spices like peppercorns and mustard seeds.
I always thought you had to sterilize the jars, but Bone said that if you’re using brand new jars (which haven’t been dirtied in any way), it’s not necessary to boil them first. I think it is a good idea to boil used jars though.
You’ve got the formula down–make the jam, fill the jar, secure the lid, and place the whole thing in the boiling water. Let it boil about 10 minutes, then remove it to a cooling rack. At that point, you can tighten the ring around the lid, or remove it. I hadn’t realized this, but the ring is really on there to secure the lid during boiling, Bone said. After it’s sealed on, the ring isn’t really necessary. Enjoy!