Last week, I wrote about my mother canning foods for the winter. As a young mother, I also canned foods for our winters. And, I used a pressure cooker – a more modern version than that of my mother. Mine did not have the wing-nut closures. Rather, it simply had a way of putting pressure on the rubber ring that was the seal between the lid and the base. Of course, it still had the pressure guage on top, as well as the pressure release valve and “petcock.”
Now, I know that there are much smaller pressure cookers for every-day use. They are not the huge canners that we used for preserving foods. We live, after all, at a higher elevation that makes it difficult to boil foods for a short time as can happen at a lower elevation. Pressure cookers speed the process of preparing certain foods for every-day meals. I have one of those. I don’t use it, these days, because I’m the only one for whom I need to prepare meals. Not much of a challenge to fix a meal for one.
Today, I want to talk about the planning for making jelly. And, again, it is so easy to go to the market and take a jar of jelly off of the store shelf. Jelly, preserves, jam, marmalade, conserve. These are all sweet foods that use fruit as a base. But, there are others.
Jelly, of course, does not have pieces of fruit embedded in the mixture. The juice of the fruit is the important thing here. After the fruit is washed and any stems have been removed, the fruit is submerged in water and cooked to a very soft stage to extract juice from the fruit.
One of our favorite jellies is chokecherry jelly. Jelly – not jam! First, you need to go out – somewhere – and pick the berries. You won’t find them in the grocery store or at a fruit market. Sometimes, when I watch my favorite TV channel (Hallmark), I wonder where they get their writers. Who would write “chokecherry jam” into a script. There is no such thing as chokecherry jam! The seeds of this fruit are so small and would be so irritating that they cannot possibly be used in a jam. In addition in a movie, when some character picks a chokecherry off of a bush and pretends to eat it, clearly, the writer knows nothing about this berry. They are so very bitter it is not possible or practical to try to eat a berry. No! No! No! Adding sugar to the juice of this berry is what makes this jelly so spectacular.
So many fruits can be made into the sweetness of jams and jellies. Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, peaches. Time was when jams were cooked and cooked and cooked to get the produce to turn into jam. Today, we have a wonderful product that speeds the process. There are very specific instructions to follow when using pectin – but, once followed exactly, the product is great. Just remember that the jars we use must be sterile, like the ones to hold the peaches.
A long time ago, I learned to use zucchini to make a preserve. I had the recipe from a book about how to make everything zucchini. The product was so very good – having bagels, cream cheese, and the zucchini preserves was a real treat.
When we create our jams, jellies, or preserves, we usually do not store them in quart jars. Rather, we use smaller jars – you know, the size you see on the grocer’s shelves. No need to put jams that include pectin into a pressure cooker or water bath. Instead, as soon as the product has “set,” we pour liquid paraffin (heated in a container on LOW heat) across the top of the mixture, sealing out the air, protecting the contents of the jar from bacteria. Then, when all is cooled – really cooled and the paraffin is set, we put a lid on the top of the small jar. This also helps to keep the food safe.
The thing about paraffin is this. Working with it is VERY HOT! AND – IT IS FLAMABLE. SO WHEN I SAY LOW HEAT – I MEAN LOW HEAT! And, just for your sanity, it needs it’s own container for heating/melting it on a low temperature on the stove – a container such as an old, stove-top coffee pot – so that it can be poured from the container into the waiting jars with jams or jellies.
Small jars of homemade jams and jellies make wonderful gifts. If you cover the lids with a colorful piece of cloth and a ribbon, the gift is really charming!
If you decide to try any of this “home canning,” you will probably need to find someone old enough to remember how they did it and learn from them.
Good luck!
Be Safe and Be Well.
The Cranky Crone
Thoughtful comments are always appreciated.
Leave a Reply