Chutney's, pickles, sweets........

floyd

Chutneys will last for at least a year if properly potted and cooked with the right proportions of vinegar/sugar. Some will last alot longer but again it is all dependent on you doing everything correctly in the first place.

For example if your jars aren't properly sterilised or there is too much 'head space' at the top of the jar you could get mould/bacterial growth. The same can be said of low sugar jams, they are much more likely to spoil prematurely.

So I would say, yes you could make them in Feb but you aren't giving the recipient too much time to use them up.

Have you done any preserving before? I am a relative novice (started in August last year) but have so far managed to produce apple ginger jam, lemon marmalade, christmas chutney, courgette chutney, pickled onions, pickled red cabbage, mint jelly, blackcurrant jam and NONE have gone off or grown anything nasty (TOUCH WOOD) so go for it .

floyd

There are lots of threads on preserving on the Money Saving Old Style thread so have a look at some of those as thats where the experts live

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=349356

ELLA

Many Thanks for the above thread's there is lots to look at, I just hope it's an easy to make chutney's and pickles...... Don't want to give any mouldy food away!

Softstuff

I made tomato chutney and some cucumber pickles for Xmas 2007. Didn't have any chance for 2008, was too busy in the latter half of the year.

Will give it some thought.