really old style living?

Hugo_Rignold

Thanks Clare, yes I use a cider press, and a garden branch shredder to chop the apples up beforehand. I have tried various other methods of chopping them before but all too laborious. I got the shredder for £5 off Ebay and gave it a good clean and it works a dream . Does in ten minutes what used to take me an afternoon by hand.
You need to pasteurise the juice, but this is basically just a matter of bringing it to 190F for 5 mins then 10mins in the canner at 10lbs pressure.
If you are interested in canning I would hugely recommend either the "Ball blue book of preserving" or the "Us Dept of Agriculture complete guide to home canning and preserving". Both are acknowledged bibles for canning and have the timings for everything under the sun. None of it is rocket science but you want to be sure you have the right timings etc because botulism is not something to be messing with.
It is curiously addictive though, and there is something very heartwarming and 'Little House on the Prairie' about having shelves full of home canned foods in the larder.

ChocClare

Wow, what a brilliant idea with the branch shredder, hugo. We made cider one year and DH had his electric drill set up with a paint mixer attachment in the end - chopping the apples was DEFINITELY the worst bit! I have got the agriculture food and fisheries book, but other than that just the instructions which came with the canner - but I belong to various canning groups on yahoo which are brilliant and have instructions for everything - well worth a look if you are not already a member.

redlady_1

Hugo, I am curious, how do you bottle bolognaise please? This sounds right up my street!

NualaBuala

Hugo_Rignold wrote: »

Hi, I am new on here but just wanted to say a pressure canner is IMO one of the very best money-saving items one can (no pun intended) have. We bottle hundreds of jars a year of veg and fruit and juice - both stuff we grow ourselves and other people's gluts in the summer months. We put adverts up on freecycle in summer offering to pick people's surplus plums, apples etc and get a great response usually. We did enough apple juice this year to keep our kids quenched for the whole year.
You can even bottle meats. We buy discounted beef in the supermarket and rabbits 20 or 30 at a time from gamekeepers and make up huge batches of bolognaise which we then bottle. Saves money and loads of time as well in winter - just grab a jar and heat it up. No waiting for stuff to defrost or using up freezer space.
I absolute swear by the thing. The only hitch is getting a stock of canning jars in the first place as they are not cheap and not easy to find. On the continent they have them in supermarkets for pennies but here they are upwards of £2 a pop, unless you bulk buy. Once you have them though, with proper care they will last indefinitely. Only the lids need replacing every few years, and they are cheap.

Wow Hugo, you are thoroughly old style! :T Thanks for all the info, it all sounds great and I hope to follow in your footsteps some day. Grandma247 recommended I just get a small canner (since there is only me to cater for) but I am waiting until I move house and see what space there is. What a great idea asking on freecycle if you can collect surplus fruit, I'll bet there are loads of people who'd be only too delighted to share.

Mardatha - glad to see you are plotting and planning! And hope that flu is thoroughly banished soon.

redlady_1

NB - I never knew you did this canning thing too!!! Forgive me for sounding dense but I know nothing about it. What does it do? What do I need? Is it a long process or can some manic dodgy bird manage to fit in into her life? etc etc.

NualaBuala

redlady_1 wrote: »

NB - I never knew you did this canning thing too!!! Forgive me for sounding dense but I know nothing about it. What does it do? What do I need? Is it a long process or can some manic dodgy bird manage to fit in into her life? etc etc.

:rotfl: You're asking the wrong person!
I don't do it .... yet! But I'm so inpsired by what I read here that I want to give it a go and when Grandma247 said you can use canners as pressure cookers I thought aha, well I will get a canner instead then!
I reckon I've been watching too much Edwardian Farm and The Good Life!

ChocClare

redlady, the pressure canner is a bit like a pressure cooker only a) bigger and b) heats up to a much higher temperature. So basically, you make your food, put it in jars, bung it in the canner and "process" it (ie boil at super-high temperatures) for the requisite time. What you then effectively have is canned goods - like tinned food - only in jars. You can put it on your shelf at ambient temperature, and it will keep pretty much indefinitely.

If you think about how your grandma "bottled" fruit, it's a very similar process. The only difference is that fruit is acidic, and therefore all the nasty bugs are killed off by the acid in the fruit, so you don't need to heat them to super-high temperatures. Vegetables and meat, on the other hand, are not acidic, and therefore do need the super-heat to "keep". If you don't use the very high heats, you are at risk of botulism, which can be fatal - and the products do not smell or taste "off", so the only way to find out you've got it is when you start finding it difficult to breathe :eek:

So, not to put you off then!! :rotfl:For Bolognese sauce, you'd just make it as usual, put it in a "proper" jar and seal it, then place in the canner and process for the requisite amount of time.

I have a Presto 23 quart canner - I always say I could fit my daughter in it (and threatened to do so when she was younger) which my DH "swapped" for me from an American client of his. They are quite pricey, and the p&p is a killer, so you do need to want to do it to make it worthwhile! You can't buy them at all in this country unfortunately.

I haven't ever made bolognese sauce in mine, though I have seen plenty of recipes. I wonder, hugo, if you could tell us how the meat tastes? I have a horror of "tinned" meat, which I always think tastes like dogfood, so I've canned the tomato-based sauce sans meat - or am I wasting my time and it tastes delish?

redlady_1

CC - you are a flipping star!!! Thank you very much. As I spend my life rushing around and the freezer is now full, the jar idea is far better. Can you use kilner jars in them with the rubber seal? So this doesnt sound as if it takes any time at all really? Does boiling it in a preserving pan work? And do you have to cover the jars with water?

Um, shame I didnt know about this when I was married. Would have saved me a fortune to say "oh I am sorry darling, you cant breathe???" :rotfl::rotfl:

mardatha

Note to self ; - learn canning (which is really bottling apparently) ; learn how to build a log cabin in three hours with only a nailfile; and knit a ragrug out of old teabags.
Cant let these newcomers steal the show !!:lipsrseal:lipsrseal:lipsrseal
Pottering around the kitchen today, pressure cooking piles of veg and then (ahem) bagging and neatly writing the contents on the bags (;)) and putting neatly in new freezer.:D I feel like Ma Walton.
If they had one.

mardatha

Um, shame I didnt know about this when I was married. Would have saved me a fortune to say "oh I am sorry darling, you cant breathe???" :rotfl::rotfl:
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Ooooooo .... Hmmmmm... I do love this site. The handy things that I have learned on here...;););)