Food Preservation: Water Bath Canning

      

    So one of the things I noticed in the series, was when Gus, AKA Sweet Tooth, hides under the stair cupboard. There are shelves with a few home canned foods. As you can see in the photo, it appears there is some banana peppers for sure, but the other two are a mystery. Which means, I am free to be as creative as I'd like. Food preservation would have been a definite skill to have in this scenario, as they are isolated in the middle of the woods. They would have had to have done this, to get through the winter.

    I've always wanted to try canning. My grandmother did it, my aunts did it, & even my mom did it, yet none of them ever took the time to show me how. So this seemed like a perfect excuse to give it a go. I know the easiest canning to do is "water bath" canning, Where you boil the lidded jar for a certain time & as it cools, it pulls the lid in, giving you the classic pop when you open it, making it shelf stable at room temperature. 

    They have special pots & racks that you can use, but I hated to spend a bunch of money on new stuff if I could go second hand. So, I checked out FB marketplace & found a lady selling a bunch of jars & had a couple pots as well. By the time I got to her house though, the pots were gone. As I was just too excited to wait, I just MacGyvered something together with stuff I already had. The idea is that the jars can't sit directly on the bottom of the pot. The rack raises them just slightly & some have handles attached to the rack/basket to make it easier to get the jars out. I had a pot & a strainer from a slightly smaller pot & some of the metal lid rings. So this is what I did...

    I placed the rings down first to raise the level of the strainer I put on top of those. Now I can fit 3-4 jars in at a time. While that may not seem like much, I've just been doing small batches anyway, as I am new & it's not like we are growing the food ourselves & trying to save our hard work. I'm just visiting farm stands or getting stuff from the store.

My first attempt was a maple apple butter, as I knew they had apples...

...& one of G.U.S.'s favorite things ever is drinking maple syrup, as you can see in the first photo. Pubba uses maple syrup as an incentive to get him to hide there. So a combo of the two was a must!

Crock Pot Spiced Maple Apple Butter

Ingredients:

• 7 large apples, peeled, cored and sliced - I used Winesap apples from a local farm. 
• 1 cup maple syrup
• ½ cup holiday spiced apple cider
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice, or juice of 1 lemon
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon ginger
• ½ teaspoon nutmeg
• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
• ¼ teaspoon ground mace
• ¼ teaspoon all-spice
• ¼ teaspoon cardamom

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• ¼ cup Crown Royal Vanilla whiskey or bourbon flavoring to taste
• 1 cup maple sugar or to taste

Instructions: 

• Place sliced apples into your crock pot. Add maple syrup, apple cider, lemon juice, vanilla, & all spices. Mix gently to combine. Cook on low, with the lid tightly secured for 8 hours.
• After 8 hours, use your immersion blender to puree the apple butter. If you don't have an immersion blender, use your regular blender and puree until smooth. 
• Return the apple butter to a medium sauce pan, add the Crown Royal Vanilla whiskey, & sweeten with the maple sugar to taste and cook for an additional 5-10 minutes on low, stirring often until you get the consistency you're looking for. If you did not peel your apples, Put the mixture through a mesh strainer or cheese cloth to remove any bits the immersion blender didn't catch.
• Cool and store apple butter in the refrigerator or freezer or follow the directions below for canning your apple butter.

Canning Maple Apple Butter:

• If you decide to can your apple butter, start by sterilizing your jars in boiling hot water. Carefully lower the jars, their lids and rims into boiling hot water for ten minutes and then allow the jars to cool on a tea towel (placing hot glass on your cold counter-top can shatter the jars.) and then dry them out.
• Ladle the warm apple butter into your canning jars, leaving a little bit (about ¼ inch) of room at the top of the jar. Wipe the jars off and then seal with the lid and rim.
• Submerge the filled jars in boiling water and process for 10 minutes.
• Remove the jars from the boiling water using tongs and allow to cool (on a tea towel) completely. The lids should be sealed tight and should not make a popping sound when you push down on them. 

Recipe adapted from: Maple & Thyme

NOTE: You can reuse jars & rims, but not lids. Used lids may not seal properly after use, so it's best to use new ones. Although, my fiance said his grandmother would place wax on the top of the jar. This seems like a way you could reuse lids, but I've not tested this to see if it would work yet.

Wanna try it? Get the printable recipe here.

    At some point I will be brave enough to try out the electric pressure canner/cooker I got second hand from a local lady on FB Marketplace recently. I'm thinking the next time I make the ORIGINAL pasta fagioli from O.G. (They changed the recipe awhile ago, so the only way I can get what I used to get, is to make it myself.) The recipe I have makes enough for an army, so it's the perfect test for me. 

    I looked into this canner before I contacted the seller & the main reason I wanted this, is because it has an auto shut-off feature. So, if I'm not doing great that day, I don't have to worry about being bound to the stove for a particular length of time. We'll see if it works out as well as I hope it does, but that's a post for another day.