Any fellow canners out there?

I used to do a lot of freezing (I have 2 upright freezers), but was concerned with being off grid and not relying on electricity as much, so I started focusing on other methods that did not require as much power, resources and were less space involved, as well as the nutrient factor. I like to find out ancient or archaic methods, methods from other cultures for preservation. I am wanting to try a peruvian method of storing freeze dried potatoes this winter. Since we get freezing temps early, here in montana, I thought it might be a good method for our climate.

Rob, this will be our first time for kimchi, but I have several recipes that I am going to attempt this week, one is from my Wild Fermentation book. This book is very much into nutrition and living foods. I will let you know how it works if you are interested and if you want the recipe, I can post it for you now.

I would be very interested in the recipe if its not too much trouble. And, please let me know how it turns out for you. We aren't off the grid yet, but I really would like to live as though we will be off the grid at some point. You never know what kind of things will happen. Case in point, 4 or 5 major countries this past week had huge natural disasters, and the US is not immune to them either. Cheers!

Rob, that is partly the "what if" scenarios that cause me to want to know more of how to do things from the most basic of methods. If we had flooding like other countries have been having and lets even say that our area was spared the worst of the flooding, but the power was out, I could lose a good portion of what is in my freezer, or at least have a hell of a lot of work on my hands for several days trying to can, dehydrate and jerky what is in there.

Kimchi recipe

Timeframe: 1 week or longer

Ingredients: for 1 quart

sea salt
1 lb napa and or/ bok choy cabbage (I would use both)
1 daikon radish or a few red radishes
1-2 carrots
1-2 onions, can include leeks, scallions or shallots
3 or more cloves of garlic
3 or more hot red chillies, depending on your heat level
3 tbs fresh grated ginger root

Mix a brine of about 4 cups of water and 4 tbs of salt, stirred well. Coarsely chop cabbage, slice radhishes and carrots and let vegetables soak in brine, covered by a plate to keep vegetables submerged until soft, a few hours or overnight. Add other vegetables to the brine.

Prepare spices - grate ginger, chop garlic and onion, remove seeds from chilies. Kimchi can absorb a lot of spice. Mix spices into a paste.

Drain brine of vegetables, reserving brine. Taste to see if it needs salt or is tto salty. Rinse if too salty.

Mix vegetables with the spice paste thoroughly and stuff into a clean quart size jar. Pack it tightly into the jar, pressing down until brine rises. If necessary add a little of the reserve brine to submerge vegetables. Weight the vegetables down, or if you are checking it everyday, with clean fingers push it back down.

Ferment in your kitchen or other warm place. Taste the kimchi every other day. After a week of fermentation, when it tastes ripe, move it to the refrigerator. An alternative and more traditional method is to ferment kimchi more slowly and with more salt in a cool spot, such as a hole in the ground or a cellar.

I am starting mine this week, but a much larger batch. We eat a lot of kimchi. Have fun.

awesome, thanks very much!

This probably isn't the topic for it, but I'd love to hear more about alternative preservation methods. What is the peruvian method?

Thanks!

Feral, the process is called various names by the different cultures:chuno, cunta, and tunta. I like the idea of being able to store these for years and the light weight for transportation, less space for storage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu%C3%B1o

This bookmark is to the section on chuno in the The Oxford companion to food By Alan Davidson, Tom Jaine, pg. 186, http://books.google.com/books?id=JTr-ouCbL2AC&pg=PA186&lpg=PA186&dq=tunta+how+to+make&source=bl&ots=1000lf8bxi&sig=2kFsVkfNLKt5DY1TBKKu5xBLvEU&hl=en&ei=EOphTK3PL9KGnQfqld2ODw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CC8Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=tunta%20how%20to%20make&f=false

The South American table, pg 299, http://books.google.com/books?id=LlePAePLlqkC&pg=PA299&lpg=PA299&dq=chuno+how+to+make+potatoes&source=bl&ots=da00_hXuv0&sig=-hewETU3eoRuPc47Ctkf_f-Umc4&hl=en&ei=t-5hTOr-CqONnAfyitTNAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=chuno%20how%20to%20make%20potatoes&f=false

Very fascinating!
Thank you.

I'm surprised with all the canning going on that no one has mentioned canning dry beans; as in bean soup with ham !    I get a canners worth of jars set up and start filling them in order with:
about a half cup of diced ham chunks, a quarter of an onion,diced, some diced carrot, 1 1/4 cup of washed dry beans, and, if I've got it, a small piece of the skin from the ham(adds flavor). 

Then I fill the jars with a "boiling soup" I've made from all the trimmings from the whole ham,it's bone, onions,celery,carrots etc, and may have added some HAM flavored Boullion to it if I can find it. Some years it's scarce.    Pressure can the quarts for 90 mins. and you're done.  And it's soooo good on a freezing cold night, !  All I do is toss a pan of cornbread in the oven and pop the lid on a jar and I've got a dinner that tastes like it's been cooking all day !   The ham's not rubbery or anything like the earlier complaints and the beans LOOK and STAY WHOLE, until they hit your mouth and then they just melt ! Yum !  I TRY to keep about 6 jars put away for when the power goes out, (often) because they also heat up real easy over my alcohol stove; but it's not easy ! 

I love eating fresh sweet corn, when cobs are still young so i can eat the whole thing. I would love to eat young sweet corn cobs in winter. What i can do?

Plankl wrote:
I love eating fresh sweet corn, when cobs are still young so i can eat the whole thing. I would love to eat young sweet corn cobs in winter. What i can do?

can them, I'd add some lemon juice and use the USDA guidelines for acidic food tha seem to fit best with the size of them

7 year old thread.... anybody still canning?

I haven't done any so far this year as my pantry is still full from years past but I do need to can applesauce as my stock is getting low. Will do about 50 pints later this fall. Have about 500 pints and a few quarts, jars both empty and full.

I still can, mostly pressure canning. My favorite things to can are stocks, prepared meats, chicken soup base, spaghetti sauce, green beans and onions. My kids love pickles and salsa. I used to do a lot of jam, but now that I can't eat that, I just do blackberry jam for the kids.

I just started canning this year for the first time ever. So far we have done tomato paste and sauce, peach-applesauce and mixed berry-applesauce. All water bath, haven't purchased a pressure canner yet. I love my vintage squeezo and my apple peeler corer slicer machine. Any other equipment you can't do without?

Kalaina - a food mill with different size plates and an immersion blender come in handy.

Just wanted to add this link as I had not seen it mentioned.  Steam canning without elevated pressure can be used for certain types of high acid foods:  https://fyi.uwex.edu/safepreserving/2017/10/24/safe-preserving-using-a-steam-canner/

I started doing this with all jams and jellies....it doesn't seem to be much different from other methods but can reduce the amount of time and water used in the process.  Maybe of interest to some here....