| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Fall Freezer Canning
One of the things I like about having a chest freezer, is being able to pop into it all the things I’m not ready to deal with, preservation-wise. It’s especially good for quantities too small to make up a recipe. Jelly for example. Over the summer I’ve frozen small quantities of fruits with the idea that I’d make a batch of mixed fruit jelly.
 |
| Frozen elderberries, grapes, and sand cherries |
Elderberries (what the birds left me), sand cherries (several handfuls from their first year of fruiting), tree cherries (pie ones, also from a first year of fruiting), grapes (from a vine planted years ago, not fruiting well because it now gets too much shade), and red raspberries, (oops, forgot I ate all those. Sorry.)
Also, these…
 |
| Bags of tomatoes in the freezer for canning |
These are tomatoes I’ve been saving to make okra gumbo.
I lived in Louisiana for a number of years, and fell in love with Cajun cooking. I always preferred filé gumbo, and have in fact canned that. Last year I had tons of okra and tomatoes, so I canned a batch of chicken okra gumbo. We loved it! This year I have plenty of chevon (goat meat) in the freezer, so I made and canned chevon okra gumbo.
 |
| Frozen tomatoes peel easliy |
I love the freezer method of peeling tomatoes, how-to details in this post. The okra I used was from the freezer too, leftovers from last year. I had plenty of tomatoes and chevon, and enough okra to can 14 quarts of gumbo.
 |
| Chevon okra gumbo. Ready to heat and serve with rice. |
The rest of the frozen tomatoes will be peeled and canned in chunks for soups.
Another thing I put in the freezer is all of our leftover homegrown chicken bones. From these I make bone broth.
 |
| Chicken bone broth (aka chicken stock) How-to, Here. I can quarts for soup, pints for cooking grains & making gravies. |
Basically, bone broth is made by adding an acid (vinegar or wine, for example) to the pot and simmering for a long time over low heat. I added leftover liquid from lacto-fermented pickles this time. The acid helps dissolve and release minerals from the bones for a nutritious soup or gravy stock.
Besides the odds & ends jelly I showed you above, I pull out all the previous year’s leftover frozen blueberries. These become blueberry jam.
 |
| Steaming hot blueberry jam |
I had enough blueberries to make six pints.
Fall freezer canning usually clears out the freezer pretty well. Then I defrost the freezer and I’m ready for a new fill.
What I love is that this is a time saver during the busiest part of summer harvest and canning. Plus it’s nice to do at least some of my canning in the fall, when the temperatures are a little cooler and I appreciate the heat from the stove. It’s nice to see my pantry shelves filled up again too. 
2012-11-12 07:45:30
Source: http://my5acredream.blogspot.com/2012/11/fall-freezer-canning.html
Source:
