Author: craig

Garden Update: December 2024

Posted on by craig

Well, we’ve finally reached Winter here in Winnipeg. As I’m writing this, the city is digging itself out of a week of moderate snow. (Moderate for Winnipeg, heavy for other parts of the world.) The active outdoor side of gardening is fully over until the spring thaw.

The transition from fall to winter was not ideal. There were several days where it was abnormally warm, and when we had a shift to cold, we knew it wouldn’t stay long.

Because of that, we didn’t plant our garlic. It normally goes in the ground at the end of fall, when it’s too cold for the cloves to sprout—they hibernate for the winter and then sprout when the warmer spring weather comes. But with the unpredictable fall, we knew if we planted them too early and then had some warm days, the garlic might sprout and the crop would be ruined for next year. And by the time we were sure we’d fully transitioned to winter, the ground was too solid to do the planting.

So… we’ll plant the garlic in the spring.

Planting in the spring is an equally valid way to do it. For us, though, we like planting in the fall so it’s one less thing to do in the spring—and fall planting means the garlic is one of the first crops to sprout and show life in the garden. It’ll be an interesting experiment to see if spring planting produces different results than fall planting.

Preserving projects still to come

This year was easily our biggest haul. I still haven’t done all the math on the weights and approximate grocery store value, but I plan to wrap that up before the end of the year. Despite not knowing those numbers, the visual evidence alone proves that we’ve outdone previous records. We have three deep freezers full, two fridge-freezers full, the storage room is packed with canned goods, and we’ve got loads of potatoes and squash.

There are a few preserving things still to be done. The vegetables that do well in cold storage usually start to spoil around January or February, so those need to be taken care of soon.

These include:

  • Onions, which I’m going to preserve as French onion soup, balsamic onion jam, and pickled onions, as well as leaving a handful in storage for dinner use in the hopes that we use them before they go bad.
  • Garlic, which I’ll preserve as pickled garlic, while also leaving a bunch for dinner use. We usually use our garlic harvest to plant the next one (in the fall), but I’m not sure if this garlic will last till May since we’re doing spring planting this time, so we’ll try throwing them in the freezer over winter and see if the simulates outdoor winter for them.
  • Potatoes, which we had a smaller harvest of and have given a lot away, but there are still lots left. We’re looking at boiling, mashing, and freezing them. They’re not the greatest when reheated (and with a ton of butter added), but it’s preferable to letting them go bad. We had plans of using potatoes in a lot of dinner dishes in the fall, but with how our busy schedules turned out, we had very few dinners at home, so we ate very few.
  • Squash, which we typically peel, chop, and freeze, and we’ll do that again this year.
  • Popcorn, which just needs to be stripped from the cob and stored in an airtight jar.
While the food storage room still needs some tidying, it is packed with food. The potatoes are kept in a darker room, and the freezers are in other rooms.

Maintaining this blog in winter

I have to admit, keeping up with posting on this blog is a bit of a challenge when I’m not in the middle of six different food projects on any given day. Winter is a time of relaxing and enjoying the harvest we had.

However, over the winter, you’ll likely see blog posts about wine making and perhaps some more about bread making.

I’ve got six wines on the go right now—pea pod, rosemary, beet, rhubarb, jalapeño, and grape—and a few more waiting to be started when the wine making jars are emptied (namely cranberry, corncob, and cherry).

Other winter projects

I have it on my lengthy to-do list to write a preserving cookbook. I’m hoping to hammer through that in the coming months and get it out and published. So a lot of my winter will likely be writing out recipes, some of which will also appear here.

After that, though I might not get it done this winter, is a wine making cookbook. One of my favourite projects from the garden is turning food into wine and the results are often quite spectacular and tasty.

A new logo

With the help of my bestie, Cali, I’ve created a new logo for Urban Homesteading.

This new logo features a preserving jar, a handful of fruits and veggies (though, admittedly, I don’t preserve bananas), and a retro hipster style to it. I really love this logo and I hope you do too.

Until next month…

Well, that about brings me to the end of this garden update—while I’m still busy with garden-related stuff, it’s quite a bit more relaxed than in the height of it. While I take it easy for the next few months, I’m already looking forward to diving head-first back into it in the spring.

How to Can Chicken (Raw Pack Method)

Posted on by craig

I’m sure many of you had a reaction when reading the title “How to Can Chicken”.

For many folks, I’m sure you’re picturing something rubbery, tasteless (or weird tasting), and gelatinous. You’re probably picturing what canned meat from the grocery store looks like.

Canning chicken at home is quite different—and quite good.

Like any frugal millennial, I buy the clearance chicken. I look for the big family size trays of chicken that are on their last sell-by date that the store marks down to 50%. It’s even better if chicken happens to be on sale that week in addition to the 50% markdown, usually resulting in about a 75% discount off normal prices.

In the past, I’d go home, portion the chicken out into little baggies, and throw them all in the freezer. When I needed a chicken breast for dinner, I’d pull out the little baggie and thaw it. Or if I forgot to thaw it, which happened more often than not, I’d force a knife through the frozen chicken to dice it up and then throw it in the pan to cook it.

But as we got more and more into gardening and our freezer space became increasingly limited, it became quite a problem to store all this frozen chicken. And when I finally got a pressure canner, I had opened myself up to other options for food storage by canning chicken. I usually buy the occasional try of chicken I see on sale and throw it in the freezer until I either run out of freezer space or run out of canned chicken, then make it a project to can some more.

Canning chicken is remarkably easy with the proper equipment (namely, a pressure canner), and the result is a fully cooked jar of chicken that’s been marinating in its own juices, ready to throw into the pan for a quick and easy dinner.

While preserving chicken through canning was born out of necessity, it’s quickly become a preference. I only handle raw chicken once while canning them, dinner never takes more than 15 minutes to throw together, and I always have it on hand for when I need it.

The right supplies

While both chicken breasts and chicken thighs are suitable for canning, I’ve seen a handful of folks comment that canned chicken breast is somewhat lacking in flavour, but chicken thighs retain their flavour. As a result, I’ve always canned chicken thighs. Plus, chicken thighs are cheaper and I already mentioned I’m a frugal millennial.

There are also recipes for canning larger pieces of chicken with bones, if you happen to come into whole chickens that need to be preserved.

Beyond the meat, you’ll need canning jars, with lids and rings. My husband and I are not big meat eaters, so we find a half pint / one cup jar of chicken works well for the two of us. But if you’re bigger meat eaters or have a bigger family to feed, you can also can these in pint / two cup jars or quart / one litre jars.

You will need a pressure canner and there is no alternative. Meat cannot be canned in a water bath canner, despite what some may say. Water bath canners do not reach a high enough temperature to kill of botulism or other potentially harmful stuff; rebel canners will often say to boil jars of meat extra long, perhaps a few hours, but that doesn’t change the fact that it does not get hot enough to kill off potentially-deadly botulism. Also, a pressure cooker cannot be used in place of a pressure canner, as the pressure is not as tightly regulated.

If you’re new to pressure canning, this Canning 101 post should get you started. Canning chicken is quite an easy starter recipe.

How to can chicken

You can either hot pack or raw pack chicken. I quite like the raw pack method because there are fewer steps involved. (This recipe is only for the raw pack method of boneless skinless chicken; you are able to can chicken with bones but the process is a little different.)

To start, ensure your chicken is fully thawed. If any parts are frozen, it may prevent the jars from reaching the full necessary temperature. Cut the chicken into one-inch cubes or smaller, trimming off any fat and gristle.

Pack the chicken into jars, leaving a one-and-a-quarter-inch headspace. If you would like, you can also add water or chicken broth, keeping to that one-and-a-quarter-inch headspace. I generally do not, because the chicken releases juices to fill the jar.

Also optional, top off each jar with a bit of salt. If you’re watching your salt, you can definitely skip this. However, adding a bit of salt will help with the flavour of the final product.

When the chicken is in the jars, wipe the rims with a paper towel wetted with vinegar. Then screw on the two part lids to fingertip tightness.

Process in a pressure canner, as per your pressure canner’s directions. For pints and smaller, process for 75 minutes. For quart sizes, process for 90 minutes.

Once canner has depressurized and it is safe to open, as per your canner’s instructions, transfer jars to a thick towel on a counter or table and allow to fully cool overnight. In the morning, check that the jars have sealed (with a depressed lid); sealed jars can be stored for about a year. If any jars did not seal, store them in the fridge and use them promptly.

How to use canned chicken

I find canned chicken a great on-hand dinner solution. I cook up the veggies and sauce—or whatever it is I’m making—and then dump in a jar of canned chicken. It usually comes out as a clump, so I have to gently break it up with a spoon, fork, or spatula. However, you’ll want to be gentle with it because it is so tender it will completely fall apart like finely shredded chicken.

It’s perfect for those evenings where I want to make dinner at home but don’t have energy for anything fancy—just throw it in the pan with other ingredients and it’s good to go!

How to Can Chicken (Raw Pack Method)

Canning chicken is a great way to not only preserve chicken for long term storage, but it means you have fully cooked chicken on hand for quick and easy dinners.
5 from 1 vote
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 45 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour 15 minutes

Equipment

  • Pressure Canner
  • Mason Jars with Rings and Lids

Ingredients
  

  • Boneless, Skinless Chicken
  • Salt (Optional)

Instructions
 

  • If chicken was frozen, ensure it's fully thawed before beginning. Trim excess fat and cut chicken into one-inch cubes or smaller.
  • Put chicken in jars (quart size or smaller), leaving 1¼" headspace. Add salt to each jar (¼ teaspoon for half pints, ½ teaspoon for pints, and 1 teaspoon for quarts).
  • Optional: You can add water or chicken broth up to the 1¼" headspace. I generally do not do this. The chicken will release its own juices in the canning process.
  • Wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with vinegar. Attach lids and rings and screw to fingertip tightness.
  • Process in a pressure canner, as per the canner directions:
    For pints and smaller: 75 minutes at 10 psi.
    For quarts: 90 minutes at 10 psi.
    Adjust for altitude if necessary.
Keyword how to can chicken

How to Dry Chamomile Flowers for Tea

Posted on by craig

This year in the garden has seen us expand into other areas beyond simply preserving vegetables and fruit. We’ve been working on proteins with some success—we got a ton of black beans but next to no mushrooms. But the other focus this year was juices and other drinks.

So far this year, we’ve done:

We’ve also done a handful of other things like start up a half dozen different types of wine, and in the past I’ve made a Bloody Mary mix for drinking too.

But of all of these, the exciting new project was chamomile.

Enjoying a calming cup

Chamomile is one of my favourite teas. I have to be careful about how much caffeine I consume because it can cause stomach issues, and that’s always presented a problem. Decaf coffee is still somewhat caffeinated, same with decaf tea, so they are both no-go when I need to limit caffeine, and most caffeine-free herbal teas just don’t appeal to me.

Strangely, chamomile has always been an exception. When I tried my first cup, I immediately fell in love with the flavour.

My husband likes to end each night with a mug of Sleepytime tea. I took a look at the ingredient list of the brand we buy and the first two items were mint and chamomile, so he now drinks a homemade variation on Sleepytime that comes right from the garden patch at the side of our house.

I find homegrown chamomile considerably stronger than storebought. Perhaps it’s because it’s fresher or because it’s been jostled around less, but whatever the reason, I have to be careful when I drink it because on the right day it can put me out like a light.

Growing chamomile

We had tried to grow chamomile from seed a few times but really gotten nowhere with it. We generally don’t have luck with starting seeds indoors, and then rarely have luck with direct planting flower seeds in the garden.

This past spring, though, I found chamomile at a local greenhouse and snapped up three seedlings.

Once they established in our garden, they were prolific. They grew to about knee height and were completely decked out with little white flowers with yellow centres. They seem to be a pretty easy-to-care-for plant; we water daily when it’s hot and dry and every other day when it’s a little milder out, and rarely did these plants look droopy.

Harvesting chamomile

When harvesting chamomile, you want the flower heads and not much else. While that’s a relatively easy task, it becomes difficult when you’re dealing with dozens or hundreds of flowers. And with chamomile, the more you harvest, the more it grows, so you do want to harvest as much as you can.

I got in the habit of going out every Saturday and picking everything that looked like a decent size. I tried different methods—scissors (way too laborious and unnecessary), plucking them individually (best way, but at a flower at a time it takes a long time), and eventually settled on my preferred method. If I “rake” my fingers through the flower and then gently press my fingers together, locking the flowers in my hand and then gently pull up, the stems snapped and the flowers remained in my hand. I would get some stem attached to the flowers still, but usually not much. If it was a long stem, I’d trim it off, but if it was shorter I’d just leave it.

Drying chamomile

Drying chamomile is particularly easy. You just lay the flowers out in a tray or dish and let it sit for seven to ten days.

My routine was to harvest on a Saturday and put them all in a baking dish and leave it on the counter. The next Saturday I’d harvest a new batch and fill a second dish, moving the first dish to the right, so I could keep track of which was newest and which was oldest. And on the third Saturday, I’d empty that first dish of dried flowers into an airtight jar and reuse that dish for that day’s harvest.

Letting them dry is a hands-off activity. Sometimes if the dish was particularly full, I’d shake it or stir it once or twice a day to ensure that air was circulating past all the flowers.

Making tea from dried chamomile

A good rule of thumb is to use a teaspoon of dried flowers for a cup of tea, adding more or less based on your preferences.

You can use a tea infuser for this. We also have a Brewt (identical to this), which is a handy device for looseleaf tea, and T-Sac teabags meant for looseleaf tea—both of these work great too.

Print
5 from 1 vote

How to Dry Chamomile Flowers for Tea

If you have a flowering chamomile plant, harvesting and drying the flowers is incredibly easy and yields a delicious and calming mug of chamomile tea.
Prep Time10 minutes
Course: Beverage
Keyword: Chamomile Tea

Equipment

  • Cookie sheet or baking dish

Materials

  • Chamomile Flowers

Instructions

  • Harvest chamomile flower heads.
  • Lay out flower heads on a cookie sheet or a baking dish in a thin layer. Place in a cool, dry spot.
  • Let sit for 7-10 days to fully dry.
  • Store dried flowers in an airtight container.
  • To enjoy, steep 1 teaspoon of flowers per cup of tea.

Garden Update: November 2024

Posted on by craig

While stuff has stopped growing in the garden for weeks now, we’re still busy wrapping up the tail end of the garden, harvest, and preserving season.

Everything has been pulled from the ground, but as of writing this, I’m drying rose hips for tea, figuring out what to do with the massive horseradish haul, and still have to finish off the popcorn.

There were several points in the last couple months where we were overwhelmed, especially when the harvest overlapped with Thanksgiving, five birthdays, and a handful of other social engagements, but we kept telling ourselves that come November it’s pretty much all over and we’ll be glad we did it.

And you know what? Even back on November 1st I was feeling that relief. I have a solid seven months ahead of me of just enjoying this food and not having to do any garden or preserving work.

End of season reflections

I’ve yet to do my annual tally of total weight harvested and the equivalent grocery value, but it’ll be interesting once I get to it. 2024 was a record year for things like carrots, beets, garlic, and rhubarb, but lower than average for corn, potatoes, and tomatoes. I’m not sure how the whole harvest balances out.

Some successes and new discoveries included:

  • Chamomile. I’d been wanting to grow this for years but finally found seedlings. The tea is fantastic so we will be upping our chamomile next year.
  • Rose hips. They’re currently in the dehydrator but I can’t wait to try them in tea. The Sleepytime Tea I buy is a mix of six or seven ingredients, but the first three are chamomile, mint, and rose (they use rosebuds, I’d use rose hips), so I’m hoping we come up with a blend pretty similar.
  • I love my steam juicer. Like, a lot. I use it frequently.

Some “better luck next time” experiences this year included:

  • Growing mushrooms were a flop. We did get some super tiny mushrooms but certainly not enough to make the effort worth it. However, we will try again next year. It often takes us a couple years to figure out how to make something really work, so maybe the same is true here.
  • The rainy and cold start to the season created all sorts of problems. Our chickpeas didn’t grow and we got next to no kidney beans. We did manage a record haul of black beans though!

Planning for next year

Even though we’re just winding down this year’s garden, we can’t help but think ahead to next year already.

In addition to expanding the chamomile mentioned above, we’ve got a few other changes in mind:

  • We really want mushrooms to work. Over the winter, I’ll reach out to my “mushroom guy” and run our experience past him and see if we can figure out what might’ve gone wrong this year and figure out a better strategy for 2025.
  • We like to rotate crops a bit. It’s good for the soil, but we also learn that certain produce grows better in different parts of our garden. It might be due to differences in sun, water retention in soil, soil quality, microorganisms, or a million other things. The big change is moving the corn. We usually plant it in this long stretch between our sidewalk and fence. Between the corn and the fence we usually have sunflowers. It seems sometimes the sunflowers grow fast and shade the corn, stunting their growth—and other times it seems the opposite with the corn stunting the sunflowers. Also, while the squirrel raids our whole garden, it lives in the tree right next to the corn, so maybe moving it away will reduce the damage it does.
  • Popcorn is also a problem that requires changing next year. The issue is that popcorn needs to completely dry on the stalk before it’s picked, which means it’s in the garden extra long and the squirrel will eventually raid it. In 2023, it devastated our entire popcorn patch in half a day. This year, we noticed it raiding the popcorn fairly early in, so my husband chopped all the popcorn down and hung the stalks upside down in the garage to let them dry. We thought we’d defeated the squirrel… only to later discover other rodents in the garage had eaten a good portion of our popcorn. We did get a harvest this year, but not as nice as back in 2022 before the local rodents discovered how tasty popcorn is. For 2025, the plan is to cut them down when we see the squirrel starting to pay attention, and then hang them upside down indoors where it’s rodent free.

Enjoying the fruits of our labour

All work aside, we now enter into my favourite time of year—enjoying our abundance.

We share our harvest with a handful of people—family, friends, and neighbours. With the overwhelming hauls of food we bring in, even giving out a considerable amount of food leaves more than enough for our family of two for a full year.

Ahead of us we have a year of tasty dinners—pasta with home canned pasta sauce, pesto dinners with frozen pesto sauce, curries with home canned butter chicken sauce, soups for lunches, vegetables to accompany every meal, fruit to throw in overnight oats, juices to keep us going, and country wines for sharing with guests.

How to Make Rhubarb Wine

Posted on by craig

When my husband and I started on our journey of urban homesteading, it was pretty basic. He wanted to grow a row of squash and a row of potatoes and all we had to do was figure out a place to store them.

As time went on, our garden grew more and more, to where it’s now a massive operation, especially given our small property. Last year we harvested over 600 kg / 1300 lbs of produce. A lot of that gets frozen, dehydrated, fermented, and canned, so we can enjoy it for months to come. It’s often just as the garden season is starting up that we’re finishing off what we had of last year’s harvest.

Still, though, as our harvest yield continues to skyrocket, we need to find more ways to use the food, partly because we can only eat so much of it in one year, but partly because we only have so much freezer space. While I still have to compile my spreadsheet of this year’s harvest to see if overall we’ve increased or decreased our yield, I do know we’ve hit a record for rhubarb, beets, and carrots, among other things.

Rhubarb is a particular challenge. The most common use for it is desserts like rhubarb crumble and rhubarb pie…and we’re not really dessert people.

That’s where country wines come in. If you’re brand new to wine-making, you might want to check out this rough guide to country wines that I put together a while back.

A starter wine

While I’d worked with a few store-bought wine kits before starting on my adventures in country wines, I wasn’t particularly experienced. I was grateful to receive wine-making equipment from one of my mom’s friends, so I had a lot of the tools I’d need, but you can start with just a big jar and nothing else. My rough guide talks about some of the equipment and some of the substitutions and what’s really necessary.

I can’t remember if dandelion wine or rhubarb wine was the first country wine I made. Either way, rhubarb was the first or second, back when I was quite new to this…and the recipe turned out great on the first try. I’ve made a tweak to it for a better result, which I’ll talk about later, but this is a great starter project for people exploring country wines.

What really draws me to country wines, though, is the price. Yes, there’s an investment in some equipment, but beyond that, the costs are minimal. Yeast, sugar, yeast nutrient, and tannin are all fairly cheap and the main ingredient—in this case, rhubarb—grows in our garden, so it’s free.

Even if you don’t have rhubarb in your garden, this recipe doesn’t take a lot, so if you head to a farmers market or the grocery store during rhubarb season, you might pick up what you need for a decent price. Or if you have a friend, family member, or colleague who has rhubarb in their garden, they’re probably eager to give you piles of the stuff because it can be quite productive.

How to make rhubarb wine

You’ll find the measurements of each ingredient in the recipe card at the bottom of this post. The recipe is measured for a one-gallon batch—which is the perfect size for a small rhubarb harvest, a small space to work in, or a first-time wine-maker. However, if you want to make a five-gallon batch, simply multiply all measurements by five.

After you clean and chop the rhubarb into small pieces—I usually strive for half-inch chunks—place this in the bottom of your fermentation vessel (the jar or container you’re making wine in), along with the sugar. Mix it well and let it sit covered in a dark spot for a few days to let the sugar draw all the juice out of the rhubarb.

(You can also chop and freeze the rhubarb and make the wine later. I don’t usually have the time to make wine in the height of garden season, so everything just gets frozen and then pulled out when I need it.)

After two to three days have passed and the sugar has pulled all the juice out, strain out the solid rhubarb and gently rinse with water—being sure to save this rinsewater. You’re washing off some of the last bits of sugar and juice, so you want to capture this because you’ll add it to the fermentation vessel. This can be done by placing the rhubarb in a wire mesh strainer over a large bowl and lightly rinsing with the sprayer attachment on the faucet—the rhubarb gets rinsed and that tasty water is collected in the bowl. Depending on the size of your bowl and strainer, you may need to do this in a few batches.

Add this rinsewater to the fermentation vessel, along with the yeast nutrient and tannin powder. If needed, fill the vessel with water to the one-gallon mark. Give everything a good stir, and then sprinkle half a package of wine yeast on top. If desired, you can bloom the yeast for a few minutes by letting it sit in a small cup of water before pouring into the wine. I don’t usually bloom the yeast first—I just dump it in—and I’ve had no issues nor seen any quality differences.

(Looking to cut costs or go even more rustic? Yeast nutrient can be replaced with a handful of raisins and tannin powder can be replaced with a cup of strong black / English breakfast tea cooled to room temperature.)

Cover it with a lid with an airlock and let it sit in a dark place at room temperature to ferment.

After two weeks, rack the wine (transfer the wine) to another fermentation vessel, leaving the sediment behind. Do this every two to three weeks until the wine is fully fermented (there are no more bubbles forming in the airlock). This should take about six weeks, but if you’re uncertain, you can leave it a few weeks longer.

When fermentation is finished, rack (transfer) the wine into wine bottles, cap, and store. Rhubarb wine can be drunk right away, but it tastes better the longer it sits. I usually put aside a few bottles in the back of a cupboard and promptly forget about them, so when I rediscover them I have some nicely-aged rhubarb wine to enjoy.

A tastier recipe variation

Last year I bought a steam juicer. It’s a handy set of pots that extracts juice from fruits and vegetables. I was curious to try it with rhubarb wine—I’d juice the rhubarb and add the juice to the fermentation vessel with the sugar, water, and all other ingredients. I used the same recipe with the only change being I didn’t leave the sugar and whole rhubarb to sit for a few days.

The result is a much smoother feeling wine with a brighter taste. Plus it means I can skip the whole step of scooping out rhubarb and washing it, so it’s easier too.

I highly recommend this if you own a steam juicer or have some other method of juicing rhubarb. I talk a bit more about juicing rhubarb (and canning the juice) in this post.

A crowd pleaser

Rhubarb wine is easily one of my most popular country wines. It feels nostalgic and it tastes delicious, and for me it’s dirt cheap and extremely easy.

I’ve had a handful of people glare at the bottle very skeptically but then quickly learn they love it and finish off the bottle.

If you’re looking for a great starter wine, this is definitely the one!

Rhubarb Wine

An easy and tasty recipe for those new to country wines and those who are experienced but are looking for an old favourite.
5 from 2 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 30 minutes
Fermenting Time 45 days
Course Drinks
Cuisine wine

Equipment

  • One Gallon Fermentation Vessel with Airlock

Ingredients
  

  • 1 gallon Rhubarb, washed and chopped in small slices
  • 3 lbs Sugar
  • 2-3 quarts Water
  • ¼ tsp Tannin Powder (See notes)
  • 1 tsp Yeast Nutrient (See notes)
  • 1 packet Wine Yeast

Instructions
 

  • Wash and chop rhubarb into small slices and place in fermentation vessel or a large bowl or pot.
  • Cover with sugar and stir to coat and evenly distribute. Cover with a lid or tea towel secured with a rubber band and let sit for 2-3 days. The sugar will extract juice from the rhubarb. (See notes below for an alternative method if you have a steam juicer.)
  • After 2-3 days you should have a lot of juice. Separate juice from rhubarb chunks. If the juice is not already in the fermentation vessel, put in there. Lightly rinse rhubarb chunks and save the rinse water. Add the rinse water to the fermentation vessel. If needed, add water until you have about a gallon of liquid in the vessel.
  • Add tannin and yeast nutrient and stir until dissolved.
  • Sprinkle about half the packet of yeast on top. If desired, you could bloom the yeast in a small amount of water first.
  • Cover with a lid with an airlock and let sit at room temperature for about six weeks to ferment. Every two weeks or so, rack the wine (transfer the wine) to a new fermentation vessel to remove it from the sediment.
  • When fermentation has fully stopped (and it may take longer than six weeks), siphon the wine into wine bottles, cork, and store. Rhubarb wine can be enjoyed immediately, but flavour does improve with aging.

Notes

Tannin Powder can be replaced with a cup of strongly-brewed black tea (English Breakfast tea), cooled to room temperature.
Yeast Nutrient can be replaced with a small handful of raisins.
Alternative Method:
Instead of letting the sugar extract the juice from the rhubarb for 2-3 days, you can extract juice yourself. If you have a steam juicer or other method of extracting juice, you can do so and add the juice directly to the fermentation vessel, along with the sugar and all other ingredients. I find this method produces a smoother and more flavourful wine.
Keyword rhubarb wine

How to Can Rhubarb Juice

Posted on by craig

Every year we’re faced with the same problem with the produce that we freeze—how the heck are we going to fit it all in the freezer?

Until last year, our freezer space was limited to our fridge freezer (we have a side-by-side fridge/freezer, so it’s a bit more room than a top-only freezer), a big chest freezer at my mom’s place, and (for emergencies only) my mom’s fridge freezer. Every year we try to preserve more and more with the goal of providing a year’s worth of food, and to do that means having the space and equipment. And those three freezers simply weren’t enough.

So, late last summer we bought a smaller chest freezer for our place…and quickly filled it up and ran out of room. About a month or so later, we bought a second smaller chest freezer, which we keep at my mom’s place. That did the trick for last year!

This year, though, we were faced with a record rhubarb haul—115 pounds—which is something we normally store in the freezer. We have SO MUCH frozen rhubarb. The big chest freezer was entirely rhubarb and nothing else, and half our fridge freezer was also rhubarb. We also juice cucumbers and freeze the juice, which filled one of our small chest freezers to the brim. It was fine for a while, but now as the peppers, Brussels sprouts, carrots, and more cucumbers are coming in—all of which go in the freezer—we were faced with the question of if we need to buy yet another freezer.

I was determined not to spend that money, so I thought about what the key problem is.

It’s the rhubarb.

We needed to get some of it out of the freezer.

We had to leave some as frozen rhubarb for my step-dad who makes pies every summer (so he’ll use this summer’s rhubarb for pies when he’s back next summer), we use some for flavouring kombucha, and we have some extended family that want some bags of rhubarb. But, in all, those uses account for maybe a sixth of what we have.

So, I started juicing.

A big batch of that juice went straight into a bucket for some rhubarb wine, but the rest I canned.

Canning rhubarb juice is quite simple and safe; rhubarb is acidic enough on its own that nothing is needed to make it safe for canning. Most recipes call for some optional sugar to counter the tartness of rhubarb, but it’s optional.

So, over the course of two days, I canned about 35 pints (17.5 litres) of rhubarb juice. Now the next challenge is to see if we use all that juice over the coming year, to see if it’s a useful project. I have some ideas of how to use it—but those are at the end of the post!

Step one: Juice the rhubarb

There are two ways to juice rhubarb—both are just as effective, but one is far easier and quicker.

Last year I bought myself a steam juicer. It’s a handy contraption of three interlocking pots—the bottom one boils water, and the steam gets vented into the top pot where the fruit/veg is kept. The steam heats the fruit/veg and eventually the juice bursts from it, dripping and draining into the middle pot. The middle pot has a drain hose built into it to drain the juice.

To juice rhubarb using a steam juicer, simply set the pots up, fill the bottom one with water, fill the top one with chopped rhubarb (fresh or frozen), and turn it on and let it do its work. I find it takes about 45 minutes for the rhubarb to fully juice with a steam juicer.

In the absence of a steam juicer, you can juice rhubarb using a pot on the stove. To do that, simply put twelve cups of chopped rhubarb in a pot along with four cups of water (and you can use this 4:1 ratio for larger or smaller batches). Simmer it until the rhubarb breaks down and the liquid turns a bright pink; this takes about twenty minutes.

Pour the pot’s contents into a jelly bag and let the juice drip out into a bowl or pot below. Let it drain for at least two hours and do not squeeze or compress the bag, or else you’ll get solids coming through and making a cloudy juice. In the absence of a jelly bag, you could likely use a wire mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth. It may take 1-2 hours to fully drain.

Canning rhubarb juice

Rhubarb juice is acidic enough for canning straight as is, but most recipes suggest adding sugar to improve the taste and cute down on the tartness. Knowing what you’re going to use the juice for would help determine if you want to add sugar or not. If it’s for drinking, then I’d recommend adding sugar. But if you’re going to eventually use it for jelly or other recipes that call for rhubarb juice, I’d recommend not adding sugar since the recipe is counting on the juice to be free of added sugar.

I chose to go with no sugar since I didn’t know what my final usage of the juice would be. Besides, I could always add sugar when I open it if I need to.

Safely canning rhubarb juice relies on the juice going into the jars warm, so start by heating the juice on the stove, bringing it to a simmer. If you’re adding sugar, now’s the time to do so, and give it a good stir to ensure all the sugar dissolves.

When it’s thoroughly heated, transfer juice to canning jars, leaving a quarter inch headspace. Wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with vinegar and then seal the jar with two part canning lids, screwed to fingertip tight.

Process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes, with the ten minute timer starting once the pot is brought to a full boil. The pot must boil for the entire ten minutes. When the ten minutes is over, remove the pot from heat and let it sit for five minutes. Then carefully remove jars using a jar lifter and place them on a thick towel on a table or counter overnight to cool and seal. In the morning, check that jars have sealed (lids bend downward). If they’re sealed, they can be stored on a shelf for a year or more before being consumed; if any jars are not sealed, put these in the fridge and use them first.

Using rhubarb juice

There are a number of uses for rhubarb juice that come to mind:

  • Use juice to make rhubarb ginger gin using my recipe here. Just pour in rhubarb juice instead of chunks of rhubarb. I haven’t made this from juice yet, so you will need to experiment with how much juice to add. It’s best to start with less than you think you need since you can always add more juice, but you can’t remove juice if you put in too much. This recipe alteration also lets you reduce the sugar if you want a dryer gin, since you’re not relying on the sugar to draw the juice out of rhubarb.
  • Use juice to make rhubarb wine. Instead of letting the sugar and rhubarb sit, just use rhubarb juice and all other ingredients (including sugar) in the same proportions. I’ve found rhubarb wine made from juice rather than letting rhubarb and sugar sit results in a much smoother and more pleasant wine.
  • If you added sugar to your rhubarb juice, you could drink it as-is or mix it with other juices for a tasty blend.
  • Whip up a batch of rhubarb jelly.
  • Make a batch of rhubarb simple syrup—equal parts sugar and rhubarb juice—and use it for tasty cocktails and youth-friendly mocktails. We’ve also used rhubarb simple syrup in place of plain simple syrup for other cocktail and baking recipes.

Rhubarb Juice

Easy and tasty, canned rhubarb juice keeps the taste of summer fresh all year round.
5 from 2 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 45 minutes
Canning Time 10 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 10 minutes
Course Beverage
Cuisine American

Equipment

  • Steam Canner (Optional)
  • Water Bath Canner
  • Canning Jars and Lids (Pint size or smaller)

Ingredients
  

  • 12 cups Rhubarb, slice in small pieces
  • 1 cup Sugar (Optional)

Instructions
 

  • Juice the rhubarb.
    With a steam juicer:
    Load rhubarb into steam juicer and place on stove. It should take about 45 minutes for the rhubarb to fully juice. Make sure the pot at the bottom doesn't boil dry.
    Without a steam juicer:
    Place 12 cups of rhubarb and 4 cup of water in a pot. (Use this 4:1 ratio if you have more or less rhubarb.) Bring to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer; the rhubarb should break down in 10-15 minutes. Strain mixture using a wire mesh strainer or a jelly bag. Resist the temptation to squeeze the bag or press the rhubarb against the strainer as this will push solids through and you won't have a clear juice. If you leave it for 1-2 hours, it should fully drip through.
  • Transfer juice to a pot and bring to a simmer. Add sugar, if using, and stir until dissolved.
  • Transfer hot rhubarb juice to canning jars (pint size or smaller). Wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar. Screw on two-part canning lids to fingertip tightness.
  • Process in a water bath canner for ten minutes. (Put jars on rack in canner and fill canner with hot water until jars are submerged by at least an inch of water. Bring pot to a boil and start the ten minute timer when it's boiling. The canner must boil for the full ten minutes; if it stops, bring to a boil again and restart the timer.) When done, remove from heat and let sit for five minutes.
  • Transfer jars to a thick towel on a counter or table and let sit undisturbed overnight. In the morning check that jars have sealed (lids are curved downward). If they're sealed they can be stored for at least a year before using. If any did not seal, put these jars in the fridge and use them first.
Keyword rhubarb juice

Garden Update: October 2024

Posted on by craig

Things have been a bit quiet around the blog lately. That’s partly due to some employment changes (I took on a new job and am adjusting to new hours and roles, etc.), but it’s largely due to everything needing to be harvested all at once.

The last two weeks have been a canning bonanza.

First there was SO MANY TOMATOES. At this point we have a year’s worth of salsa, pasta sauce, butter chicken sauce, and crushed tomatoes, so we’re juicing the rest of it. And that takes quite a bit of work.

Looking ahead, I knew I’d need more freezer space, so I went about juicing a bunch of rhubarb and canning the juice.

I use a steam juicer for easy juicing of rhubarb, then can the juice.

And then there were the beets. Eighty-eight pounds of beets. I pickled most of them and pressure canned some in water.

While all this was going on I also set up a batch of jalapeño wine, juiced all our grapes for grape wine, set up rhubarb wine, and set up beet wine.

And while I was working away in the kitchen, John was outside harvesting well over a hundred pounds of squash, a couple hundred pounds of potatoes, and enough carrots and parsnips to feed an army.

And there is still more to go.

Preparing for winter

As we harvest our produce, we’re leaving the property as bare earth again. But there’s still a lot of work to do before things are finally down for the winter.

The most important is planting the garlic, which John will do toward the end of this month. He’ll insulate it with squash leaves and other garden greenery. The garlic will hibernate over winter and then be one of the first things to break through the soil in the spring.

While we didn’t get much of anything from our mushroom beds, we might try overwintering them with squash leaves too. If we can successfully do that, it’s possible the mushrooms will spring to life when the weather warms again next year. If we don’t see action, we’ll try again with new mushroom kits.

And once the urgent canning is done, likely in early November, we’ll turn to canning the less urgent things. We have a ton of dried beans to can in water so they’re ready for cooking. I might also make some pumpkin purée and stick it in the freezer. And as we near January, we’ll figure out strategies for using or preserving the squash and potatoes before they go bad (which usually happens around February).

The first step is to let the beans fully dry before storing them, so I’m leaving them in cookie sheets to dry without going mouldy.

Enjoying the fruits of labour

I have cursed out loud several times these past couple weeks at the record harvests we’ve brought in. (Squash was about the same and potatoes were a little less, but most other things far out-produced last year.)

But I know come December when it’s all truly and finally done that I will be glad we did it. We’ll have veggies for a full year, fruit for several months, juice for maybe eight or nine months, and proteins (beans) to supplement dinners for a full year.

We are overrun with jars filled with produce, but it’s a good thing. Once things calm down, we’ll work at moving everything to our storage room and organizing it all. For now, it’s sitting in crates in the kitchen.

Not only does this mean convenience—I have everything on hand and in the case of things like veggies in the freezer, they’re already peeled and chopped—but it saves a TON of money over the year through grocery savings. People keep telling me about the rising cost of produce at the store and that hasn’t hit me because we buy next to no produce.

And as the spring rolls around, I’ll be ready to do it all over again.

Photo dump

Here are some snaps I’ve taken of the wind-down of the garden.

We got a record haul of 88 pounds of beets. Our previous record was 55 pounds.
And some of those beets were massive.
It hasn’t been the greatest year for peppers, but the habaneros are starting to come in.
We harvested all of our tomatoes and put the plants in our compost. We’ve got four crates of green tomatoes that we’re leaving out to allow them to ripen. I also have some green tomato recipes that I’ll likely pull out once the rush of preserving is done and I can circle back to these.
I had a week off between jobs and literally canned about 150 jars. Most were pickled beets, some were pressure canned beets, and the rest was tomato juice and rhubarb juice.
Our potato harvest wasn’t so great this year. We got four half-filled Ikea bags, whereas we normally have four or five filled-to-the-brim Ikea bags. However, we always have way too many potatoes, so we’ll see if this ends up being a reasonable amount.
We had a nice haul of squash, ending up with about as much as we normally have. Most of it was butternut squash, a few pumpkins, and a handful of pumpkin squash (a green squash shaped like a pumpkin).
We like to let our pumpkins stay out until right before a frost—this lets them get nice and orange, but also doubles as Halloween and autumn decorations since we grow our pumpkins in the front yard.
On the left is grape wine and on the right is jalapeño wine. The grape vine in our yard had a label that said “red wine grapes”, so I’m quite excited to taste this. I made grape wine last year with a friend’s concord grapes and it tasted like spiked grape juice; I’m hoping this is more wine-like. For the jalapeño wine, this is completely new to me, but it’s supposed to be good!

How to Make Bread and Butter Pickles

Posted on by craig

I’ve heard it said that in every relationship, there’s one person who loves pickles and one person who hates pickles, and whenever they have burgers, the pickle-hater donates their pickles to the pickle-lover.

That’s certainly the case with me and my husband. I do not like pickles and he will gladly take my pickles so he can have double pickles on his burger. It happened last night, in fact.

But when you garden and you grow a ton of cucumbers, it’s hard to not pickle them. It’s easy to do, it uses up cucumbers, it looks pretty on the shelf, and it keeps one half of this relationship happy.

When I do up a batch of pickles, my favourite is bread and butter pickles. This is partly because this is the only and only type of pickle I find reasonably tasty—but please don’t fear, because I regularly get requests to make these pickles, so for pickle lovers these ones are amazingly tasty!

The other reason I like making these is because I find them much more visually appealing than other types of pickles. In addition to cucumber slices, bread and butter pickles also have slivered onions and spices like mustard seed and celery seed.

Preparing the cucumbers and onions

We have a habit of letting our cucumbers grow too large. We primarily use them for juicing, so larger cucumbers means more juice. For pickles, though, you want smaller cucumbers. Since these will be sliced cucumbers, though, it’s okay if they’re a little on the large side.

Start by slicing ten cups of cucumbers. Slices should be approximately 1/4 inch thick.

Then thinly slice or sliver four cups of onions. I usually cut my onion in eighths so the slices are not too long, but this can be personal preference. I aim for about 1/4 inch thickness on the slices so they match the cucumbers.

Toss the cucumbers and onions in a glass or non-reactive metal bowl with half a cup of canning or pickling salt. Mix everything around really well, then cover and let it sit on the counter for about two hours. The salt will draw some of the water out of the cucumbers and onions, as well as remove the bitterness that might be in the cucumbers.

After two hours, drain the cucumbers and onions and give them a good rinse to get as much salt off as you can.

Preparing the brine

The brine is a vinegar and sugar mixture with spices added. This is what will actually pickle and flavour the cucumbers.

In a large pot, combine three cups white vinegar, two cups granulated sugar, two tablespoons mustard seed, one teaspoon celery seed, and one teaspoon ground tumeric. I typically use the yellow mustard seeds you can buy in the spice section of the grocery store, but if you have access to brown or black mustard seeds, you can use these instead. In general, the darker the mustard seed, the more intense the flavour and heat, so if you like a spicier pickle, it might be worth your while to seek out darker mustard seeds. (We grow mustard in our garden and we get black seeds, so sometimes I will throw these in.)

Bring the brine to a boil and stir or whisk to ensure all sugar is dissolved.

Making the pickles

The next step is to add the drained and rinsed cucumbers and onions to the brine. Bring the mixture back to a boil, then remove the pickles from heat and transfer them to pint jars.

This can be quite messy, no matter how careful you’re being.

I use a slotted spoon and a canning funnel to divide the solids into five pint jars. The canning funnel helps me stop from spilling all over the place but it’s still somehow the messiest recipe I make. Once everything is evenly divided between the five jars, then use a ladle to add brine to the jars, bringing everything up to a half inch headspace.

Because of how the cucumbers layer in the jar, there’s a good chance that air bubbles are trapped. While it’s impossible to completely remove them, you do want to do your best. Using a bubble remover tool, a wooden chopstick, plastic cutlery, or any non-metal utensil, jostle the contents of the jar to remove bubbles. If the fluid level goes down, add more brine to bring it back up to a half inch headspace. If you run out of brine, you can add white vinegar.

Canning the pickles

Because I find this recipe to be oddly messy, you’ll want to take extra care to wipe the rims of the jars with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar. If there is any sugary brine left on the rim, it may prevent a proper seal.

Once the rims are cleaned, put on the two-part lid and screw to fingertip tightness.

Process in a boiling water canner for ten minutes.

If you’re newer to canning, this means to put them in a water bath canner and submerge with hot water until the water level is one to two inches above the top of the jars. Bring the water to a roiling boil and then start the ten minute timer. If the pot ever stops boiling, bring it back to a boil and restart the timer.

Remove from heat and let the pot sit for five minutes before carefully removing the jars with a jar lifter. Set them on a thick towel on a table or counter and let them rest overnight. In the morning, check to see that the lids have sealed (they bow downward). If they have, then they can sit on a shelf in a cool, dark place for approximately a year. They can sit longer, though quality (but not safety) can degrade after that. If any jars have not sealed, put them in the fridge and consume them first.

Bread and Butter Pickles

A sweet and savoury sliced pickle, perfect for sandwiches and burgers.
5 from 2 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Resting Time 2 hours
Course condiments
Cuisine American

Equipment

  • Water Bath Canner
  • 5 Pint Mason Jars

Ingredients
  

  • 10 cups Pickling Cucumbers, Sliced ¼ Inch Thick
  • 4 cups Onion, Sliced ¼ Inch Thick
  • ½ cup Canning or Pickling Salt
  • 3 cups White Vinegar
  • 2 cups White Sugar
  • 2 Tbsp Mustard Seed
  • 1 tsp Celery Seed
  • 1 tsp Ground Turmeric

Instructions
 

  • Combine cucumbers, onions, and salt in a large non-reactive bowl (glass or stainless steel). Mix until cucumbers and onion are fully coated. Let sit for two hours.
  • After two hours, drain the cucumber/onion mixture and rinse well to remove most of the salt.
  • In a large stainless steel pot, combine remaining ingredients and bring to a boil, ensuring sugar has dissolved. Add cucumbers and onions to the pot and return to a boil.
  • Remove from heat and start filling jars. Using a slotted spoon, scoop solids equally into five pint-size mason jars. Top with brine, bringing contents up to ½ inch headspace. De-bubble the jars with a wooden chopstick or plastic utensil. Top up with brine to return to ½ inch headspace. If you are short on brine, you can add white vinegar.
  • Wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with vinegar, then put on two-part lids and screw to fingertip tightness. Place in water bath canner and cover with hot water until jars are submerged by 1-2 inches of water. Process in canner for ten minutes; once the water starts boiling, start the ten minute timer. If at any point the water stops boiling, return to a boil and restart the ten minute timer.
  • When processing time is over, turn off heat and let canner sit for five minutes. Then, carefully using a jar lifter, remove jars from canner and place on a thick towel on a counter or table and let them sit undisturbed overnight.
  • In the morning, check to see that lids have sealed (they dip inward). If so, they can be stored on a shelf for up to a year; after which safety does not change, but quality may degrade. If any jars did not plea (they click when you press on them), store these jars in the fridge and consume them first.

Notes

If using quart jars, add 5 minutes to processing time.
Keyword bread and butter pickles

Garden Update: September 2024

Posted on by craig

While it seems this slow start to garden season this year delayed everything, it’s yet to be seen if it has an actual impact on harvest quantities. Things are coming in fast and heavy right now, but with the weather starting to cool and as we inch toward fall, the ripening might slow down and we might not see much more coming. The next few weeks will be crucial for stocking up this year’s haul—which provides next year’s food.

August harvests

While we’ve had a few things here and there that were ready early, like a few potatoes that needed to be harvested extra early and a couple bell peppers, here are the significant harvests this past month:

  • Corn, 28 cobs. This is down considerably from the 130 we had last year. However, we planted a significantly fewer corn than last year, and of what we planted, some stalks developed a fungal growth and several healthy cobs were stolen by the squirrel.
  • Cabbage, 2 heads. This is a new-to-us crop. I’m fermenting one right now to make sauerkraut and I gave the other one to my mom.
  • Garlic, 188 bulbs. This is a record haul for us. I’ve already dehydrated some to make garlic powder and with the rest I’m letting them cure so they store nicely in the pantry. I’ll likely pickle some.
  • Tomatoes, currently around 100 pounds, with lots more to go. I’m not sure if we’ll reach last year’s haul of 206 pounds. There are a lot of green tomatoes so we’ll still get a lot more, just not sure if it will be as much as last year.
  • Cucumber, currently around 60 pounds. There’s more coming, but I’m not sure how much. It’s not looking too promising for reaching last year’s haul of 173 pounds.

Likely coming this month are the massive hauls of our:

  • Black beans
  • Peppers (bell peppers and hot peppers)
  • Grapes
  • Onions
  • Beets
  • Carrots
  • Parsnips

And in early October before it gets too cold and wet we’ll harvest our squash, potatoes, and popcorn.

The salsa experiment

For the last several years I’ve been canning a very tasty salsa using a premade salsa mix intended for canning. You chop the tomatoes and throw them in a pot with the salsa mix and vinegar, cook it a bit, and then can it. It was super easy and delicious. But that salsa mix has been discontinued!

This year I need to find a new salsa recipe, but I’ve always found salsa recipes intimidating. The ones I’ve seen seem to require several different types of hot peppers and a whole list of spices. But I don’t want to go shopping for ingredients; I just want to pull them from my garden. I did some digging and found three easy recipes to try. I’ve canned them all up and will soon have a taste test with some family or friends to determine which is my new salsa recipe going forward.

Here’s what I’ve put together this year (so far):

  • Tomato and corn salsa. I made this with cherry tomatoes, so it’ll hopefully be a bit sweet, and it has homegrown corn and a couple homegrown jalapeño peppers. I’m hoping it has a nice flavour to it and it isn’t too spicy.
  • Tomato and jalapeño salsa. This is similar to the above recipe except it has no corn and about ten times the number of jalapeño peppers! This will likely be very spicy.
  • My Bernardin Complete Book of Home Preserving (which, for US folks, I believe is the exact same as the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving) has a roasted tomato salsa ranchera recipe and in the notes it mentions a Sicilian alternative where instead of using jalapeños you mix in chopped pickled banana peppers. I went with the Sicilian alternative and am really looking forward to trying this one! While the Sicilian variation is technically a relish (relishes and salsas are pretty much the same, but relishes are more acidic), I would use it as a salsa.

Lots of tea…

Our chamomile plants have stopped flowering for the year and we ended up with about one litre / one quart of flowers. These make excellent chamomile tea! Next year we will plant a lot more of these flowers so we get a year’s supply, since we expect this litre of dried flowers to last only for two or three months.

We’re also working on dehydrating our mint and saving that for tea. We’re currently at 3.5 litres with a LOT more to go!

Building up the pantry

Earlier this year I posted a photo of my food storage room and its bare shelves. These are starting to fill up again. Around that time, our freezers were mostly empty too, and now everything is packed to the brim.

I’m really looking forward to when the end of October rolls around and all of the processing is done, and we’ve got packed shelves and stuffed freezers and we get to just spend eight months enjoying the fruits of our labour.

We want to be more strategic with our meal planning this year. Usually, the squash and potatoes start going bad around February or March and we rush to use as many as we can as soon as possible. This fall, we’re going to do meals like shepherd’s pie and dinners with roasted root vegetables, so we use much more of these up before we get to that new year rush to use them before they go bad.

August photo dump

The sunflowers along the side of our property have grown quite tall, with several of them higher than the eavestroughs on the house. We think this might be a record height, but we’ll know at the end of the season when my husband measures them.
These are two squash plants that have grown out of the compost bins after a couple seeds survived the process. Not only have they completely overtaken the work area just to the right of this pic, but they’ve climbed this twenty-foot tree (you can see squash leaves right at the top on all sides of the trees), but it’s also gone along the top of the fence to the left, going at least 1/3 of the way down our property.
We’ve had a grape vine for several years but never managed to harvest more than a handful of grapes. Last summer, my husband built a pergola for the grapes to climb on, which has resulted in the plant spreading out and making it easier for me to harvest grapes. This is maybe 1/4 or 1/3 of what’s on the plant. These are red wine grapes, so I’m looking forward to seeing how they taste as a wine. Harvesting these grapes is a little intimidating, though, because the wasps have discovered they love grapes and once they break into a few grapes, they all come swarming.
Another harvest pic. These tomatoes and jalapenos went into making salsa. The red bell peppers will likely be chopped and frozen, but if I get enough red bell peppers I’d like to try canning roasted red peppers.

How to Make Fermented Snap Peas

Posted on by craig

Snap peas or sugar snap peas are one of those “blink and you’ll miss them” kind of produce. While they’re not quite as quickly there-and-gone as things like cherries, they do have a relatively short span of time in which they produce peas, and it’s fairly difficult to maintain that freshness of snap peas for any length of time. Thus the culinary experience of munching on sugar snap peas with roasted garlic hummus is a treat for my family for a few weeks mid-summer.

For long-term storage of snap peas, I shell them and put the peas in a bag and then in the freezer. While we no longer have the whole shell to eat, we at least have peas to keep us stocked throughout the year. (This year I’m attempting pea pod wine with the discard shells—look for a potential update on that in the winter!)

There’s a recipe for preserving snap peas I’ve been eyeing for a while and have finally tried—fermented snap peas.

Fermentation is the process of fostering an environment for beneficial bacteria to take hold in a food and choke out any bad bacteria. Fermented foods can then be stored for quite some time in the fridge, sometimes as long as several months, depending on the specific fermented food.

Fermented foods are loaded with probiotics and eating these foods can contribute to a healthy gut microbiome, which can have a broad impact on general health, including boosting the immune system. Fermented foods can also be easier to digest, which may be of benefit to some folks, and which can also increase nutrient absorption.

But, really, when you find a good recipe, fermented foods can be just darn delicious. Every week I make a batch of kombucha, which is a fermented tea-based beverage, and we drink it regularly.

So when I finally came across this recipe for fermented peas, it checked off a long list of things I was looking for—a new food preservation project, a way to preserve snap peas beyond their small window, and a delicious new food.

The science and art of fermentation

I’ve spoken before about how fermentation is both a science and an art, and it was me eventually coming to understand that symbiosis that led me understand the appeal of fermentation. The science is fairly basic—you use a saltwater brine (or just salt in the case of some foods like cabbage) to create an environment conducive to beneficial bacteria. These bacteria will thrive and outcompete the bad bacteria. That’s the science of it.

The art is where things can get a bit creative. You can flavour your fermented foods in a million different ways. For these fermented snap peas, I threw in some red pepper flakes and a heavy dash of Italian seasoning for some hot Italian snap peas. However, I could have instead thrown in some dill and peppercorns, or some sliced garlic, or the spices used in bread and butter pickles to make bread and butter snap peas.

How to ferment snap peas

The process is pretty simple and mostly requires patience.

You will need a fermentation vessel. I have a cool little Mason Tops kit that has a straight-sided jar, a glass weight, and an airlock for the top. You can also make do with any jar, a Ziploc bag filled with water as a weight, and a loose-fitting lid to act as a makeshift airlock. And, really, given how the peas are packed tightly and unlikely to float, you could probably skip the weight altogether.

Once you’ve got your fermentation vessel selected, start by putting any spices and seasonings in the bottom of the vessel. Then cram the peas in there. You’ll likely want to put them vertically so it’s easier to fill the narrow gaps with pea pods. (If you just dump the peas in, they’re not likely to be tightly packed and the brine you add won’t cover your peas.)

Unfortunately, I forgot to take any photos of this process for this blog. 🙃

In a bowl, combine water and salt (quantities listed in the recipe card below) and stir until all the salt has dissolved. This is your brine for fermenting. Pour the brine over the peas and ensure they are fully covered by brine. If not, you may need to push the peas further down or make more brine to top it up.

Put the weight on top of the peas, close the jar, and let sit in a cool, dark place to ferment. Fermentation will take several days. (If you’re using a regular lid and not one with a built-in airlock / air release, you will want to ensure the lid is loose-fitting to prevent gas buildup. Still, you may want to briefly and very quickly open the lid once a day to vent gasses.)

You’ll know it’s fermenting because of the bubbles that form and rise to the top. After several days, the peas should be ready. There’s no real test of readiness for fermented foods and it’s sort of a “how does it taste” assessment. Fermentation with saltwater creates a vinegar, so the peas should taste pickled, but the degree of “pickle-ness” is up to you. Once you determine it’s ready you can remove the weight and store the jar in the fridge. It should last several months.

How to use fermented snap peas

It was recently pointed out to me that while my recipes sound tasty, some of them would benefit from a section on how to use them—so welcome to a brand new feature to my recipe pages!

There are a variety of ways to use fermented snap peas:

  • When I do a BBQ or a dinner for a group of people, my appetizer is usually a baked brie with crackers, and whatever random pickles and preserves I have in my fridge. So this would go great paired with a baked brie, pickled beets, and sugar-fermented blueberries or Saskatoons.
  • Depending on how you flavour them, they would go great as a side of topping for dinner. I made spicy pickled snap peas with cayenne pepper and Italian seasoning, so it would go great paired with a stir-fry (the spice is more prominent than the Italian seasoning). If you’re eating fermented foods for the beneficial probiotic bacteria, you’ll likely want to add the peas when serving rather than cooking them in the stir fry, since the heat may kill the probiotic bacteria.
  • Fermented snap peas would also make a wonderful addition to a packed lunch or a bento box, as a vegetable side with a bit of a kick.

Fermented Snap Peas

Fermenting is a great way to preserve snap peas for months beyond their season. Plus, they're tasty!
5 from 1 vote
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Prep Time 10 minutes
Fermentation 7 days
Course Appetizer

Equipment

  • Fermentation Vessel, with Weight and Airlock

Ingredients
  

  • 2 cups Water
  • 1 Tbsp Sea Salt
  • 2 cups Snap Peas
  • Seasonings, To Taste (see notes)

Instructions
 

  • Make the brine by combining water and salt, stirring until salt is dissolved.
  • Place seasonings in the bottom of the fermentation vessel. See notes for some ideas for seasonings.
  • Tightly pack peas into the fermentation vessel and cover with brine until peas are submerged. If peas are not submerged, you may need to pack them down tighter or add more brine. Putting the fermentation weight on top may push the peas down too.
  • Put the weight and lid on and store in a cool, dark place to allow peas to ferment. Check daily. You should see bubbles form after a few days; this is from fermentation.
  • Start tasting the peas after 5-7 days and then taste daily until desired fermentation has been reached. Once done, store peas in the fridge.

Notes

Spice options:
  • Spicy: 1 tsp red pepper flakes and 1tsp Italian seasoning
  • Garlicky: 1-2 garlic cloves, sliced, and 1 tsp peppercorns
  • Bread and Butter: 1 tsp mustard seeds, 1/4 tsp celery seeds, 1/4 tsp turmeric
Fermentation vessel:
If you don’t have a fermentation vessel you can use any large jar. In place of a weight, you can use a Ziplock bag filled with water or, if it fits, a small ramekin or other small dish. In place of an airlock lid, you can use a loose-fitting lid, but you may want to vent built-up gasses once per day, even if the lid is loose-fitting.
Keyword fermented snap peas, snap peas