Author: craig

Sourdough focaccia bread topped with rosemary, roasted garlic, and cherry tomatoes

How to Make Sourdough Focaccia Bread

Posted on by craig

My family is pretty big into movies. My husband and I watch movies at home every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and then every Tuesday (which is “cheap Tuesday” at the theatres here) we check out a new release with my mom. While we sometimes skip a day here and there, it works out to about 200 movies a year.

So when the Oscars comes around, it’s a big event for us. We all invite ourselves over to my sister’s place (because she’s the only one with cable to watch the telecast), and my husband makes a big dinner for Caesar salad, fettuccini Alfredo, and apple crumble, all made from scratch (even the Alfredo sauce and Caesar dressing).

Normally we buy a loaf of garlic bread from the grocery store to go with it—but I’ve been in a real baking mood lately and offered to make sourdough focaccia bread.

Slices of sourdough focaccia bread

Sourdough focaccia bread is easy to make if you have a healthy sourdough starter bubbling away, and the toppings are completely optional and customizable to your tastes and what you have on hand.

I ended up topping mine with herb salt (also known as butcher salt), roasted garlic, dehydrated rosemary, and (dehydrated and then rehydrated) cherry tomatoes.

It was soft and airy like you expect of focaccia, with the chewiness and tang of sourdough, and immensely tasty with the toppings I added. It immediately became a crowd pleaser.

How to make sourdough focaccia bread

The first thing you’ll need before even starting this recipe is a healthy, active sourdough starter.

An overflowing jar of sourdough starter

If you’re brand new to sourdough and don’t have a starter, I have a post here to help guide you through the steps of creating one. It takes about a week to get one going and your success will vary based on local climate conditions and a number of other factors. Your sourdough starter will likely get stronger as time goes on, provided you take good care of it, so your results with this recipe may be partly influenced by how old your starter is.

Step one: Make the dough

Start by adding 50-100 grams of sourdough starter to a bowl. I went with the full 100 grams because my starter can be a little slow to rise sometimes, especially in the winter (and I was making this in early March), so I figured extra starter would be better.

To the starter, add 10 grams of salt and 440 grams of water.

Stir to combine as best you can. A spatula will work well, but I sometimes opt for a fork.

Water, salt, and sourdough starter mixed together

Then add 512 grams of flour. As I outline in my post about sourdough starters, I’ve started doing a mix of whole wheat flour and white flour, as it works better in my local climate, so feel free to experiment with flour if you’re curious. If you’re not in Canada, you’ll likely want to use bread flour as it will likely give you better results. All-purpose flour in Canada is similar to bread flour, so I just use the standard all-purpose.

Mix in the flour with your spatula or fork until you get a rough and wet dough ball.

Wet sourdough dough

Step 2: Rest and fold (and rest again)

Cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let the dough ball rest for about a half hour.

Then do a “pinch and fold”. Grab a pinch of dough from the edge of the ball, pull it upward and toward the centre of the ball, folding it over. Go around the dough ball, doing this about 8-10 times. Try not to tear the dough as that’s not the goal.

Gently rub a splash of olive oil over the top of the dough. I have to confess that I used canola oil because it’s what I had on hand (and olive oil has become very expensive lately).

Oiled-up sourdough focaccia dough

Cover again with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let rest for 4 to 18 hours. Since it’s winter here, things are cool and dry, I went with the full 18 hours. What you’re ultimately looking for is for the dough to have doubled in size, so how long this takes will vary based on where you are and where you leave the dough. it might be tempting to put the dough in a warmer place like in an oven with the oven light on, but this might become too warm. Your best strategy is to do this at room temperature and just let it take how long it’s going to take. As a chef once told me, the key to making anything with sourdough really good is a “long, slow rise”.

Step three: Transfer dough to baking dish

Drizzle a few tablespoons of olive oil in a 9×13 baking dish. To make sure nothing would stick, I also gave the sides of the dish a spritz with some cooking spray.

Gently scoop the dough out of the bowl and into the dish. It will likely form an oval shape. Gently grab each side and fold toward the centre so you roughly have a rectangle. Flip the dough over to the seam side is down.

Sourdough focaccia dough resting in a baking dish

Rub the top of the dough with more oil, then cover again and let it rest for 4-6 hours.

Step four (optional): Prepare toppings

Focaccia can be made with just a generous sprinkle of salt over the top, but I wanted to make mine a little extra special, so I roasted a head of garlic in the air fryer until the cloves were soft and cooked, and I threw some dehydrated cherry tomatoes into water to plump them up a little bit.

Step five: Bake the sourdough focaccia bread

Heat oven to 425 F.

Rub some oil onto your hands and then press down on the dough to create dimples. Do this across the whole surface.

Sourdough focaccia with dimples pressed into it

Add toppings of your choice. At a minimum, you should add a generous sprinkle of sea salt / chunky / flaky salt. I used:

  • The garlic I roasted in the air fryer
  • Drained rehydrated cherry tomatoes
  • Dried rosemary
  • Butcher’s salt (a flaky/chunky salt with dried herbs mixed in)
Sourdough focaccia ready for the oven, with roasted garlic, cherry tomatoes, rosemary, and salt on top

Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown.

When ready, remove dish from oven and let cool for at least 20 minutes before slicing. If you cut into it while it’s hot, moisture could evaporate, so it’s best to let it cool even longer.

You should have an absolutely delicious sourdough focaccia bread that will impress anyone.

Sourdough focaccia fresh from the oven

Sourdough focaccia bread topped with rosemary, roasted garlic, and cherry tomatoes

Sourdough Focaccia Bread

Light and fluffy focaccia with the tang of sourdough, this easy to make recipe is a crowd-pleaser.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Resting Time 1 day
Course Appetizer
Cuisine bread, Italian

Ingredients
  

  • 50-100 g Bubbly and Active Sourdough Starter
  • 10 g Salt
  • 440 g Water
  • 512 g Flour (see note)
  • 3 Tbsp Olive Oil
  • Flaky salt and/or other toppings of your choice (cherry tomatoes, roasted garlic, rosemary, etc.)

Instructions
 

  • Add sourdough starter, water, and salt to a bowl. Mix with a spatula or fork until well blended.
  • Add flour and mix until a dough forms.
  • Cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let rest 30 minutes.
  • Do a "pinch and fold"—pinch the outer edge of the dough ball and fold it to the centre. Do this 8-10 times around the dough ball.
  • Gently rub the top of the dough ball with a splash of oil.
  • Cover and let rest 4-18 hours, until doubled in size.
  • Once doubled in size, drizzle about 2 Tbsp oil into a 9×13 baking dish. Optionally, you can spray or grease the sides of the dish to help prevent sticking.
  • Scoop dough into baking dish. It should form an oval. Fold the dough so it roughly looks like a rectangle and flip the dough so the seam side is down.
  • Cover and let rest 4-6 hours. During this time you could prep any optional toppings that need prepping, such as roasting garlic.
  • Heat oven to 425℉.
  • Rub oil on your hands and press down on the dough, creating dimples across the top. Sprinkle with flaky salt and add any toppings you wish.
  • Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown.
  • Let rest at least 20 minutes before slicing. If it's hot while slicing, moisture may evaporate, leaving a dryer, denser bread.

Notes

Note on flour:
If you’re in Canada, all-purpose flour should be fine. I opt to use a blend of about 20% whole wheat flour and 80% all-purpose flour.
If you’re outside of Canada, you will have better results using bread flour.
(Canada’s all-purpose flour is similar to bread flour in the rest of the world.)
Keyword focaccia bread, sourdough focaccia

How to Make Tofu From Black Beans

Posted on by craig

We’ve been having slightly warmer than usual weather lately and it has me already dreaming of our upcoming garden. But, despite this warm spell, the start of garden season is still a ways away, and harvest season is even further away. Plus, we still have a lot of last year’s harvest to work our way through.

My project this last month has been to do stuff with the dried beans. A few weeks ago I canned up some of our black beans so I have fully-cooked beans ready at a moment’s notice for dinners.

With that out of the way, I turned to a fun bean-related project—making tofu from black beans.

Black bean tofu chopped into cubes

Burmese tofu

Tofu as most people traditionally know it is made from soy beans in a process that is not easy to replicate at home. Burmese tofu, on the other hand, is slightly different and can easily be made at home with no special equipment other than a blender or food processor.

Burmese tofu is typically made from ground yellow split peas or chickpeas, but the process works with pretty much any type of bean or lentil.

Burmese tofu is much softer than soy tofu. So when you’re including it in your meal, you have to be extremely gentle with it when frying it because it will fall apart. This softness also excludes any recipe that involves pressing tofu or treating it with anything other than gentleness. This is something I’ve struggled with, but I’ve discovered a hack with the air fryer for perfectly cooked Burmese tofu that makes it crispy on the outside and pillowy soft on the inside, which I’ll share at the end of the post.

How to make black bean tofu

Like most bean recipes, this is a two day process, requiring soaking the beans the night before and using them the next day.

Step one: Soak the black beans

I find for our two-person household, 100 grams of black beans makes enough tofu for us, leaving no leftovers. I’ve found that leftover Burmese tofu, even if used the next day, isn’t always so great, so I’ve taken to only making what I need.

If you’re cooking for three to four people, you’ll want to go with 200 grams of black beans.

Black beans soaking in water overnight

Put the beans in a large pot or jar and cover with plenty of water, submerging the beans by at least several inches. Let sit at room temperature overnight.

Step two (the next day): Make a bean slurry

Drain and rinse the beans, then throw them in a food processor or blender and and pulse them until they’re roughly chopped.

Black beans in blender

If, like me, you went with 100 grams of beans, add in 250 ml (one cup) of water. If you went with the full recipe of 200 grams, use 500 ml (two cups) of water.

With the blender or food processor, puree the mixture until you have what resembles a bean slurry, or looks like a watery Oreo milkshake.

Bean slurry of pureed beans and water. It's white with black flecks, resembling an Oreo milkshake.

Step three: Strain the slurry

Using a wire mesh sieve over a pot, strain the slurry. You’ll want to press the slurry with the back of a spoon or a rubber spatula to get all of the liquid out. (It’s the liquid you want, so make sure you get as much out as you can.) I often find that even when it looks like I’ve gotten everything out, if I stir it vigorously with my spatula, inevitably more liquid will come out.

Liquids strained from the black bean slurry

The solids left in your sieve can either be composted or saved to add to a soup or stew for extra protein. There are many potential uses beyond soups and stews, but keep in mind that beans must be cooked before eating and these remnants have not been cooked, so ensure you cook them for however you use them.

Step four: Thicken the liquid

Add a little bit of salt, and then over medium heat and stirring constantly with a whisk, bring the mixture to a gentle boil and simmer. As it cooks and as you whisk, it will soon become very thick, almost paste-like. This should take about a minute.

Thickened black bean slurry that looks paste-like in consistency

Step five: Pour into mould and let it set

Once thickened, remove from heat and immediately pour into a mould of some sort. I use a small square glass container. When I used to make full-sized batches I used to use bread pans. Do not grease the pan or dish; the tofu will not stick to it.

Freshly-poured black bean slurry that will solidify into tofu

Leave it alone for at least an hour for the tofu to cool and set.

Black bean tofu that has set and hardened

Step six: Enjoy your black bean tofu! (Here’s the air fryer tip!)

Once fully set, you can cut up the tofu and cook it however you’d like.

Black bean tofu

It’s common to roll the tofu in cornstarch or rice flour and then gently fry them.

Like I said above, I have difficulty with that and they often fall apart. I found, though, that using an air fryer removes my hands from the process and thus they don’t fall apart!

Cubes of black bean tofu

Starting with the same process of rolling them in cornstarch or rice flour, put them into the air fryer basket. I sometimes give them a few spritzes of a cooking spray so they get extra crispy. With the air fryer at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, cook the tofu for five minutes at a time until cooked and crispy on the outside, shaking the basket at each five minute interval.

Black bean tofu in the air fryer

To serve, I typically layer noodles, then stir-fried vegetables, then tofu, then sauce. With my most recent tofu dinner, I used a simple teriyaki sauce, but I often make this ginger peanut sauce—both are great!

Black Bean Tofu

Easy to make, nutritious, vegan, and tasty, this black bean tofu is an all-around winner!
5 from 2 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 12 hours
Cook Time 5 minutes
Resting Time 1 hour
Course dinner, lunch
Cuisine Tofu, Vegan, Vegetarian

Equipment

  • Blender or Food Processor
  • Container or Small Baking Dish (This will serve as the mould for the tofu to set in.)

Ingredients
  

  • 200 g Black Beans
  • 2 cups Water
  • ½ tsp Salt

Instructions
 

  • The night before, place black beans in a bowl or pot and cover with plenty of fresh water, submerging them by at least a few inches. Let sit overnight.
  • The next day, drain and rinse the beans.
  • Put beans in a food processor or blender and pulse a few times to break them up.
  • Add water to the beans in the blender and puree until a liquid slurry forms.
  • Strain mixture through a mesh sieve, collecting liquid in a pot. Press beans with the back of a spoon or a spatula and/or mix vigorously in the sieve to ensure as much liquid drains as possible. Bean solids left in the strainer can be composted or reserved for other uses.
  • Add salt to liquid. Heat liquid over stove, bringing to a gentle boil and stirring constantly to ensure slurry stays nicely mixed and does not burn. After about a minute of cooking, the liquid should become very thick and paste-like.
  • Pour slurry into a mould, which can be a container or small baking dish.
  • Let rest for at least an hour. The slurry will cool and solidify into tofu.
  • Once fully set, remove from mould and use as desired. (See notes below.)

Notes

I find the texture isn’t as desirable the next day, so I recommend only making what you need and using it all. I usually halve this recipe for the two of us, but if you’re cooking for three or four people this full recipe would be ideal.
Black bean tofu is a form of Burmese tofu, which is very soft and must be handled very gently. General practice is to roll it in cornstarch or rice flour and then fry it. This can also be done in the air fryer—I usually give the cornstarch-covered cubes a few spritzes of spray oil and then air fry at 400 in fie minute intervals, shaking each time, until crispy on the outside.
Keyword Black Beans, how to make tofu from black beans, tofu

How to Bake Sourdough Bread from Scratch

Posted on by craig

It seems like it was the “millennial thing” to learn how to bake sourdough bread from scratch during the pandemic lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. While I never really got into it, I did at that time pull out my husband’s uncle’s bread machine and finally teach myself how to make bread (albeit machine-assisted).

It was surprisingly easy, but it left me unsatisfied. I wanted more control. I wanted the artistic flair that you see on social media posts (which I’m still working on), and more importantly… I wanted sourdough.

There’s a local chain of cafes here that offers a phenomenal breakfast sandwich, which I always order on sourdough bread. It’s tangy, it’s chewy, and it just complements the sandwich filling perfectly.

So once I learned the basics of machine-assisted bread, I decided it was time to take the plunge and learn how to bake sourdough bread from scratch.

Starting with a sourdough starter

The first step was creating a sourdough starter, which I detail in my post here.

Bubbly active sourdough starter that is spilling over the edge of the jar it's in.

Over the course of several days, you mix flour and water in a jar and let it sit. It eventually captures yeast from the air in your kitchen and that yeast thrives in the starter. Essentially, the starter becomes a living thing that requires regular feeding and maintenance.

I wasn’t having the greatest luck with creating a bubbly, active starter, but I at least had something. I later learned from a friend who used to work in a bakery that the local climate is not great for sourdough starters, and tweaking my starter to include some whole wheat flour might solve that problem. And it did!

I also learned that, as long as the starter is regularly fed and taken care of, it gets stronger over time. My starter is a few years old now and when I give it a good feeding, it easily doubles in size—whereas in the first year of its life, a good feeding would result in maybe a twenty percent increase in size.

Learning how to bake sourdough bread from scratch

Once you’ve got a good starter going, it’s pretty easy to make bread.

There’s definitely a lot of fear about whether or not things are going right, but I’ve learned if I just trust the process and follow the directions, things will turn out just fine.

I’ve outlined the steps to making sourdough bread from scratch below, and again in the recipe card at the bottom of the post.

How to bake sourdough bread from scratch

The first thing to know about making sourdough bread is that it takes a long time. In addition to the weeks (minimum) of building up a healthy starter, the actual process of baking bread takes two days—or one day if you get up really and bake bread late at night.

Beyond time, there are really only two other things you need—a Dutch oven and a kitchen scale.

When I bought a Dutch oven a few years back, they were expensive. I got it on a massive sale and then had store points to get it even cheaper. But something must have happened, like there’s suddenly more supply than demand, because prices have fallen and they’re quite cheap now.

Here’s a decently priced Dutch oven on Amazon. It can seem like a steep investment for making bread, but I’ve found I use my Dutch oven quite often for things like soups, stews, pasta sauces, and canning recipes that require a large pot (such as when making salsa).

Step one: Making the dough

Mid-day to early evening of the day before you want your bread, you need to feed your starter. If you’re new to sourdough starters, you can find out how to make and feed one in this post. The goal is that once the starter gets really bubbly and active and rises from the feeding, we then scoop some of that out to make the sourdough.

We’ll start by putting 50g of bubbly, active starter in a large bowl, along with 330g of water. Mix this with a fork until it becomes incorporated.

Then add 9g of salt, 125g whole wheat flour, and 375g all-purpose flour. I use a mix of whole wheat and white flour because it works well for my local climate. You can certainly use only all-purpose flour. If you’re outside of Canada, you may want to use bread flour instead of all-purpose flour. (In Canada, all-purpose flour is closer to bread flour in the US and other countries.)

Mix this all with your fork until it becomes a shaggy ball. You’ll likely need to then go in with your hands to incorporate it a little better and make a ball.

Place the ball back in the bowl and cover it with plastic wrap or a towel and let it rest for at least half an hour.

Ball of sourdough dough.

Step two: Pinch and fold

After the resting time is over, take the ball of dough out of the bowl and “pinch and fold” the dough. Grab a hefty pinch from the side, stretch it out, and fold it into the top of the dough ball. Rotate the ball about 1/6 to 1/3 and do it again. Keep doing this until you’ve gone around and pinched and folded the entire thing. Be careful not to tear the dough—sometimes it’s more flexible than others, so work with the dough and its capabilities.

Sourdough dough that has been pinched and folded.

Put it back in the bowl—pinched side down—and cover it again. Let it rest overnight, or about 10-12 hours.

Step three (the next morning): Pinch and fold again

The next day, the dough should have roughly doubled in size. I find my dough rarely doubles, but it does increase in size, so don’t panic if yours doesn’t expand as much.

Remove the dough ball from the bowl and place it on a floured countertop pinched side up. Do another round of pinch and folds.

Sourdough dough that has been pinched and folded.

Flip it back over so the pinched side is down, and let it rest on the counter (or in the bowl again), covered with a towel, for 30 minutes.

Step four: Yes, pinch and fold one more time, plus start the oven

Flip the dough ball and pinch and fold. This time let it rest seam side up, preferably in a bowl, covered with a towel, for 30-60 minutes.

Sourdough resting inside a towel, sitting in a bowl.

While the dough is resting, crank your oven up to 450 Fahrenheit.

Step five: Put it in the oven

Transfer the dough ball to a piece of parchment paper.

Make a few shallow cuts along the top of the dough. I typically do a north, east, south, west pattern, but sometimes do three parallel lines. Whatever you do is up to you.

Raw sourdough loaf with shallow cuts in the surface, sitting on parchment paper.

Grip the edges of the parchment paper to move the dough—lift it and put it in the Dutch oven and place the lid on top.

Put the Dutch oven in the oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 425 Fahrenheit. Bake for 20 minutes, remove the lid, and bake for 40 more minutes. The loaf should have a nice brown crust, but if it doesn’t, bake a little longer until the colour is achieved, checking every five minutes.

Remove the Dutch oven from the oven and carefully gripping the edges of the parchment paper, remove the loaf from the Dutch oven and let it cool on a wire rack.

Step six: Enjoy!

Allow the loaf to cool for at least an hour, but cooling to room temperature is even better. If you cut it too soon, some of the moisture could escape via steam and leave you with a drier, denser loaf.

Freshly baked sourdough.

Sourdough is best stored in an airtight container at room temperature. Storing it in the fridge and lead to some tough chewiness.

If it happens to be pumpkin season, pumpkin butter makes a great topping for your sourdough bread.

Branching out from basic sourdough bread

Once you’ve got the basic loaf nailed, the options are pretty limitless from there.

For example, I’ve done (and have posts) on these:

In the next week or so, I’m hoping to try making some sourdough focaccia—I’m eyeing this recipe from Alexandra’s Kitchen as a template—and hope to post about my success soon. I’ve also been interested in making pasta and I found a fairly simple recipe for sourdough spaetzle from Amy Bakes Bread that I’m going to try and tweak (and hopefully post about soon too).

Sourdough Bread

Chewy, tangy, and oh-so-delicious—sourdough bread seems complicated but is surprisingly simple to make.
5 from 1 vote
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 14 hours
Cook Time 1 hour
Course Bread
Cuisine bread

Equipment

  • 1 Dutch Oven

Ingredients
  

  • 50 g Bubbly, active sourdough starter
  • 330 g Water (1⅓ cup + 1 Tbsp)
  • 9 g Salt (1½ tsp)
  • 125 g Whole wheat flour (can round to 1 cup)
  • 375 g All-purpose flour (can round to 3¼ cups)

Instructions
 

This recipe starts the night before and concludes the next day.

    The night before:

    • Whisk starter and water together in a large bowl. Mix in flour and salt with a fork until the dough becomes stiff and shaggy. Finish mixing with your hands.
    • Cover with a damp towel or plastic wrap and rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
    • After resting, work the dough into a ball using the "pinch and fold" method. Grab a pinch of dough at the edge and fold it / press it into the middle of the ball. Rotate the bowl a bit and do it again, repeating until you've gone all the way around. The dough will feel tighter as you do this.
    • Cover with a damp towel or plastic wrap and let it rise overnight at room temperature, about 10-12 hours.

    The next day:

    • After 10-12 hours, the dough should double in size. Don't panic if it doesn't; while mine does get larger, it certainly doesn't double in size. A lot of this comes down to local climate factors and my local climate is not amenable to sourdough. Sometimes if you leave it longer, it will rise some more, so feel free to do this too.
    • Sprinkle flour on your work surface, like a counter or table. Scoop the dough out of the bowl and onto the work surface. Use the pinch and fold method to start shaping the dough into a ball.
    • Once you've gone around the whole ball, flip it over so the pinched seam is down. Cover with a towel and let rest for 30 minutes.
    • Flip it over again so the seam is up. Pinch and fold the dough one more time.
    • Line a bowl with a dry towel and sprinkle the towel with flour. Let the dough ball rest in the towel, seam side up and with the towel edges covering it, for thirty minutes to an hour. The dough should rise some more, but again local climate may give you different results.
    • Preheat oven to 450℉.
    • Cut a sheet of parchment paper larger than your dough. Place the parchment over the dough and flip the bowl so the dough is now resting on the parchment in your hand. Set it down on the counter and with a sharp knife, make some shallow cuts in the top surface. For example, you could do four shallow cuts at north, east, south, and west points (or 3, 6, 9, and 12 on the clock), or some parallel lines across the top of the loaf.
    • Grabbing the edges of the parchment paper, lift the dough and place it into the dutch oven and put the lid on.
    • Reduce oven heat to 425℉ and put the dutch oven in on the centre rack.
    • Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the lid. Bake for an additional 40 minutes. If the bread doesn't seem ready, bake for ten more minutes.
    • Transfer to a wire rack and let cool for at least an hour before slicing.
    • Sourdough is best stored in an airtight container at room temperature.
    Keyword Sourdough, sourdough bread, sourdough starter

    How to Pressure Can Black Beans: A Step-by-Step Guide

    Posted on by craig

    Now that things are really calming down around here—the fall harvest has nearly all been processed, the holiday season is fully over, and we’re now in that lull between mid-winter and the warming of spring—I’m getting to the task of pressure canning black beans.

    We’ve been experimenting with growing beans the last few years. We’ve had kidney beans, black beans, and scarlet runner beans. These are all the kind where you let them dry in the pod, shell them, and let them dry more—we don’t grow the fully-edible kind like green beans.

    While our beans are fully dry and in jars in our food storage room and, in a sense, were already processed and preserved, they weren’t exactly dinner-friendly. Working with dried beans takes planning ahead as you need an overnight soak to rehydrate them. While you can do a quick soak in a much shorter time, it still requires a considerable time investment, and the quick soak method doesn’t produce quite as nice results as the overnight soak.

    Soaked and rinsed black beans, waiting to be pressure canned

    Besides, what I really want are jars of fully cooked beans that I can just pop open and dump in dinner at a moment’s notice. Indeed, shortly after canning a batch of beans, we felt we needed to add protein to a potato soup and added a jar of beans about ten minutes before serving.

    If you’re not a gardener but you like food projects, you can buy dried beans from the store at very cheap prices and do up these pressure canned jars. That allows you to control the salt level or even do a mix of your favourite kinds of beans in one jar.

    While I pressure canned black beans, this process and recipe works for any dried bean.

    Preparing the beans

    Before doing anything, carefully sort through the beans to ensure there are no stones, pebbles, or clumps of dirt hiding in there. This can be fairly common, especially with smaller beans.

    The first step is to rehydrate the beans, either with an overnight soak or the quick soak method.

    I much prefer an overnight soak. While it takes some planning since you have to start the day before, it’s very much a “set it up and leave it” soak, which I like. The overnight soak can also reduce the amount of skin-splitting on beans, if this is a concern. If you experience digestive upset from beans, the overnight soak can also reduce the likelihood of this happening.

    Soaked and rinsed black beans, waiting to be pressure canned

    Overnight soak

    Put the dried beans in a very large pot and add 10 cups of water for every pound of beans. For this full canner load of beans, I did up 3.25 pounds of dried beans, which meant 33 cups of water. I like to give it a little stir to see if anything floats to the top so I can scoop it off (since home processing of beans sometimes means I have some dried plant detritus mixed in).

    The next day, drain the beans, give them a good rinse, and then move ahead to the cooking stage.

    Quick-soak method

    This also uses a large pot and the same ratio of beans to water. For every pound of beans in your pot, add 10 cups of water. Bring it all to a boil over medium-high heat and let boil for two minutes, then remove from heat and let sit for an hour

    Afterward, drain the beans, give them a good rinse, and the move ahead to the cooking stage.

    Cook the beans

    Put the beans back in your large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and let boil for 30 minutes.

    While the beans are boiling, prepare your pressure canner to manufacturer specifications and prepare your jars.

    Pressure canning black beans

    When beans have cooked for thirty minutes, remove from heat and use a slotted spoon to scoop beans into mason jars. You can use pint or quart, but I like to use half-pint because that’s a more reasonable serving of beans for us. (You can always go with smaller jars for canning, but never larger.)

    Leave a headspace of one inch. Don’t discard the water.

    Black beans in mason jars, waiting for salt before pressure canning

    This is optional, but you can add non-iodized salt to your jars—1/4 tsp per half pint jar, 1/2 tsp per pint jar, or 1 tsp per quart jar.

    Then, using a ladle, scoop out the bean water and add to the jars, maintaining the one-inch headspace. If you run out of bean water (as I did), freshly boiled water can be used instead.

    Debubble, adjust headspace, wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar, and close with two-part lids to fingertip tightness.

    Process jars in your pressure canner at 10 psi weighted gauge (or 11 psi for dial gauge) for 75 minutes for pints (or half pints) or 90 minutes for quarts. Adjust for elevation if necessary—for elevations above 1,001 feet use 15 psi weighted gauge; for dial gauge use 11 psi for 1,001-2,000ft, 12 psi for 2,001-4,000ft, 13 pis for 4,001-6,000, 14 psi for 6,001-8000ft, and 15 psi for 8,001-10,000ft.

    Once canner has fully cooled and depressurized as per manufacturer directions, carefully remove jars from canner and place on a thick towel on the counter or a table. Leave undisturbed overnight and check them in the morning; sealed jars can be stored at room temperature for a year or so, unsealed jars should be put in the fridge and consumed promptly.

    Using canned beans

    Use pressure canned canned black beans in the exact same way as you’d use canned black beans from the grocery store.

    The week after I canned these black beans, I had made up a batch of potato soup. We felt it needed a bit of protein added, so we dumped in a can of beans, and it was perfect.

    Today, I’m planning some crockpot chili, and it calls for a couple cans of black beans, so I’ll be using my home-canned ones.

    Pressure canned black beans, ready to be used in dinner

    Pressure Canned Black Beans

    This beginner-friendly pressure canning recipe turns dried black beans into ready-to-eat black beans that are shelf stable and convenient.
    5 from 2 votes
    Print Recipe Pin Recipe
    Prep Time 8 hours
    Cook Time 30 minutes
    Canning Time 1 hour
    Course Side Dish

    Equipment

    • Pressure Canner
    • Mason Jars, quart size or smaller

    Ingredients
      

    • Black Beans
    • Salt
    • Water

    Instructions
     

    Soaking Beans

    • Sort through beans to remove any pebbles, dirt clumps, or plant detritus.
    • Beans must be soaked, either overnight or via the quick soak method. Use 10 cups of water per pound of beans. A full canner load is 3.25 pounds and would use 33 cups of water.
      Overnight soak
      Place beans and water in a large pot or bowl and let sit overnight. The next day, drain and rinse beans.
      Quick-soak
      Place beans and water in a large pot. Bring water to boil over medium-high heat and let boil for two minutes. Remove from heat and let beans soak for one hour.

    Cooking Beans

    • Put beans in a large pot and cover with fresh water. Heat beans over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Let boil for 30 minutes.
    • While beans are cooking, prepare pressure canner as per manufacturer directions.

    Canning Beans

    • Using a slotted spoon, fill jars (quarts, pints, or half-pints) with beans to one inch headspace. Reserve bean water.
    • Optional: Add 1 tsp non-iodized salt to each quart jar, ½ tsp to each pint jar, or ¼ tsp to each half-pint jar.
    • Top off with bean water, maintaining one inch headspace. If you don't have enough bean water, you can use freshly-boiled water.
    • Debubble, adjust headspace, wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar, and attach two-part lids to fingertip tightness.
    • Load into pressure canner and heat and pressurize as per manufacturer directions. Process at 10 psi with a weighted gauge or 11 psi with a dial gauge for 90 minutes for quarts and 75 minutes for pints or half-pints. Adjust for elevation if necessary (see note).
    • When processed, allow canner to cool and depressurize as per manufacturer directions. When safe, carefully remove lid and with a jar lifter remove jars and place them on a thick towel on a counter or table and let sit overnight. In the morning, check that jars have sealed; sealed jars can be kept at room temperature for approximately a year before quality starts to degrade, while unsealed jars should be refrigerated and consumed promptly.

    Notes

    Adjust for Elevation
    Weighted Gauge
    0-1,000 ft – 10 psi
    1,001 and above – 15 psi
    Dial Gauge
    0-2,000 ft – 11 psi
    2,001-4,000 ft – 12 psi
    4,001-6,000 ft – 13 psi
    6,001-8,000 ft – 14 psi
    8,001-10,000 ft – 15 psi
    Keyword Black Beans, Canning Black Beans, Preserving Black Beans

    Garden Update: February 2025

    Posted on by craig

    As I’m writing this, we are experiencing one of the coldest Februarys that I can remember. Normally at this time of year we’re having some warmer weather—and I remember this because there’s an annual winter festival right now that includes snow sculptures and I always worry about them melting. This year that’s not a concern.

    The back yard garden covered in snow.

    So it feels odd…that I’m preparing our seed order and am in the early stages of garden planning.

    Buying seeds for the garden

    When we first started this urban homesteading adventure years ago, we just went to the hardware store and snapped up any seed packets that looked interesting.

    Now, though, it’s a careful process.

    We receive two seed catalogues in the mail that we order from, I’m eyeing a website I’m going to try ordering from, and after we do all that we still sometimes pick up random packets at the hardware store.

    Two seed catalogues.

    So what is the point of so many sources?

    Two things—selection and price.

    The catalogues tend to have much greater selection that what we find in our typical hardware store or greenhouse, so they’re my default go-to. Between the catalogues there are sometimes differences in selection—only one offers popcorn and only one offers black beans. And the prices vary between the two catalogues I use, with one of them usually tending to be cheaper.

    This year with the website I’m adding to the mix, that’s again due to selection. They have watermelon seeds designed for our climate—and we find watermelon difficult to grow here.

    I’ll put our full garden list at the end of this post.

    Planning for a year of food

    When taking in the challenge of urban homesteading—the challenge of providing for yourself as much as you can—planning a garden can be quite a daunting task.

    Frozen food in a chest freezer.

    It involves some guesswork, but it also leaves a lot up to chance beyond your control. For example, do we need six chamomile plants or twelve? We had three last year that have given us a good six months of tea, so theoretically six plants would be what we need. But if it’s a bad year for chamomile flowers or it’s a variety that doesn’t bloom as much, six plants might only give us a small amount for tea.

    Hot peppers were like that, but in reverse. The first year we grew hot peppers we maybe had a dozen plants and we got very few peppers. The following year we doubled the number of hot pepper plants, but that was also a very good year for hot peppers, with each plant giving us at least double what comparable plants gave us the previous year. In effect, we’d wanted to double our yield but ended up quadrupling it.

    The economy of urban homesteading

    Going through all this effort of growing and preserving all our own food is a Herculean task sometimes. The planting, maintaining, harvesting, and processing / preserving is sometimes more than the two of us can manage on our own. It’s also not cheap to buy all the seeds and seedlings we need.

    But it’s worth it in the end.

    There’s of course the satisfaction of knowing this was something we did ourselves. There’s also the satisfaction of knowing what’s in our food. While we don’t have a mistrust of the food industry and aren’t concerned about deceptive practices, we do like being able to control what goes in what we eat. This means less salt in our pasta sauce, it means higher quality tomatoes in our tomato juice, it means richer tasting beets in our pickled beets, and it means customizing recipes to produce exactly what we want.

    But there’s also the savings of it all. While, yes, seeds and seedlings often cost in the range of $400-$600, we easily result in $1,500 in produce value. And that’s using numbers I collected years ago, and doesn’t reflect the skyrocketing prices of fruits and veggies in recent years. It also neglects the final “finished price” of what I make. Twenty jars of pesto might have use up $20 worth of homegrown basil, but twenty jars of pesto could easily cost $100—so the value is actually $100, not the $20 worth of what we grew.

    Freshly-harvested vegetables.

    But then there’s also the social reward. We’ve formed great connections with both neighbours over the years from using their yards and from simply being outside. We’ve had friends and family come and help us in the garden. And we’ve had a good reason to invite people over—come see our garden and stay for a barbecue.

    The full garden list

    Seeds we’ve ordered:

    • Beans – black
    • Beans – other
    • Beans – scarlet runner
    • Beets
    • Cabbage
    • Carrots
    • Chickpeas
    • Corn
    • Cucumbers
    • Kale
    • Parsnips
    • Peas – for canning
    • Peas – snap peas for snacking
    • Popcorn
    • Pumpkin – sugar pie
    • Pumpkin – for carving
    • Radish
    • Sunflower
    • Spinach
    • Squash – acorn
    • Squash – butternut
    • Squash – spaghetti
    • Watermelon

    The seedlings we’ll buy at the greenhouse (which is subject to availability):

    • Basil
    • Broccoli
    • Brussels Sprouts
    • Catnip
    • Chamomile
    • Cauliflower
    • Leeks
    • Mint
    • Oregano
    • Peppers – bell
    • Peppers – hot
    • Rosemary
    • Thyme
    • Tomatoes

    Other things to source:

    • Garlic – we’ll replant some of last year’s harvest
    • Mushroom spawn for a mushroom bed
    • Onions
    • Potatoes – we’ll likely replant some of last year’s harvest
    • Shallots

    Permaculture products—plants we already have in our garden that come up year after year:

    • Blueberries
    • Borage
    • Chives
    • Dandelions
    • Dill
    • Goji – we’ve yet to harvest anything
    • Grapes
    • Haskap Berries
    • Horseradish
    • Lilac
    • Mint
    • Mustard
    • Peonies
    • Raspberry
    • Rhubarb
    • Saskatoons
    • Strawberries

    Foods we harvest from other people’s yards:

    • Apples
    • Cherries

    Even with this extensive list, there’s a lot of chance and random decisions that go into gardening on this scale. Some things may not grow, some seeds and seedlings may not be available, a new seed or seedling may catch our attention, or something wild and edible might show up in our yard (which is how the mustard came about).

    It’s a massive task to plan out a year’s worth of gardening, but the reward makes all the effort worth it.

    How to Make Delicious Homemade Rhubarb Jelly: A Step-by-Step Guide

    Posted on by craig

    Rhubarb is one of those plants where if you have it, you have a ton of it.

    A pile of rhubarb on a patio table.

    We don’t actually grow rhubarb in our yard, but both neighbours have rhubarb plants and neither neighbour wants any of it. Since we hate seeing food go to waste, we harvest as much as we can, wash it, chop it, and freeze it. This year we ended up with a large deep freezer stuffed to the brim with rhubarb because it was our biggest harvest ever.

    When you think of rhubarb and how to use it, you’re probably thinking desserts—primarily rhubarb crumble and rhubarb pie. While those are both great, my husband and I aren’t really dessert people and so we never make either of these ourselves. My step-dad loves to make it though, so he’ll go through several bags of rhubarb every summer when he’s here.

    But, still, several bags (maybe 10?) out of somewhere around 40 means there’s still a TON of rhubarb left to use up.

    Ziplock bags filled with chopped rhubarb.

    I’ve been working on ways to use rhubarb that aren’t desserts. I make a super delicious rhubarb wine and my rhubarb ginger gin is something I get requests for year-round. I also make a rhubarb lemonade concentrate, though that recipe needs some tweaking because it’s kind of bland (and that’s why it’s not on this site yet), and I make a rhubarb simple syrup that works great for cocktails (which I hope to have on my blog later this year).

    And the final recipe I make is rhubarb jelly. Like desserts, jellies are not something my husband and I eat, so I make this for a family member upon request. It just so happens she requested another batch this past week, so I got to work in the kitchen and whipped up a batch!

    Preparing rhubarb juice

    This recipe can be made with either fresh or frozen rhubarb. I tend to make it from frozen since I have no time in the height of summer to make jelly when there are a million other more urgent things that need doing.

    Once you’ve got your rhubarb, it’s time to make the juice.

    Rhubarb in a steam juicer.

    This is where I pull out my steam juicer. In fact, I have a whole post about using my steam juicer to make and can rhubarb juice. In that post I had mentioned that since I knew I’d more than likely be using the juice for recipes in the future, I opted to not add the optional sugar I wouldn’t have to have to recalculate how much sugar the recipe calls for. So, for this batch of homemade rhubarb jelly, I popped open a couple pints of pre-canned juice and skipped this whole first step.

    However, if you don’t have rhubarb juice on hand—and, really, how many people do?—you have two options for extracting juice from your rhubarb: using a steam juicer or the stove top method.

    Using a steam juicer

    If you have a steam juicer on hand, this is the method I highly recommend.

    Set up the juicer as per manufacturer directions, which usually means filling the bottom pot with water, stacking the pots together, and loading the top pot with your fresh or frozen rhubarb. (If you’re using frozen rhubarb, you don’t even have to thaw it first!)

    You’ll likely need around two pounds of rhubarb, though you might want extra on hand in case it takes more rhubarb to get that amount to juice.

    Turn on the stove, watch that the bottom pot doesn’t run dry, and let the juicer do its work!

    Using the stove top method

    This requires a bit more active work, but it doesn’t require expensive equipment like a steam juicer.

    Boil two pounds of rhubarb in four cups of water until the rhubarb just completely falls apart. Then, with a jelly bag or cheesecloth-lined strainer suspended over a large bowl, strain the rhubarb. Let it sit in the jelly bag or strainer for a couple hours to allow the juice to fully drain from the rhubarb. You should end up with about four cups of juice.

    If you’re short on juice, you’ll want to run another smaller batch through this process to obtain the juice. You may want to actually do a little more than the recipe calls for just to ensure you have enough juice.

    Making homemade rhubarb jelly

    Once you have the juice on hand, the process of making the jelly is really quite simple.

    You will need a large pot. You’ll want one larger than you think, because in the later steps, it will likely bubble up quite a bit and if you use a small pot it may boil over.

    Pour the four cups of rhubarb juice into the pot and bring it to a boil, then let it boil for a minute.

    Then add a packet of powdered pectin and whisk it in, bringing the mixture back to a boil, letting it boil for a minute.

    Finally, add six cups of sugar and again whisk and bring back to a boil, letting it boil for a minute. This is the stage where it can get really bubbly and could bubble over if you’re using a too-small pot.

    Once the final minute is up, remove the pot from heat. If there’s a film on top of the jelly, you can skim it off. It doesn’t hurt anything if it’s there, it just might not look as nice in the final product.

    Carefully ladle hot jelly into pre-warmed jars. To pre-warm a jar, I usually run it under hot tap water. You’ll want to fill them to a quarter-inch headspace. It can get pretty messy; a canning funnel can make the process easier and cleaner.

    Once the jars are filled, wipe the rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar. This step is to clean the rim of the jar so it can seal properly. I find that when making jelly, it can be quite easy for there to be jelly on the jar rim, preventing a seal from forming, so this stage is more important here than it might be in other canning recipes.

    Attach two-part lids to fingertip tightness and then load into your water bath canner. Ensure the water level is high enough that the jars are submerged by at least an inch of water. Turn on the heat, bring it to a boil, and once it’s boiling let it process for ten minutes.

    Afterward, turn off the heat and let it sit for five minutes. Then carefully remove the jars from the canner and place them on a thick towel on a counter or table and let sit overnight. In the morning, check that jars have sealed. If so, they can sit at room temperature on a shelf for at least a year, after which time quality may degrade, but safety will not (as long as the jar remains sealed). Unsealed jars should be refrigerated and consumed promptly.

    A jar of rhubarb jelly.

    Using rhubarb jelly

    While there is, of course, the obvious use of homemade rhubarb jelly—slathering it on toast for breakfast—there are other creative uses as well. You could top a baked brie with rhubarb jelly, or slather it on a ham before baking.

    Rhubarb Jelly

    Sweet and with a burst of summer freshness, rhubarb jelly is both easy and delicious.
    5 from 1 vote
    Print Recipe Pin Recipe
    Prep Time 2 hours
    Cook Time 10 minutes
    Canning Time 10 minutes
    Course Breakfast

    Equipment

    • Water Bath Canner
    • 6-8 Half-Pint (One-Cup) Mason Jars

    Ingredients
      

    Rhubarb Juice

    • 2 lbs Rhubarb, Cleaned and Chopped
    • Water

    Rhubarb Jelly

    • 4 cups Rhubarb Juice
    • 6 cups White Sugar
    • 1 box Powdered Pectin

    Instructions
     

    How to make juice with a steam juicer

    • Set up steam juicer as per manufacturer directions, which usually means water in the bottom pot and rhubarb in the top pot. Boil until the steam releases the juice. Make sure the bottom pot doesn't run dry.

    How to make juice on the stove top

    • Boil two pounds of rhubarb in four cups of water until the rhubarb completely falls apart.
    • With a jelly bag or cheesecloth-lined strainer suspended over a large bowl, strain the rhubarb. Let it sit in the jelly bag or strainer for a couple hours to allow the juice to fully drain from the rhubarb.

    How to make and can rhubarb jelly

    • Pour rhubarb juice into a large pot and bring to a boil.
    • Add the pectin, return to a boil, and boil for one minute.
    • Add the sugar, stir to dissolve, return to a boil, and boil for one minute.
    • Remove jelly from heat and immediately ladle into jars, leaving a ¼ inch headspace.
    • Wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar and attach two-part lids to fingertip tightness.
    • Put in water bath canner and cover with hot water until jars are submerged by at least an inch of water. Process in canner for 10 minutes, starting the timer when the canner reaches a full boil.
    Keyword rhubarb jelly

    Garden Update: January 2025

    Posted on by craig

    As I write the first draft of this post, the temperature outside is somewhere around -32 degrees Celsius (-26 F) and there’s a strong wind that makes the “feels like” temperature a whopping -42 C (-44 F). We usually have a week or two like this in mid January, so it’s entirely expected, though not entirely welcome.

    Despite the brutal cold, there are still a handful of garden things going on—a bit of final preservation of our 2024 haul and some early prep for the 2025 season.

    The last of the preservation

    The veggies that do well in cold storage in my mom’s basement closet are at the point where they will start to go bad soon if we don’t do things with them. These include squash, which will rot, and potatoes, onions, and garlic, which will all start sprouting. It seems these things tend to happen all at once, right when things start to get a little bit warm outside, usually in early February. My guess is there’s a subtle change in ambient temperature and humidity, even though these things are inside the house, and the veggies (and mould) pick up on it and start to work.

    With the onions, I’d had hopes of making jars of French onion soup, balsamic onion jam, and pickled onions, but I’m not sure if I have the time and energy for all of that, so for the time being, I’m just working on chopping and freezing them so we can throw them in dinners and things. I do, however, have a LOT of onions to go through, so I might still get to these things.

    For the garlic, I’d like to do up several jars of pickled garlic, as that’s often a crowd-pleaser at summer barbecues. Pickled garlic is delicious and for those who aren’t super fans of garlic, it might help to know that the potent bite of garlic greatly recedes, leaving just the flavour of garlic behind.

    For the potatoes, we tend to boil and mash them (with just a little bit of butter), and then freeze the mashed potatoes. They aren’t the greatest when reconstituted for dinner, but they’re not terrible. They just need a LOT of butter and milk, and all that dairy and fat makes them appetizing again.

    And for the squash, the only thing we can really do is peel, chop, and freeze them. It is possible to can winter squash, but with our ample freezer space and given the fact that canned squash has to be peeled and chopped first, I prefer to just freeze it. Frozen squash works well for soups and making pumpkin pie (which can be made with squash other than pumpkin). Frozen chopped squash is also great for throwing into a roast or onto a sheet pan with other veggies.

    However, we also realize we still have way too much food for us, so we have been giving some of it away. That not only helps reduce our over-supply, but it helps strengthen the connections with the people around us, and allow us to share the delicious bounty of our summer labours.

    Preparing for 2025’s garden

    While I’m not quite ready to open up the seed catalogue we received a few weeks back, we are starting to talk about what we want to plant.

    Our neighbour whose yard we use usually starts all of our tomatoes, some peppers, and a few other things indoors. We don’t have the space or skill to do so, but he’s a natural at it. He’s not sure if he’s going to be up for doing it this year, so in a few weeks my husband is going to go over there and visit and find out what the neighbour’s plans are, so we can assess what we need to do (or not do).

    One of our ongoing struggles is growing fruit. We seem to have strawberries and saskatoons down, and we get a good harvest of apples and cherries from a friend’s trees, but we’d like more beyond these. We’ve got some blueberry, raspberry, and haskap berry plants, but they haven’t been productive, though this might be the year they turn around. But one thing we’ve been trying a few years and failing miserably at is watermelon and other melons.

    Last year I had made plans to go and visit a homesteading fair. I ended up not going, but I checked out their website for their vendors, and found one of them was a seed company in Saskatchewan (the next province west) that has, among other things, seeds for watermelon (and another type of melon) that grow well in our climate. We will order these seeds shortly so that we don’t miss out on them.

    Until next month…

    This blog does get slow in the winter, mostly because the garden projects really slow down. However, with the above projects that need to get done, hopefully I’ll get a few posts out of them. There’s also the dried beans that I want to pressure can so they’re dinner-ready, and I’ve got a number of wines that are just about to get bottled.

    But, if all of that fails and no posts come out of it, I’ll be back with a February update which will hopefully have more firm plans on what we’re planting—and I may have even ordered some seeds by then!

    How to Make and Can Cranberry Juice (Three Methods)

    Posted on by craig

    My husband and I had high hopes of making it out to a provincial park this fall to forage for wild cranberries. Apparently they’re plentiful in a couple of the nearby parks, but the parks are quite large and we wouldn’t know where to look, so we ended up not making the trip out. As well, if we got there too early or too late and the berries weren’t ready or were gone, we could be staring right at a cranberry bush and just not know it.

    My cranberry plans for the year were dashed… until the Sunday after Thanksgiving when I found bags of cranberries on clearance for 99 cents at the grocery store. (I looked again after Christmas but they didn’t have as many left over so it looks like they didn’t put them on clearance.)

    Image from pexels.com

    I wasn’t ready to deal with the cranberries yet, so I stored them all in the freezer — which ended up being a good thing. Freezing cranberries for at least a week reduces their pectin content by at least half. Since my plan was to make juice and not jam, I want as little pectin as possible in my final product.

    I used some of the bags of cranberries to try a batch of cranberry wine — so that will likely be a future post too.

    Three ways to juice and can cranberries

    There are a few ways to go about this project of making cranberry juice and canning it — and one of those methods doesn’t even involve juicing the cranberries at all.

    Since this was my first batch of cranberry juice, I only did one method (the steam juicer method), but I’ll outline the three methods here so you can go with your preference.

    Juicing option one: Canning berries and sugar

    This is the method that does not require any actual juicing and thus this one is the easiest method to take on. Plus, it just looks darn gorgeous.

    In a warmed quart jar, add 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cups of whole cranberries, then top with 1/4 to 1/2 cup of sugar. If you’re using smaller jars, adjust ratios, but don’t go larger than quarts.

    Top with boiling water to 1/2 inch headspace, wipe rims, attach two part lids to fingertip tightness, and then process in a water bath canner (check the recipe card below for the canning time).

    Since with this method you’re technically canning berries and not juice, sealed jars will have to sit on a shelf for 4-6 weeks for the berries to fully infuse the sugar-water and create juice.

    Juicing option two: Boiling and straining cranberries

    This method is more involved at this stage, but at the end you have simply juice in the jars and don’t have to worry about straining out berries when you pour a glass for yourself.

    Starting by putting three pounds of cranberries (which is four of the typical 12 ounce bags) and four quarts of water in a large pot. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and let simmer for 5-10 minutes. Strain cranberries—a jelly bag or a mesh strainer lined with a couple layers of cheesecloth would both work. Let it sit for about a half hour for it to fully strain.

    Reserve the juice but add the cranberries back to the pot along with two quarts of water. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and let simmer for another 5 minutes. Strain again, but you can strain for a shorter time now, about 15 minutes.

    Reserve the juice but add the cranberries back to the pot one more time, along with one quart of water. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and let simmer for 5 minutes. Strain for a final time, letting it sit for 5-10 minutes.

    Transfer all the juice to a new pot and bring to just below a simmer, about 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit, but do not bring to a boil. Add your desired amount of sugar (in the recipe card below).

    Fill jars to 1/4 inch headspace, wipe rims, attach two-part lids to fingertip tightness, and process in a water bath canner as per the instructions in the recipe card.

    Since this method started by making juice, juice can be consumed as soon as it cools, but sealed jars can sit on a shelf until needed.

    Juicing option three: Using a steam juicer

    Ever since getting a steam juicer, I’ve been looking for excuses to use it—and making cranberry juice seemed like the perfect time to pull it out of the pantry.

    The process of making cranberry juice with the steam juicer is the same as any other—set up the steam juicer as per manufacturer directions, load it up with cranberries, and let the heat and steam do its work.

    Technically, what you end up with is cranberry juice concentrate. You can keep at this concentration or dilute it with some water.

    This is where I improvised a little bit, so here’s what I did and why:

    • Since by steam juicing, we are extracting the same amount of juice as we do in the “boil and strain” method, and that method ended up with 7 quarts (about 6.6 litres) of juice, I aimed for the same here.
    • I measured how much juice concentrate I had and then topped it off with water until I reached 7 quarts / 6.6 litres.
    • Since I was improvising a little bit, I did do a test to ensure this is safe to can. A couple years ago I bought some pH testing strips to test for acidity — you might remember these from chemistry class at school. To be safe for water bath canning, the pH must be 4.6 or below. With a quick test, the pH strip turned the colour for 4, meaning it was in the safe zone.

    Satisfied with regard to safety, I then stirred in sugar, warmed it up again, and canned it as per the directions below.

    Taste test: The final result

    It was good! It was a little watered down, though. So, next time I will add less water (which will mean it’s even more acidic so definitely safe for canning).

    Cranberry Juice

    Making and canning your own cranberry juice is not only cost-effective, but it allows you to control the amount of sugar and concentration of juice.
    5 from 2 votes
    Print Recipe Pin Recipe
    Prep Time 1 hour
    Canning Time 25 minutes
    Course Beverage

    Equipment

    • 1 Steam Juicer (Optional)
    • Strainer Lined with Cheesecloth (Optional)
    • Canning Jars and Lids
    • Water Bath Canner

    Ingredients
      

    • 3 lbs Cranberries (four standard 12 ounce bags)
    • 7 qts Water (6.6 liters)
    • 1¾ – 3½ cups Sugar

    Instructions
     

    Boiling Berries Method

    • Add cranberries to a large pot and add four quarts (3.8 litres) water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Cranberries should pop.
    • Strain cranberries through a strainer lined with cheesecloth or through a jelly bag. Let drain for about 30 minutes. Collect juice and put aside.
    • Return cranberries to the pot and add two quarts (1.9 litres) water. Simmer for 5 minutes. Strain again and let sit for 15 minutes. Collect juice and add to already reserved juice.
    • Return cranberries to the pot and add one quart (0.9 litres) water. Simmer for 5 minutes. Strain again and let sit for 5 minutes. Collect juice and add to already reserved juice.
    • Discard cranberry pulp.
    • Prepare a water bath canner by pre-heating it and bringing the water to a near-simmer.
    • Transfer reserved juice to a clean pot and warm about 180-190 degrees F, which is just barely simmering. Do not let the juice boil.
    • Add sugar to taste, if you choose.
    • Ladle hot juice into prewarmed canning jars, quart size or smaller, leaving a ¼ inch headspace. Wipe rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar and attach two-part lids to fingertip tightness.
    • Process in boiling water canner for 10 minutes, or 15 minutes if at an elevation of 1,000 feet or higher. Start the timer once the water reaches a full boil and keep it at a full boil.
    • Turn off heat and let sit for 5 minutes. Carefully remove jars from canner and let sit on a thick towel on a counter or table overnight. In the morning, check that jars have sealed. Sealed jars are shelf stable and can be kept for 12-18 months before quality begins to degrade. Unsealed jars should be put in the fridge and consumed promptly.

    Steam Juicer Method

    • Set up steam juicer as per manufacturer directions. Load the juicer with cranberries and turn on heat. Keep an eye on the juicer to ensure the water in the bottom pot does not run dry.
    • Collect juice concentrate. Continue until berries no longer produce juice. Resist the temptation to mash the berries to obtain more juice, as this will lead to pulp in the juice.
    • Transfer juice concentrate to a large clean pot. You can proceed with the juice concentrate as-is or add water. If adding water, ensure the total volume (of both water and juice) does not exceed seven quarts (6.6 litres). However, going for a full seven quarts produces a rather watered-down juice. I’d recommend going for a total volume (of both water and juice) of 5 quarts (4.7 litres). Adding less water will also ensure acidity is in the safe zone for canning.
    • Prepare a water bath canner by pre-heating it and bringing the water to a near-simmer.
    • Warm juice to about 180-190 degrees F, which is just barely simmering. Do not let the juice boil.
    • Ladle hot juice into prewarmed canning jars, quart size or smaller, leaving a ¼ inch headspace. Wipe rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar and attach two-part lids to fingertip tightness.Add sugar to taste, if you choose.
    • Process in boiling water canner for 10 minutes, or 15 minutes if at an elevation of 1,000 feet or higher. Start the timer once the water reaches a full boil and keep it at a full boil.
    • Turn off heat and let sit for 5 minutes. Carefully remove jars from canner and let sit on a thick towel on a counter or table overnight. In the morning, check that jars have sealed. Sealed jars are shelf stable and can be kept for 12-18 months before quality begins to degrade. Unsealed jars should be put in the fridge and consumed promptly.

    Canning Berries for Juice

    • Using quart jars, add 1 ½ to 1 ¾ raw berries to each jar. If using frozen berries, let them thaw first. Then add ¼ to ½ cups sugar to each jar. If using smaller jars, see note below for measurements of berries and sugar.
    • Prepare a water bath canner by pre-heating it and bringing the water to a near-simmer.
    • With a kettle or pot, bring water to a boil and pour boiling water over cranberries and sugar, filling jars to ½ inch headspace.
    • Wipe rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar and attach two-part lids to fingertip tightness.
    • Process in a water bath canner for 25 minutes. If in altitudes above 1,000 feet, process for 30 minutes (1,000 to 6,000 feet), or for 35 minutes (over 6,000 feet).
    • Turn off heat and let sit for 5 minutes. Carefully remove jars from canner and let sit on a thick towel on a counter or table overnight. In the morning, check that jars have sealed. Sealed jars are shelf stable and can be kept for 12-18 months before quality begins to degrade. Allow jars to sit for 4-6 weeks to allow the berries to infuse the sugar water with juice. Unsealed jars should be put in the fridge and consumed promptly, though they will not have much flavour since they won’t have the 4-6 weeks to infuse flavour.

    Notes

    If using pint jars for the “canning berries” method, use about ¾ berries and ⅛ to ¼ cups sugar.
    Keyword cranberry juice

    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