Category: Preserving Vegetables

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

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

Ingredients
  

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

Equipment

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

Method
 

  1. 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.
  2. The next day, drain and rinse the beans.
  3. Put beans in a food processor or blender and pulse a few times to break them up.
  4. Add water to the beans in the blender and puree until a liquid slurry forms.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. Pour slurry into a mould, which can be a container or small baking dish.
  8. Let rest for at least an hour. The slurry will cool and solidify into tofu.
  9. 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.

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

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

Ingredients
  

  • Black Beans
  • Salt
  • Water

Equipment

  • Pressure Canner
  • Mason Jars, quart size or smaller

Method
 

Soaking Beans
  1. Sort through beans to remove any pebbles, dirt clumps, or plant detritus.
  2. 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
  1. 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.
  2. While beans are cooking, prepare pressure canner as per manufacturer directions.
Canning Beans
  1. Using a slotted spoon, fill jars (quarts, pints, or half-pints) with beans to one inch headspace. Reserve bean water.
  2. 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.
  3. Top off with bean water, maintaining one inch headspace. If you don't have enough bean water, you can use freshly-boiled water.
  4. Debubble, adjust headspace, wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar, and attach two-part lids to fingertip tightness.
  5. 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).
  6. 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

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

5 from 2 votes
Easy and tasty, canned rhubarb juice keeps the taste of summer fresh all year round.
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
Ingredients Equipment Method

Ingredients
  

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

Equipment

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

Method
 

  1. 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.
  2. Transfer juice to a pot and bring to a simmer. Add sugar, if using, and stir until dissolved.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

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

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

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

Equipment

  • Water Bath Canner
  • 5 Pint Mason Jars

Method
 

  1. 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.
  2. After two hours, drain the cucumber/onion mixture and rinse well to remove most of the salt.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.

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

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

Ingredients
  

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

Equipment

  • Fermentation Vessel, with Weight and Airlock

Method
 

  1. Make the brine by combining water and salt, stirring until salt is dissolved.
  2. Place seasonings in the bottom of the fermentation vessel. See notes for some ideas for seasonings.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

How to Make Fermented Garlic Scape Hot Sauce

Posted on by craig

The garlic scapes are up and this year we got quite the haul, coming in at around 1.5 kg, or about three pounds. Normally we get just a smattering and they’re usually quite thin, but this year we have at least double the garlic planted and these scapes grew nice and thick.

Scapes are the flower stem of the garlic plant. They grow nice and tall and then curl in on themselves. At the end is a bulb that will form garlic seeds. Once that bulb flowers, the garlic bulb underground will stop growing, so you want to harvest the scape before that happens.

In my previous post about pickling garlic scapes, I talked in depth about the process of harvesting them. In a short summary, you’ll want to cut or break the scape where it emerges from the top leaf of the plant.

Scapes have a strong garlic taste and can be used multiple ways. They grill up great on the BBQ, they have a wonderful garlic bite to them when you pickle them, they make a zesty pesto, and there’s a garlic scape jam I want to try next year that I think would go great on a baked Brie.

Garlic scape hot sauce

A few years ago I tried doing the farmers market thing, selling jams, pickles, and preserves. It was an interesting experience but ultimately not one I’ll likely return to. While there, I made some great connections with local food folks and got to try some amazing foods.

A highlight for me was the garlic scape hot sauce that I bought from the hot sauce guy. While his prices are affordable and I continue to buy garlic scape hot sauce off him, it was a hot sauce I wanted to see if I could make myself.

In my research on garlic scape hot sauce recipes I found that there’s almost nothing. I did come across one fermented garlic scape hot sauce recipe, and so my variation is based on that one.

I made a couple alterations in the batch I made for this post and have noted further alterations for next year’s batch that I’ll make. The recipe on this post is for what I’d do next year.

The art of fermenting

Fermenting is very much a science. You create an ideal environment for beneficial bacteria to thrive, which then outcompetes bad bacteria, preserving food for weeks, months, or even longer.

Because of this careful balance needed and the fact that this whole preservation method relies on bacteria, I’d always been quite intimidated by it. I’d follow recipes to the T and never vary.

A couple years back, a local chef loaned me a copy of The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz and even on just the cursory flip-through that I gave it, the book opened my eyes to the fact that while fermenting is very much a science, it is also very much an art. As long as you’re following the basic science of fermenting, there’s tons of wiggle room to customize what you’re creating and make culinary works of art.

This recipe relies on creating a salt brine with water and submerging the foods in it. (Versus something like sauerkraut that relies on salt drawing the moisture out of cabbage so it’s in a salt brine of its own juices.)

That brine will create the environment for beneficial bacteria to thrive, allowing us to then create some artistic customization in what is being fermented.

Making the ferment

Before we start making the ferment, we’ll want a vessel to do the ferment in. I have a Mason Tops fermenting kit that comes with a jar, an airlock lid, and a glass weight. Here are some kits on Amazon that can be adapted with a regular mason jar. In a pinch, you can jerry-rig a ferment vessel by using a mason jar, a Ziploc bag of water as a weight, and a loose-fitting lid that will keep bad bacteria out but still allow venting of gas.

The first step is prepare the veggies going into the ferment. This recipe calls for 175 grams each of garlic scapes and jalapeno peppers. The scapes can be chopped up in small pieces. The exact sizing doesn’t matter too much because at the end you’ll be pureeing everything. The peppers can be stemmed and then sliced in half—and keep the seeds so they add heat to the sauce. They can be chopped up smaller if you’re having difficulty getting everything nicely in the ferment vessel.

While the recipe calls for jalapeno peppers, you can use any green-coloured hot pepper. This is a hot sauce that gets its kick from the garlic scapes, so it’s more of a flavour with heat than pure heat. That being said, with my initial taste-test of the final product, I felt it wasn’t quite hot enough, so next year I’ll look at either a hotter pepper or adding more jalapenos.

And while ideally you want a green-coloured hot pepper, this is purely to maintain the green colour in the final hot sauce. If you don’t care so much about the colour, you could put in any hot pepper of your choice. I grew some scotch bonnet hot peppers and discovered they have an interesting flavour along with their intense heat—they’d go quite well here, but the green scapes and red pepper might create a muddied colour.

In a pinch, if you don’t have fresh hot peppers, you could use pickled hot peppers, but I would add them at the blender step. After the full ferment, you add some vinegar before you blend it, so you could add pickled hot peppers at this stage.

Anyway, back to the ferment!

Put the scapes and jalapenos in your ferment vessel and then chop and add a few green onions.

Now we’ll create the brine, which should be 2% by weight. To do this, add two teaspoons of salt to two cups of water, and heat it in a pot, stirring until the salt dissolves. Allow the water to cool a bit and then pour it into the ferment vessel, ensuring everything is submerged. If you add the brine immediately after boiling, the heat may kill the beneficial bacteria you’re trying to help.

Add the fermenting weight on top, as well as the airlock, and store in a cool, dry, dark place for 7-10 days. You may want to put a plate or bowl under it as ferments sometimes bubble over. You can check on it every few days; if you see bubbles, you know it’s working and it’s fermenting. After seven days, start tasting the scapes to see if you’ve got a good taste going. Mine took eight days.

Once things taste ideal—and this is another place where the art of fermenting comes in since “ideal” is completely up to you—the ferment is done and we can move on to making the hot sauce.

Turning the ferment into hot sauce

Strain the ferment, reserving the liquid.

The scapes, peppers, and green onions are then put into a blender. (If possible, use an actual blender. I used an immersion blender / stick blender and it didn’t work that well, so next time I’ll dig out the actual blender.) Add in half a cup of vinegar and 2/3 cup of the brine.

The choice of vinegar is up to you. The original recipe calls for apple cider vinegar, but I found the apple taste clashed with the garlic and jalapeno. I’d strongly suggest white vinegar or unseasoned rice vinegar, or a vinegar with a complementary flavour profile.

When I make this next year, I’m going to either use my homemade chive blossom vinegar, which would add a chive flavour, or I’d use my homemade sinamak. Sinamak is a Filipino vinegar infusion; white vinegar is infused with hot peppers, ginger, garlic, and black peppercorns. I made a batch a while back with some thai chili peppers and it has a real kick to it that would go fantastic in this hot sauce.

Blend until smooth.

From here, you have two options.

If you like a smooth sauce, you can strain the pureed sauce through a strainer or cheesecloth. If you like a chunkier sauce, you can transfer the whole thing to a jar as-is.

The original recipe calls for the sauce to be strained and then xantham gum to be added, which would thicken it and give it some consistency. I chose to go without the xantham gum and without straining. The hot sauce I buy always needs a good shake because it settles easily, but then you get all those garlicky bits from the pureed scapes and it’s oh-so-good.

Because it’s a ferment that’s ultimately preserved in vinegar, this should last in the fridge for weeks, if not months.

Garlic scape hot sauce can be used the same as any hot sauce, but the garlic taste opens up some ideal pairings. This goes great on any food where garlic is a complementary taste, such as on pizza.

Fermented Garlic Scape Hot Sauce

5 from 1 vote
A hot sauce with the mouthwatering tang of garlic makes for the perfect topping on things like pizzas and burgers.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 20 minutes
Fermenting Time 10 days
Course: condiments
Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients
  

  • 175 g Garlic Scapes
  • 175 g Jalapeno Peppers, or other hot pepper, preferably green
  • 2-3 Green Onions
  • 10 Peppercorns
  • 2 tsp Salt
  • 2 cups Water
  • ½ cup Vinegar, see notes

Equipment

  • 1 Fermentation Kit / Vessel, see notes for alternatives
  • 1 Blender

Method
 

  1. Chop garlic scapes and add to fermentation vessel. De-stem jalapeno peppers and quarter or chop and add to fermentation vessel. Chop green onions and add to fermentation vessel.
  2. Add salt and water to a small pot and heat, stirring until salt dissolves. Let the saltwater brine cool, then add to the fermentation vessel.
  3. Place the weight in the vessel, ensuring all vegetables are below the water line. Close with an airlock. Place on a plate (in case it bubbles over) and put in a cool, dark, dry place to ferment.
  4. After a few days, you should start to see bubbles in the ferment. This means it's working.
  5. After 7 days, taste a scape to test for readiness. (There's no real measure of when it's ready, you go by taste and preference.) Ferment should be done in 7-10 days.
  6. Strain vegetables, reserving the brine.
  7. Add vegetables to a blender, vinegar, and ⅔ cup of the reserved brine. Blend until smooth.
  8. If you prefer smooth sauce:
    Strain though a strainer or cheesecloth, then store remaining liquid in a bottle or jar in the fridge.
    If you prefer chunky sauce:
    Transfer blender contents to a bottle or jar and store in the fridge.

Notes

If you don’t have a fermentation kit, you can piece one together using a large jar as the fermentation vessel, a Ziplock bag filled with water as the weight, and a loose-fitting lid as the airlock.
For vinegar, white vinegar is usually best, but any vinegar with a complementary flavour profile would work well, such as chive blossom vinegar or sinamak.

How to Pickle Garlic Scapes

Posted on by craig

One of the things I love about growing garlic is that you get two different harvests from them—the garlic, of course, but also the garlic scapes.

Backing up a bit—there are two types of garlic: hardneck and softneck. Hardneck is more weather resilient and can overwinter, so we plant it in the fall and it’s one of the first things to pop up in the spring. Hardneck garlic grows a thick flower stem, called a scape, that can be harvested and used in various recipes. (For more on the differences between hardneck and softneck garlic, I found this webpage informative.)

There are many ways to use garlic scapes, such as barbecuing them, turning them into pesto, and even a garlic scape jam that I want to try next year. I’m also currently attempting a fermented garlic scape hot sauce that I’ll post about when it’s done.

One of the easy crowd-pleasing scapes dishes is pickled scapes.

How to harvest garlic scapes

At a certain point in the life cycle of hardneck garlic, the plant will shoot out its flower stem. It gets really tall and then circles back in on itself, sometimes creating several circular loops. Toward the end there will be a bulb forming—this will eventually become garlic seeds.

Garlic scapes must be harvested before a flower forms on the scape. If the flower is allowed to form, the garlic bulbs will stop growing, but if you harvest the scape before the flower forms, the plant will refocus all its energy on growing the garlic bulbs.

There are two schools of thought on how best to harvest the scapes. One is to use scissors or a blade to cut it off at the base of the top leaves. The second is to grasp the stalk and tug the scape; theoretically, the scape will break further down inside the plant and you get a longer scape.

I normally cut them, but this year tried to tugging method. There was no difference; it broke at the spot I would have cut it. However, it meant I didn’t have a pair of scissors or a blade in one hand, meaning I could move a little quicker since I had two hands.

Once you’ve harvested them, it’s a good idea to give them a quick rinse to get rid of any dirt or insects clinging to the scapes.

Scapes can be stored in the fridge for up to a few weeks. However, their firmness does reduce over time, so if you like the crispiness of a fresh scape, it’s best to use them as soon as possible.

How to make pickled garlic scapes

There are different flavour variations for garlic scapes. Last year I did straight-up normal pickled scapes, and this year I did spicy pickled scapes. Both variations are in the recipe card at the bottom of this post. An internet search can bring up a variety of recipes if you’re looking for a different spice combination.

The first step is to put the spices in the bottom of the jar.

Next, cut scapes to appropriate lengths and stuff them into jars. I generally find I’ll have jars of mostly straight scapes all standing upright, and jars where the curly scapes circle the inside of the jar and a handful of straight scapes will fill the centre void. I usually end up with lot of little bits of scapes from all the trimming, so I top off the jars with these. You can pack them in tightly.

The next step is to boil some brine, which is a combination of water, vinegar, salt, and sugar. Pour the brine into the jars, leaving a half inch of headspace. Wipe rims and put on lids.

If you’re refrigerator pickling these you can put them straight into the fridge. If you’re canning these, they can be processed for 10 minutes, adjusting for elevation as needed. Refrigerator pickling will result in crisper pickled scapes that are a brighter green and have a bit more of a flavour bite to them. Canning them will result in softer scapes that are a muted green and the bite of garlic will be a bit milder since they cook while processing and that reduces the flavour a bit, but canning them will give you a much longer shelf life. Regardless of which preserving method you use, give the scapes at least a few days to fully pickle before opening a jar and enjoying them.

Pickled Garlic Scapes

5 from 1 vote
Pickled garlic scapes perfectly preserve the scapes from the garlic plant in the form of a tasty appetizer with some zing.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 30 minutes
Processing Time 10 minutes
Course: Appetizer
Cuisine: Pickles
Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients
  

  • ½ pound Garlic Scapes
Regular Pickled Garlic Scapes
  • 1 ¼ cup Water
  • 1 ¼ cup Vinegar, can be white, white wine, cider, or any vinegar as long as the acidity is 5% or greater
  • 1 ½ Tbsp Canning Salt
  • 1 Tbsp Sugar
  • 2 tsp Mustard Seeds, 1 tsp per pint jar
  • 2 tsp Black Peppercorns, 1 tsp per pint jar
Spicy Pickled Garlic Scapes
  • 1 ¼ cup Water
  • 1 ¼ cup Vinegar, can be white, white wine, cider, or any vinegar as long as the acidity is 5% or greater
  • 1 Tbsp Canning Salt
  • 1 Tbsp Sugar
  • 2 tsp Red Pepper Flakes, 1 tsp per pint jar
  • 2 tsp Black Peppercorns, 1 tsp per pint jar

Equipment

  • Canning Jars with Two-Part Lids, either 2x pint or 4x half pint sizes
  • Water Bath Canning Pot, if canning

Method
 

  1. Cut scapes to appropriate size and pack tightly in jars. Add spices directly to each jar (mustard and black peppercorns for regular scapes, red pepper flakes and black peppercorns for spicy scapes).
  2. Create brine by bringing water, vinegar, salt, sugar to a boil, dissolving sugar and salt.
  3. Add brine to jars, bringing up to ½ inch headspace. If you're short on brine, top up with vinegar. Wipe rims and put on two-part lids.
  4. For Refrigerator Pickles
    Put jars in the fridge and let sit for at least a few days before consuming.
    For Canned Pickles
    Put jars in a water bath canner filled with hot water, with the jars submerged by at least an inch of water. Bring to a boil and boil for 10 minutes. (Adjust for elevation as needed.) Remove canner from heat and let sit for five minutes. Remove jars using a jar lifter and let sit undisturbed overnight. If jars are properly sealed, then they can be stored in a cool dark place for up to a year before quality (but not safety) starts to degrade. If any jars did not properly seal, they should be put in the fridge and consumed first. Allow jars to sit for at least a few days before consuming.

Notes

This recipe is intended for two pints of scapes, but can easily be divided or multiplied for smaller or larger quantities. I usually pack the jars first to see how many pints I get before figuring out the brine, and then I usually do a little extra brine just in case. (If you’re dividing or multiplying, ensure your math is correct so you get the correct ratios of ingredients.)
Feel free to add more spices to the jar if you want spicier scapes.
Refrigerator pickles will result in crispier and bright green scapes, but canned pickles will result in shelf-stable scapes that can sit in a cupboard for several months before opening (but refrigerate upon opening).

How to Make Pumpkin Butter

Posted on by craig

For fans of pumpkin and all things autumn, pumpkin butter is a treat. I made a batch last year and took it along to work with a fresh loaf of homemade sourdough bread and a colleague described it as “a warm hug on a cold day”.

I’ve taken to gifting pumpkin butter to friends and family. It’s one of those things that feels luxurious and special, but it’s ridiculously easy to make. Given that pumpkin butter is something not found in stores—at least not around here—it doubles as a gift for those hard-to-buy-for people in your life.

Despite its name, there’s no butter or any kind of dairy in pumpkin butter. It’s basically pumpkin cooked to the point where it’s spreadable like butter.

Making pumpkin butter

In a large heavy-bottomed pot, dump in a 15oz can of pumpkin puree—or if you make your own pumpkin puree, put an equivalent amount in the pot. For us metric system folks, 15oz is just shy of two cups, so you could just put in two cups and not worry about the 1oz extra.

To this, add half a cup of apple juice—I used my own apple juice that I canned from a friend’s apple tree this past summer—two-thirds cup of brown sugar, half a teaspoon of cinnamon, and an eighth of a teaspoon each of ground cloves, ground ginger, and salt.

When I got to the brown sugar part of this recipe is when I discovered I didn’t have any in the house. John had done some baking a few weeks ago and must have used the last of it. Unfortunately, we’re in the midst of a sugar shortage here in Western Canada. Most (or all?) of our sugar comes from Rogers / Lantic, and they’ve been on strike since sometime in September. Nowadays you’re lucky to find sugar in the grocery store…right as we enter into Christmas baking season. All of this is to say that I didn’t bother heading down to the grocery store to pick up a bag of brown sugar since I knew chances of me finding some were slim to none.

Thankfully, there’s an easy fix for this—I had white sugar and molasses on hand, and brown sugar is literally just white sugar and molasses combined.

Since pumpkin butter isn’t a baking recipe that requires exact ratios of ingredients, I didn’t get too exact with the white sugar and molasses ratios. I put in the equivalent amount of white sugar, two thirds of a cup, and then poured in several tablespoons of molasses.

Once everything is in the pot, give it a big stir to mix it all up, then turn on the stove, bring it to a boil, and then partially cover it, reduce the heat, and let it simmer for about twenty minutes until it’s thick and glossy. You’ll want to stir it regularly with a rubber or silicone spatula so you can scrape the bottom of the pot to ensure nothing is sticking and burning.

At the start…
At the end…

Once you’ve reached your desired consistency—and do feel free to let it cook a little longer if you find it’s not thick enough yet—remove the pot from the heat and let the pumpkin butter cool. Once it’s fully cool, you can transfer it to containers or jars for storage. I like to use one-cup mason jars as this allows me to put one jar in the fridge and the rest in the freezer, so I don’t have to worry about a big jar of it going bad before I can finish it all.

In the fridge, pumpkin butter should last a few weeks. In the freezer, you’ll get at least a few months.

Enjoying pumpkin butter

I find that pumpkin butter tastes like pumpkin pie filling, which shouldn’t be too surprising—after all, it’s made with pumpkin, sugar, and some of the spices found in pumpkin pie.

I like to eat it on my morning toast or on a bagel. It’s nice enough that it could be part of a mid-day snack or even a dessert. A scoop of pumpkin butter on top of a flaky buttery (but plain) pastry would be lovely.

Pumpkin Butter

5 from 1 vote
Pumpkin butter makes a wonderful autumn spread for toast and bagels, tasting almost like pumpkin pie.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 35 minutes
Course: Breakfast
Cuisine: American
Ingredients Equipment Method

Ingredients
  

  • 1 15oz Can Pumpkin Puree (or homemade pumpkin puree)
  • ½ Cup Apple Juice
  • ⅔ Cup Brown Sugar (Packed)
  • ½ tsp Ground Cinnamon
  • ⅛ tsp Ground Cloves
  • ⅛ tsp Ground Ginger
  • ⅛ heaping tsp Salt

Equipment

  • 1 Large Pot

Method
 

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large heavy-bottomed pot.
  2. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
  3. Reduce heat and partly cover. Simmer, stirring regularly to ensure nothing is sticking to the bottom and burning, for approximately twenty minutes until mixture becomes thick and glossy.
  4. Remove from heat, let cool. Transfer to jars or other fridge- and freezer-safe containers.
  5. Pumpkin butter can be stored, covered, in the fridge for a couple weeks or in the freezer for a few months.

Making and Preserving Pumpkin Puree

Posted on by craig

Cans of pumpkin puree are something I generally don’t have on hand and when I set out to make something with pumpkin puree I typically completely forget to buy some when I’m at the grocery store.

What I do often have on hand, particularly in the fall and early winter, is pumpkins.

Making pumpkin puree is fairly quick and very easy. The end result is often on-par with what you’d find in the grocery store, though it may be a bit waterier, which may require adjusting the liquid in whatever recipe you’re using the puree in.

Before we dive in, please note that pumpkin puree cannot be canned in either a water bath canner or a pressure canner. If canning is your ultimate goal, your strategy is to pressure can pumpkin chunks and then puree the chunks when you need it for a recipe.

Choosing the right pumpkin

To start, you need a good pumpkin. Jack-o-lantern pumpkins are not good for this—these pumpkins have been bred for carving purposes, not eating. While they are, of course, edible, they’re not as tasty or as tender as a pumpkin intended for eating.

When it comes to planting time in our garden in the spring, we always plant a few jack-o-lantern pumpkins so we have something to carve in October (though this year we had a pumpkin thief run off with our humongous jack-o-lantern pumpkin!) and we plant a bunch of sugar pie pumpkins. When selecting your pumpkin seeds to plant, if you’re growing these pumpkins yourself, read the description to ensure it’s meant for eating.

This year we ended up with about ten sugar pie pumpkins. We store them in my mom’s basement along with the rest of our squash. (For those new to the blog, I don’t have a basement or any sort of cool storage space, so I use a basement bedroom at my mom’s house as my food storage central. In return for using her space, she has free access to our harvest.) I often find pumpkins are the first squash to go mouldy and disintegrate. Quite often the butternut, acorn, and spaghetti squash will last till about March or April—they seem to go mouldy when the weather outside turns to spring—but the pumpkin will go mouldy within a month or two. It’s currently December and most of our pumpkins have been thrown in the compost because they went bad before we could do anything. We still have a few hanging around.

Back to the puree…

Preheat your oven to 400 F.

Cut your pumpkin in half. This can be tricky and potentially dangerous depending on the thickness, size, and shape of your pumpkin, and the strength and dexterity of your hands—so be very careful.

I typically find if I can break the stem off, that lets me put the pumpkin stem-side-down on the cutting board. The stem area is often very tough to cut through, but the bottom of the pumpkin is a little easier to cut. However you cut your pumpkin, the more stable it is on your cutting board, the less risk there is of injuring yourself.

There are two ways I’ve found for cutting pumpkins and other large squash:

  • Using a large and sharp knife—larger than your pumpkin, if you have one that large—press the middle of the blade against the peak of the pumpkin and see-saw the knife back and forth. The knife doesn’t slide back and forth, you’re just pressing down and see-sawing it (alternating between putting the greatest pressure on the handle end and then the tip end). You may want to drape a tea towel over the tip end of the knife so you don’t risk cutting your fingers/hand in this process. It’ll usually be a bit tough to break through the skin, but once you’ve done so, it’s fairly easy to then slide it down through the rest of the pumpkin. As you start to meet resistance when you get to the thick and tough stem area, stop.
  • If you don’t have a knife large enough for the above method, or if you find it’s not a method you’re comfortable with or capable of doing, the other method I’ve found is to take a reasonably large and sharp knife and carefully stick the knife into the pumpkin. Because you’re starting with the sharp tip, it goes in fairly easily. You should then be able to cut down one side of the pumpkin. When you meet the resistance of the thick and tough stem area, stop. Then turn the pumpkin around, slide the knife into the cut at the top, and then cut down the opposite side, again stopping when you meet that resistance.

Whichever method you’re using, remember to always be conscious of where your fingers and hands are and, whenever possible, cut so the knife is going away from you. I’ve come pretty close to chopping my fingertips a few times.

Now that you’ve cut through about 90% of the pumpkin, there’s still that tough stem part you didn’t cut through. Put the knife aside and break the pumpkin apart manually. To do this, slip your fingers into the cut you’ve made—the pumpkin should “give” enough for you to do this—so you’ve got a pumpkin half in each hand, and pull it apart. The pumpkin should break fairly easily.

The next step is to clean out the pumpkin. Using a spoon, fork, or your hands—whichever works easiest for you, though I often find I use a combination of all of these—scoop out all the seeds and the stringy stuff in the interior. You could filter out the seeds and make roasted pumpkin seeds. I find we generally don’t eat them when we make them, so for us, I throw all the pumpkin guts, including the seeds, into our composter.

Once everything is cleaned out, give it all a sprinkle of salt, and then place them cut-side-down on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. If you don’t have parchment paper, give the baking sheet a light spritz of oil or non-stick spray so the roasted pumpkin doesn’t stick to the baking sheet.

Then roast it in the oven for about 45-60 minutes.

You’ll know it’s ready when the skin starts to look a little bit wrinkly and the flesh of the pumpkin starts to pull away from the skin. When done, remove from the oven and turn the oven off. Let the pumpkin rest until it’s cool enough to handle.

With the pumpkin I roasted for this post, I didn’t really get much of that wrinkly or pulling-away effect, so I let it sit in the oven for the fully sixty minutes. When I let it rest to cool down, it then got very wrinkly and the flesh was clearly pulling away from the skin—I could tell because the skin was sinking down and looked like it had no flesh supporting it underneath.

Now comes the pureeing step.

Using a big spoon or other kitchen utensil ideal for scooping (perhaps an ice cream scoop?), scoop the pumpkin out of the skin and place in a food processor. The empty skin can be composted.

If your pumpkin is large or your food processor is small, you may need to do this in batches. Turn on the food processor and let it run until the pumpkin is fully pureed and smooth. If you find there’s a lot gathering on the sides, you may want to turn off your food processor and scrape down the sides with a spatula. You may also want to stir the pumpkin in the food processor as I sometimes find the chunky bits get trapped at the bottom under the reach of the blades.

In previous years, I’ve also done this with a hand blender / stick blender with the pumpkin in a flat-bottomed pot. It worked just as well but took quite a while and the blender got quite warm in my hand. So, ultimately, I’d recommend a standard food processor, but a stick blender will do the trick if that’s what you have.

In the absence of both a food processor and a stick blender, you could mash the pumpkin with a potato masher.

When the puree has a smooth consistency with very few or no chunks of pumpkin, it’s ready. I find it’s difficult to avoid chunks entirely, but I look at that as part of the appeal of homemade puree—it’s a reminder that I made this from scratch from a pumpkin my husband grew in our garden.

Storing your puree

From here you have two options for your next step.

  • If you’re planning to use the pumpkin puree in the next day or two, transfer the puree into a container and place in the fridge until you’re ready to use it.
  • If you’re not planning to use the pumpkin puree in the immediate future, the puree can be frozen in freezer-safe containers. I like to use one-cup (half-pint) mason jars; I fill them with puree and leave a bit of headspace in case the puree expands when frozen, and then put them in the freezer. Be sure that the jar you use does not have “shoulders” but is instead “straight-sided”. If it has shoulders and the puree expands as it freezes, it could push up against the shoulders and break the jar. Alternatively, you could put the puree into Ziplock bags and squeeze out all the air.
    • Most sources I see say that frozen pumpkin puree is good for about three months. However, I’ve had puree in the freezer for up to a year and it was fine when using it…so your mileage may vary on this.
    • The old adage of “when in doubt, throw it out” applies here. If you find pumpkin puree in the back of your freezer from an unknown date and it looks like it might be freezer burned or it’s crystallized a lot, you’re likely best to throw it in your compost.

Pumpkin puree cannot be canned in either a water bath canner or a pressure canner.

Using your pumpkin puree

You can use the pumpkin puree as you would use store-bought puree.

The only thing to be mindful of is that homemade puree tends to have more water to it, so you may need to adjust the liquid in the recipe you’re using so things don’t become too wet.

Alternatives

You could use this same method for pretty much any type of squash with a firm rind/skin.

My step-dad has made “pumpkin pie” using butternut squash before—you wouldn’t know it wasn’t pumpkin if he didn’t tell you—and he did it using one of our homegrown butternut squashes, so he would have followed this method or a variation of it.

Pumpkin Puree

5 from 2 votes
Make homemade pumpkin puree for pies, breads, soups, and more.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 15 minutes
Course: vegetable
Cuisine: vegetable
Ingredients Method

Ingredients
  

  • 1 Pumpkin
  • Salt, to taste

Method
 

  1. Preheat oven to 400℉.
  2. Carefully cut pumpkin in half and scoop out the insides. The scooped-out insides can be composted or discarded. Alternatively, you could use the seeds to make roasted pumpkin seeds.
  3. Sprinkle a little bit of salt on the pumpkin.
  4. Place pumpkin halves cut-side down on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
  5. Bake in oven for 45-60 minutes, until the skin starts to wrinkle and the flesh pulls away from the skin.
  6. Remove from oven, turn oven off, and let pumpkin cool until it is safe to handle.
  7. Scoop pumpkin flesh out of the skin and transfer to a food processor. Depending on the size of the pumpkin and the size of the food processor, this may need to be done in batches.
  8. Puree with food processor until a smooth consistency is achieved. Scrape down sides and stir pumpkin, as necessary, to achieve this smooth consistency.
  9. Puree may be stored in the fridge for a few days or in the freezer for up to three months. If freezing in jars, ensure the jars are freezer-safe and are straight-sided (and do not have "shoulders", as this can lead to breakage if the puree expands while freezing).
  10. Homemade pumpkin puree is often a little waterier than store-bought puree, so when adding puree to recipes, adjust accordingly.

Two Ways to Dry Hot Peppers (and What to Do With Them!)

Posted on by craig

In summer of 2022, I tried growing hot peppers for the first time. We had a few jalapeño pepper plants, half a dozen banana pepper plants, a Carolina Reaper plant, and a couple plants with what looked like Thai chilis. I figured we’d get a bumper crop of hot peppers, perfect for pickling and exploring other possibilities with.

But our peppers in 2022 were a dud.

We did have some success. We got two to three peppers per plant with the jalapeños and bananas, and a bunch of little Thai chilis, but we got no Carolina Reapers. I made a handful of jars of pickled peppers but it barely lasted half a year before they were gone.

When 2023 rolled around, we decided to triple our hot pepper plants so we’d get a decent amount to work with.

Well…I don’t know if it comes down to the specific varieties of plants or if it was just ideal weather conditions this year, but we got a massive harvest of hot peppers. Each plant—we had jalapeños, bananas, Scotch bonnets, and cayennes this year—produced dozens of peppers. We were up to our ears in hot peppers.

After making a couple dozen jars of pickled hot peppers, a batch of candied jalapeños, and two types of hot sauce, and giving a bunch away…we still had hot peppers coming in.

Pickled hot peppers
Candied jalapeños

I was at my wit’s end with hot peppers and wanted to just throw the rest in the compost, but my husband persuaded me to just try drying them so we can sprinkled hot pepper flakes on pizza and other things.

Thankfully, I listened to him.

I did some digging on the internet and found out about two methods of drying peppers and then two methods of processing them afterward. While it wasn’t super clear which method was ideal for which pepper, my guideline was this:

  • For peppers with thick walls, and thus lots of moisture, I went with the dehydrator to dry them quickly and fully, without the risk of things going bad. These peppers I ground into a powder that can be thrown into various recipes that need a kick. In my case, this included the jalapeños, bananas, and Scotch bonnets.
  • For peppers with thin walls, and thus not much moisture, I hang-dried them. These peppers were put in a food processor to turn into flakes for putting on pizzas and other dishes. In my case, this was with the cayennes.

Drying Peppers in a Dehydrator

With the bulk of peppers—the jalapeños, bananas, and Scotch bonnets—I chopped them up and threw them in the dehydrator at about 125 degrees Fahrenheit and just let them sit. The guide that came with my dehydrator said it would take about twelve to sixteen hours.

After twelve hours, they were certainly dehydrated, but I wanted them even drier. My goal was to grind them up into a powder so I wanted them as dry as I could get them. We left them in the dehydrator for three days.

At this point, they were so crispy that they easily broke if I touched them too hard. Perfect.

If you don’t have a dehydrator, you could try doing this in the oven if your oven is able to go that low. But I’m not sure if I’d want to leave my oven running for 2-3 days. Alternatively, some folks can get by with just turning on the light in the oven and letting that heat build up and dehydrate food. This may take longer than three days to get the desired crispiness, but it’s a lot less risky than leaving the oven on for three days, and won’t heat up the house as much.

Be aware that dehydrating hot peppers in a dehydrator—and presumably an oven—makes the house smell like hot peppers. This can make it hard to breathe if it’s strong or if anyone in your house has any sort of medical condition that can make breathing difficult. It’s best to do this in a well-ventilated space, perhaps by cracking open the kitchen windows to clear out the hot pepper fumes and bring in some fresh air.

Once the peppers were fully dry—and you can see how they’ve shrunk in size with all the moisture gone—I threw them all in a blender and let the blender do its magic. In a few minutes, I had an orangey powder that is nice and spicy. (You may want to crack open some windows when blending them because it gets a little intense.)

I like to use this in soups to give them a kick. It also works great if you’re making a Spanish or Mexican rice and want to add some heat. We’ve also sprinkled this directly on pizza for a bit of a zing.

Drying Peppers With the Sun

The easier, though much longer, way of dehydrating peppers is to hang them in a window and let the sun do its work. This can take a few weeks or a few months, depending on how sunny and warm it is.

To do this, start by cutting a slit along the length of each pepper. This allows the moisture to escape and prevent mildew. Next, thread the peppers together. All I had on me was twine, so I tied the stems of each pepper so they all hang together nicely. If you have some sturdy thread (perhaps fishing line) and a needle, you could easily string them together by poking the needle through the tops of the peppers.

I’d started by hanging them in the kitchen where it gets a lot of ambient light and there’s good air circulation, but I eventually moved them to my husband’s office window. It has a southern exposure so it gets lots of sunlight, and it’s directly above an air duct, so it would get lots of ventilation from the air conditioning and then the furnace as we shift into fall.

Though there’s only one string in this photo, I eventually ended up with five strings of peppers. The nice aspect of the hang-dry method is you can just add strings of peppers whenever you’ve got them and just leave it all till they’re all ready; you don’t have to do everything at once like you would with a dehydrator.

After several weeks, I took them down. They were all nice and paper-crisp.

From there, I chopped off the tops and carefully looked over each pepper. I had one that had gone mouldy on the inside—the black and mottled colouring on the outside was my cue that something wasn’t right on the inside. The rest seemed to be fine.

So, into the food processor they went.

I chose a food processor over a blender because I wanted a different end product than the dehydrator-dehydrated peppers. For those ones, I wanted a hot pepper powder, so using a blender meant the peppers were continually pushed down to the blade and could be ground into a powder. For these cayennes, I wanted hot pepper flakes, like what you put on pizza, so I didn’t want the powder result of a blender. The food processor chops things wonderfully but since the blade doesn’t go right to the very bottom, it lets flakes sit there without being chopped to powder. (You may want to crack a window while processing because the smell can get a little intense.)

I had to do two batches because I had too much, and I couldn’t quite get the consistently-small flakes like you get in the store, but the end result looks gorgeous.

These will be great for sprinkling on pizza or any other dish that needs a colourful garnish that provides a kick.