Category: Preserving Vegetables

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

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

Equipment

  • 1 Large Pot

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

Instructions
 

  • Combine all ingredients in a large heavy-bottomed pot.
  • Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
  • 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.
  • Remove from heat, let cool. Transfer to jars or other fridge- and freezer-safe containers.
  • Pumpkin butter can be stored, covered, in the fridge for a couple weeks or in the freezer for a few months.
Keyword pumpkin, pumpkin butter

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

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

Ingredients
  

  • 1 Pumpkin
  • Salt, to taste

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 400℉.
  • 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.
  • Sprinkle a little bit of salt on the pumpkin.
  • Place pumpkin halves cut-side down on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
  • Bake in oven for 45-60 minutes, until the skin starts to wrinkle and the flesh pulls away from the skin.
  • Remove from oven, turn oven off, and let pumpkin cool until it is safe to handle.
  • 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.
  • Puree with food processor until a smooth consistency is achieved. Scrape down sides and stir pumpkin, as necessary, to achieve this smooth consistency.
  • 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).
  • Homemade pumpkin puree is often a little waterier than store-bought puree, so when adding puree to recipes, adjust accordingly.
Keyword pumpkin, pumpkin puree

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.

How to Make Butter Chicken Sauce (with Canning Instructions!)

Posted on by craig

Tomatoes are always a problem in our garden because we always have too many.

In summer of 2022 we somehow ended up with 49 tomato plants. This year, we swore not to do that again…and ended up with 60. It’s partly a “too many cooks in the kitchen” kind of thing—we buy tomato plants and then our neighbour who we share garden space with will surprise us with tomato seedlings he grew at the end of winter. We gave away a handful of plants, but still had an over-abundance this year.

But after making lots of salsa, pasta sauce, and tomato juice—and given that we still have leftover ketchup, green tomato chutney, and tomato soup from last year—I needed more recipes.

The Idea…

One way we like to think about gardening and food processing is to look at what we buy in the grocery store and ask ourselves if we can do that ourselves at home. We landed on butter chicken and curries.

I tried looking for butter chicken canning recipes and came up with nothing. Absolutely nothing. There appear to be no lab-tested recipes. Further, people who cook butter chicken and curries from scratch often write about how the freshness of the ingredients is what makes it really good, and canning would dampen that freshness.

If I were to make it from scratch, though, I’d be using dried spices since I’m not going to find a lot of fresh Indian spices in Winnipeg unless I perhaps go to very specific grocery stores.

So… my determination to do this project in hand, I set off in new directions.

In the strictest of senses, this would be considered “rebel canning”, which are canning recipes that are not lab-tested and thus can’t be guaranteed for safety. However, I decided to work within the canning rules and I’ve come up with something that works. You are allowed to swap out dried spices in a recipe or adjust the dried spices, provided you’re not putting in huge gobs of dried spices and turning a sauce into a thick paste.

With that in mind, I looked at my super easy canned pasta sauce recipe. Really…butter chicken is a tomato-based sauce with Indian spices. There’s a bit more to it—like adding butter, which is a no-no for canning—but a good sauce base would give me what I need to make a super convenient dinner.

Finding a standard butter chicken spice mix was my next challenge. There does not seem to be a standard.

I eventually settled on this:

  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 tsp smoked paprika
  • 3 tsp garam masala
  • 2 tsp ground coriander
  • 1 tsp ground cardamom
  • 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 2 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

This make more than you need—which is just two or three tablespoons—but if you’re like me and you’re swimming in tomatoes at the end of the season, you’ll likely be making multiple batches.

This year when I was looking for something in the spice aisle at Safeway, I discovered they carried a premixed butter chicken spice. After quickly checking there was no cornstarch in it (which is sometimes added to prevent caking, but is a strict no-no for canning), I bought a couple bottles and used this rather than the homemade spice mix.

(If you don’t have a lot of spices at home already, buying a premixed spice mix is way cheaper than buying half a dozen individual spices.)

(I fully recognize that as a person who does not share this heritage, I am basing my tastes on Western ideas of what butter chicken should taste like. If you have a more authentic spice blend, I would love to hear about it!)

Making Butter Chicken Sauce

Maybe “sauce base” is more accurate, since during the dinner-cooking stage, you can add coconut cream and/or butter.

Anyway, it’s fairly straight forward, so I won’t write out the whole thing in this post. (It’s identical to the pasta sauce recipe, just with different spices.)

In a nutshell, you put the tomatoes in your slow cooker. If you’ve got oodles of cherry tomatoes, just wash and de-stem them and load them into the slow cooker. If you’ve got bigger tomatoes, chop them up a bit and perhaps de-core them if they’ve got dense cores.

Throw on some of your seasoning—I used about two tablespoons for a 12-cup slow cooker’s worth of tomatoes—and let it simmer on high for about two and a half hours or on low for about five hours.

Once everything is cooked, blend it all up with a handheld / stick blender. Give it a taste and add more seasoning if you feel it needs more.

From here you can either use it fresh if you’re using it in the next day or so. You can freeze it in dinner-size portions. Or you can can it in a water bath canner.

I find one-cup / half-pint jars make enough sauce for two people, so I do them all up in this size. You’ll want to add half a tablespoon of lemon juice to each jar (or a tablespoon to a pint jar, or two tablespoons to a quart jar) and add in sauce, leaving a half-inch headspace. Wipe the rims, put on the lids to fingertip tightness, and process for 35 minutes (adjusting for altitude if necessary).

Using Your Butter Chicken Sauce

When it’s dinner time, I fry up some chicken and veggies in a pan and then dump in a jar of butter chicken sauce. If I feel it needs a little more “sauciness”, I might add in a small can of coconut cream. And since it’s butter chicken, I add a dollop of butter and stir it until it melts and fully incorporates. Serve over rice and with a side of naan.

Delicious.

Butter Chicken Sauce

A tasty and highly customizable sauce that makes for easy weeknight dinners. Plus, it can be canned so it's shelf-stable until you're ready to use it. This recipe is more of a template without exact quantities, but safe canning instructions are included.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 2 hours 30 minutes
Canning Time (if canning) 35 minutes
Course dinner
Cuisine Indian

Equipment

  • Slow cooker (See notes for alternatives)
  • Hand blender, blender, or food processor

Ingredients
  

  • Cherry tomatoes (Can use regular tomatoes. See notes for more details.)
  • Butter chicken spice mix (See notes)
  • Olive oil (Or a neutral oil like canola oil)
  • Lemon juice (If canning the sauce)

Instructions
 

  • Wash and de-stem tomatoes. If using tomatoes larger than cherry-sized, chop them into halves or quarters, depending on their size.
  • Fill the slow cooker with tomatoes. Add a drizzle of olive oil, no more than a few tablespoons. Add in seasonings (see notes for details). Stir.
  • Cover and set slow cooker to high and let cook two and a half hours, or until everything looks fully cooked (the juice has released from the tomatoes, cherry tomatoes have popped, etc.). If you prefer to use the low setting, let it cook for five hours.
  • Using a hand blender / stick blender, blend everything until a smooth consistency. If using a regular blender or a food processor, process in batches until everything is a smooth consistency.
  • Sauce can be used immediately or refrigerated for next-day use.
    If freezing, put sauce in meal-size portions in ziplock bags or jars. If using jars, be sure to use jars that do not have "shoulders", and leave some headspace in case the sauce expands while freezing.
    If canning, add a tablespoon of lemon juice per pint jar or two tablespoons per quart jar. (Do not use a larger size. If using half-pints, add half a tablespoon of lemon juice.) Leave a half-inch of headspace. Wipe rims clean and put on two-part lids, fingertip tight. Process in a boiling water canner for 35 minutes (adjusting for altitude if necessary, see notes for a link). After processing, let sit in canner for 5-10 minutes, then remove jars from canner and place on a towel on a level surface and let sit for 12-24 hours. After this time, check that jars have sealed—unsealed jars should be refrigerated and used within a few days, sealed jars can be stored for up to a year and a half (after which point the flavour quality may degrade, but the safety remains indefinitely). See notes for more information on canning. I find one cup / half pint jars the ideal size for two servings.
  • See notes for suggestions on how to use this sauce.

Notes

Alternative Methods to Cook the Tomatoes:
This can be made in a slow cooker or in the oven. If using the oven, lay out an even layer of cherry tomatoes in a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 35 minutes at 450 F, until the cherry tomatoes are wrinkly and bursting. You may want to line the baking sheet with parchment paper for easy cleanup. This can create a nice roasted flavour. I’ve also done a large batch of pasta sauce (which is the same as this, just different seasonings) in my dutch oven—all the steps were the same as the oven directions, but in a dutch oven rather than a rimmed baking sheet.
Butter Chicken Spice Mix:
The first year I made this, I whipped up my own butter chicken spice mixed based on some recipes I found online.
To make your own butter chicken spice mix:
  • In a bowl, combine:
    • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
    • 2 tsp smoked paprika
    • 3 tsp garam masala
    • 2 tsp ground coriander
    • 1 tsp ground cardamom
    • 2 tsp ground cumin
    • 1 tsp ground ginger
    • 2 tsp ground turmeric
    • 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
If you’re buying a pre-mixed package of spice, read the ingredients to ensure there is no cornstarch in the spice mix.
Whether using pre-mixed spice or home-mixed spice, add one to two tablespoons to the tomatoes. After blending the fully-cooked tomatoes, take a taste—add more spice and blend, if necessary.
General Tips:
While the recipe works great for cherry tomatoes, this works equally well with larger tomatoes, cut into either halves or quarters, depending on the size. If the larger tomatoes have a thick/firm core, you may want to core the tomatoes as well.
This sauce tastes super good fresh, and just as good frozen or canned. The first year I did this, I froze all the sauce, but for the second year I did this, I canned the sauce. There’s really no difference in quality or taste either way. I prefer canning because freezer space is limited, but if you have freezer space and/or canning intimidates you, freezing is an excellent option.
If you are new to canning, click here for a Canning 101 to understand some of these terms and steps. If you have to adjust for altitude because your elevation is greater than 1,000 feet, click here for more information.
Please note that this recipe has not been lab tested and in the strictest sense would thus be considered rebel canning. However, when canning it is acceptable to swap out dry spices without affecting food safety. This recipe is based on safe pasta sauce recipes, just with different seasonings.
How to Use the Sauce:
When cooking your protein and vegetables together in a large pan, simply pour the sauce on top and let simmer until fully cooked, hot, and fragrant. Butter chicken usually has butter mixed in, so feel free to add a good dollop of butter to the pan and stir as it melts and mixes with the sauce.
If you prefer the sauce to be a little creamier, feel free to add a small can of coconut cream to thicken it up. Alternatively, you could create a slurry of one tablespoon of cornstarch and one tablespoon of water and then add this to the sauce in the pan.
Do not add coconut cream or cornstarch to the jars before canning as this is unsafe for canning. These ingredients can only be added in the final cooking stage.
Serve the protein, veggies, and sauce over a bed of rice and a side of naan.
Keyword butter chicken sauce, canning meals, curry sauce, easy dinner ideas

How to Make Pasta Sauce (with Canning Instructions!)

Posted on by craig

When the tomatoes first start ripening in the garden, it’s a time of joy. Nothing beats a fresh tomato!

But a few weeks later when they all start ripening, it becomes a time of great distress—because how on earth am I going to use up all these tomatoes???

We have a tomato problem.

Two years ago, we had a decent amount of tomatoes and I was able to preserve everything and we enjoyed it throughout the year.

Last year, I got in a bit of a panic that we wouldn’t have enough tomatoes, so I bought extra plants. While I was doing this, our neighbour whose passion seems to be growing tomato seedlings for our shared garden, brought out dozens of tomato plants for us to have. We ended up with 49 tomato plants last year.

When the first frost hit in early October 2022, we panicked and harvested all the remaining tomatoes. Before this frost-harvest, I was already overwhelmed with tomatoes—there were just too many! But once that emergency harvest happened, our kitchen was filled with crates and crates and crates of tomatoes. I couldn’t go through them fast enough, so some started rotting and our kitchen was filled with fruit flies. We ended up throwing out hundreds of tomatoes, if not thousands. We swore to never repeat that.

When we started the garden this year, we decided to limit our tomato production, so we only bought a few plants. And then our neighbour brought out the 40—yes, 40—that he’d grown in his house. We suddenly had somewhere around 60 plants. We gave some away, but planted most of them in our garden.

So… what does one do with a million tomatoes?

One of the easiest answers is pasta sauce.

There are a million pasta sauce recipes out there—some safe for canning and some not. Some take a lot of work, and some are fairly easy.

Last year, I stumbled across a cherry tomato pasta sauce recipe (as we had a dozen cherry tomato plants last year) and it quickly became my go-to pasta sauce recipe because of how darn easy it is. It’s also highly adaptable to what you have on hand and how you want to do it. Further, it works perfect as a fresh sauce, a frozen sauce, or a canned sauce.

The best part is that you don’t have to peel the tomatoes—a laborious step in nearly every other pasta sauce canning recipe! Nor is a food mill required at any point. Tomato peels are safe for canning, there are recipes that use unpeeled tomatoes after all, but they’re usually peeled in the case of pasta sauce because they can sometimes turn bitter in the canning process. I’ve never noticed any bitterness with this recipe, so I’m never going back to one where you have to peel them.

Step One: Tomatoes

The recipe I was following was for cherry tomatoes, but a little note said that it was good for all types of tomatoes, but you might want to chop them up if they’re too large.

When I did the batch of sauce where I took photos for this post, I had an abundance of plum tomatoes. Since they’re not much bigger than cherry tomatoes, I left them whole for this recipe.

The first step is simple—wash and de-stem the tomatoes. If they’re large, cut them into chunks. (And if they have a tough core, de-core them as well.)

Then just dump it all in your slow cooker.

(If you don’t have a slow cooker or don’t like using it, I’ve got oven adaptations in the recipe notes at the bottom of this page.)

I have a 12 cup slow cooker, but the beauty of this recipe is that it can be adjusted to any amount. In terms of canning safety, if you choose to can it, we will be adding lemon juice directly to the jars before canning, so there’s no need to worry about acidity levels and how much acid to add to the slow cooker.

Step Two: Add Seasonings

This is rather vague. The recipe I based this off was rather vague too. I tend to be a cook that’s comfortable flying by the seat of my pants, but I know that’s not everyone’s style. (My mom panics if there aren’t super-specific quantities listed in a recipe.)

If you’re the super-specific quantities type, this works for an 8-cup batch:

  • 1 Tbsp onion powder
  • 1 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp dried oregano
  • 1 tsp dried basil
  • Salt and pepper to taste

If you have a 12-cup slow cooker like myself, filled to the brim, that would work out to 1.5 Tbsp onion and garlic and 1.5 tsp oregano and basil.

Nowadays, though, I just open the seasoning packets and dump in whatever looks good. You’ll see in the photo below that I used fresh garlic, which the original recipe indicated could be done and still be safe for canning. I generally prefer garlic powder, though, just to be on the extra safe side.

Step Three: Add Oil, Stir, and Cook

Add a healthy drizzle of olive oil or a neutral oil. (Have you seen the price of olive oil lately? I used much-cheaper canola oil.) Give it a good stir, if you can. Mine was a little too full to stir well, so I just kind of nudged things around a bit.

Put the lid on, set it to high, and let it cook for a few hours. If you prefer to set it on low and let it cook for half the day, that’s fine too.

What you’re looking for, regardless of how you cook it, is that the cherry or plum tomatoes have burst and their skins are wrinkled and the juice has been released. If you used big chopped up tomatoes, you’re similarly looking for them to look fully-cooked.

Step Four: Blend

If you have a handheld blender / stick blender, stick it in and blend it up. Make it nice and smooth.

If you’re using a food processor or a traditional blender, you can do this in batches, but be careful not to burn yourself as the sauce is quite hot.

(I forgot to take a picture of this stage.)

I’d suggest taking a taste because if you want to add more of any seasonings, now is the time to do so.

Step Five: Choose Your Storage Method

If you’re using this the same day or the next day, it can be refrigerated until ready to use.

If you’re freezing it, separate it into dinner-size servings in Ziplock bags or jars. The first year I did this, I froze it and it was wonderful when I thawed and reheated it. I normally don’t care for freezing, but this works just fine. If you’re using jars, try not to use jars that have a “shoulder”, and be sure to leave some headspace in case the sauce expands as it freezes. I don’t know how long things keep in the freezer, but the other day I found a frozen jar of sauce from last summer (so about a year ago), which I used it up and it was perfectly fine.

If you’re canning it, the instructions are fairly straight-forward:

  • Add one tablespoon of lemon juice to each pint jar or two tablespoons to each quart jar. Do not use larger sizes. If you’re using a smaller size, do the appropriate ratio (like, a half-pint jar would require a half-tablespoon of lemon juice).
  • Wipe the rim, then put on a two-part lid to fingertip-tight.
  • Process in a boiling water bath for 35 minutes (adjusting for altitude if necessary).
  • After processing, let sit in the canner for 5-10 minutes and then carefully remove jars from canner and place on a thick towel and let rest for 12-24 hours. After this time, check that the seals have popped, if any haven’t put them in the fridge and use within a few days (or just throw them in the freezer and have them whenever).
This jar looks a little on the orange side because it was made with a mix of orange and red tomatoes.

Step Six: Using Your Sauce

Use this how you would use any pasta sauce.

I like to make this a little more substantial when I make it part of dinner, so I usually fry up a little bit of ground beef, throw in some onions and mushrooms, and then add in the sauce. This goes perfect on top of pasta and served with your favourite cheese and a side of garlic bread.

Cherry Tomato Pasta Sauce

A tasty and easy pasta sauce with a lot of versatility, perfect for using fresh, frozen, or canned. This recipe is more of a template without exact quantities, but safe canning instructions are included.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 2 hours 30 minutes
Canning Time (if canning) 35 minutes
Course dinner
Cuisine Italian

Equipment

  • 1 Slow cooker (See notes for alternatives)
  • 1 Hand blender, blender, or food processor

Ingredients
  

  • Cherry tomatoes (Can use regular tomatoes. See notes for more details.)
  • Dried seasonings of your choice (Suggestions include onion powder, garlic powder, dried oregano, dried basil, salt, and pepper. See notes for more details.)
  • Olive oil (Or a neutral oil like canola oil)
  • Lemon juice (If canning the sauce)

Instructions
 

  • Wash and de-stem tomatoes. If using tomatoes larger than cherry-sized, chop them into halves or quarters, depending on their size.
  • Fill the slow cooker with tomatoes. Add a drizzle of olive oil, no more than a few tablespoons. Add in seasonings of choice (see notes for details). Stir.
  • Cover and set slow cooker to high and let cook two and a half hours, or until everything looks fully cooked (the juice has released from the tomatoes, cherry tomatoes have popped, etc.). If you prefer to use the low setting, you'll want to let it cook for five hours.
  • Using a hand blender / stick blender, blend everything until a smooth consistency. If using a regular blender or a food processor, process in batches until everything is a smooth consistency.
  • If using fresh, serve on pasta or dish of choice. Sauce can be refrigerated for next-day use.
    If freezing, put pasta sauce in meal-size portions in ziplock bags or jars. If using jars, be sure to use jars that do not have "shoulders", and leave some headspace in case the sauce expands while freezing.
    If canning, add a tablespoon of lemon juice per pint jar or two tablespoons per quart jar. (Do not use a larger size. If using half-pints, add half a tablespoon of lemon juice.) Leave a half-inch of headspace. Wipe rims clean and put on two-part lids, fingertip tight. Process in a boiling water canner for 35 minutes (adjusting for altitude if necessary, see notes for a link). After processing, let sit in canner for 5-10 minutes, then remove jars from canner and place on a towel on a level surface and let sit for 12-24 hours. After this time, check that jars have sealed—unsealed jars should be refrigerated and used within a few days, sealed jars can be stored for up to a year and a half (after which point the flavour quality may degrade, but the safety remains indefinitely). See notes for more information on canning.

Notes

Alternative Methods to Cook the Tomatoes:
This can be made in a slow cooker or in the oven. If using the oven, lay out an even layer of cherry tomatoes in a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 35 minutes at 450 F, until the cherry tomatoes are wrinkly and bursting. You may want to line the baking sheet with parchment paper for easy cleanup. This can create a nice roasted flavour. I’ve also done a large batch in my dutch oven—all the steps were the same as the oven directions, but in a dutch oven rather than a rimmed baking sheet.
Seasoning Tips:
The seasonings are flexible. For canning safety, as long as you’re not adding immense amounts of dried seasoning so that it becomes paste-like, it should be fine. If you’re using the sauce fresh or freezing the sauce, feel free to use fresh onion, garlic, and herbs, if you’d like.
I generally eyeball the seasoning to whatever feels right, but if you’re the type that needs a recipe to follow, for every eight cups of tomatoes, use 1 Tbsp of onion powder, 1 Tbsp of garlic powder, 1 tsp of oregano, and 1 tsp of basil. My slow cooker holds 12 cups, so if I were going by this formula, I would use 1.5 Tbsp onion powder, 1.5 Tbsp garlic powder, 1.5 tsp oregano, and 1.5 tsp basil. For any amount of seasoning, add salt and pepper to taste.
If you’re using fresh ingredients for fresh or frozen sauce, you could switch these out with a medium onion, two cloves of garlic, a few sprigs of oregano, and a few sprigs of basil. If you are using fresh oregano/basil and you are oven-roasting the tomatoes, add the herbs during the blending step, not the roasting step, otherwise you’ll have burned herbs (but be sure to pull the oregano leaves from the stem so you don’t have chopped up stem in your sauce).
General Tips:
While the original ingredients and recipe called for cherry tomatoes only, this works equally well with larger tomatoes, cut into either halves or quarters, depending on the size. If the larger tomatoes have a thick/firm core, you may want to core the tomatoes as well.
This sauce tastes super good fresh, and just as good frozen or canned. The first year I did this, I froze all the sauce, but for the second year I did this, I canned the sauce. There’s really no difference in quality or taste either way. I prefer canning because freezer space is limited, but if you have freezer space and/or canning intimidates you, freezing is an excellent option.
If you are new to canning, click here for a Canning 101 to understand some of these terms and steps. If you have to adjust for altitude because your elevation is greater than 1,000 feet, click here for more information.
Keyword canning recipe, cherry tomato, pasta sauce

How to Pressure Can Potatoes

Posted on by craig

Every year my husband grows far too many potatoes.

We give some away and we attempt to eat as many potatoes as possible before they grow too many eyes. Fortunately, once the eyes get too numerous and too large, the potatoes are still usable as seed potatoes for the following year’s garden, so there’s no real waste here.

Recently, I’ve started canning potatoes and I’ve found this to be a really handy staple to have in the kitchen.

Canning potatoes is only recommended for red-skinned potatoes because they hold their shape best once they’re boiled and cooked. Light-skinned potatoes unfortunately turn to mush and are thus potentially unsafe for canning.

The process outlined in the recipe is fairly straight forward.

Wash and peel and cube potatoes, storing them in water as you go to prevent unwanted colour changes.

Cubed potatoes patiently waiting for me to cube more potatoes.

Once this is done, rinse the potatoes once more and blanch them as per the instructions below. Pack into pint or quart jars with a bit of salt (or a salt alternative if you’re watching your sodium) and top off with boiling water, then process in the pressure canner.

Since potatoes in water are a low-acid food, this must be done in a pressure canner and cannot be done in a water bath canner. Doing so in a water bath canner runs the risk of botulism, which has the unfortunate side effect of death.

You might be looking at this like I initially looked at this—with a bit of disinterest because canned potatoes doesn’t sound all that appetizing.

What I’ve found, though, is that canned potatoes are perfect for various uses in the kitchen, including:

  • Quick mashed potatoes—since it’s already cooked, you just have to heat and mash
  • Shepherd’s pie—skip the extra step of making mashed potatoes and just pull a jar of canned potatoes out of the cupboard, mash, and top your pie
  • An alternative to gnocchi—we love having gnocchi but I’m not always organized enough to remember to buy it when I’m grocery shopping, so I’ve learned that if I drain a can of potatoes and toss them into a pan with some oil and butter, they fry up nice and crispy and go great with some pesto sauce
  • The first step in gnocchi—if you want to make your own gnocchi, the first step is cooking potatoes, but using canned potatoes means that first step is already done
  • Potato bread (recipe here!)—I recently discovered an Irish potato flatbread where the first step is to boil and mash potatoes, but using canned potatoes cuts down the time dramatically

Canning Potatoes (Pressure Canner)

If you have a bumper crop of red-skinner potatoes and no cold storage to keep them for the long term, pressure canning them is a great way to preserve them. They're fully cooked in the jar, saving time when you're preparing them for dinner or other uses.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 1 hour
Cook Time 40 minutes
Course Side Dish

Equipment

  • 1 Pressure Canner
  • Pint or Quart Mason Jars The exact number needed will vary based on the amount of potatoes you have.

Ingredients
  

  • Red-skinned potatoes These must be red-skinned potatoes as they hold their shape best after boiling. Other potatoes are not recommended for canning.
  • Water
  • Salt A sodium-free salt alternative could work if you're watching your sodium.

Instructions
 

  • Wash potatoes, then peel them and cut them into cubes no bigger than half an inch. Small potatoes (1-2 inches) can be left whole, but must be peeled.
  • As you peel and chop the potatoes, put the cubes into a big bowl or pot filled with water. This prevents them from changing colour and also drains a bit of the starch from the potatoes.
  • Boil water in a big pot. You'll be blanching the potatoes, so it should be big enough to accommodate all of the potatoes, or at least to accommodate batches of potatoes. Boil additional water, either in a pot or a kettle; this will be for adding to the jars with the potatoes.
  • While waiting for the pot of water to boil, rinse the potatoes once more to wash away more starch.
  • Boil potato cubes for two minutes. If using small whole potatoes, boil them for ten minutes.
  • Drain the potatoes.
  • Pack into pint or quart mason jars, leaving one inch of headspace. Add ½ teaspoon of salt to each jar. (Adding salt is optional, but potatoes can be very bland without added salt at this step and sometimes the blandness can't be remedied.)
  • Add boiled water, maintaining one inch of headspace. Debubble and top up water if needed. Wipe jar rims, put on lid and screw band to fingertip tightness.
  • Process in a pressure canner as per your pressure canner's directions. *See note below.
    Pressure gauge at 10 lbs, dial gauge at 11 lbs. Adjust as necessary based on your altitude.
    Process pints for 35 minutes, quarts for 40 minutes.
  • When finished, bring canner pressure down as per canner instructions. Remove jars from canner and set on a heavy towel overnight to cool and seal. The next day, check that jars sealed; if any didn't seal, put them in the refrigerator and use them within a couple days.

Notes

Most pressure canners require a minimum load for the canner to work properly. My pressure canner requires a minimum load of two quarts / two litres. Since this is a variable recipe based on the amount of potatoes you have, you could end up with a too-small load. In this case, figure out how many jars need to be added to achieve the minimum load and fill those jars with boiled water and put on lids and screw bands to fingertip tightness, then add them to the canner.
If you can some water to achieve this minimum load, the processing time here is more than enough to safely can water, so you can keep this canned water on a shelf for emergencies or camping.
Keyword Potatoes, Pressure Canner