Well Preserved

We have 14 or 15 different types of jam in our pantry and I eat toast a few times a year.  We use jam for cheese, in salad dressings, smoothies, cut it with balsamic to make a glaze and more.  But more than a dozen different types of jam is more than enough and I’d like to have options access to Ontario’s fresh fruit flavours without a significant punch of sugar.

There’s a tonne of great information on freezing at the National Center for Home Food Preservation (this US site is typically accepted as the bible of safety in preserving circles).  They cover far more than I could here in a single article on how to freeze food effectively (odd concept as I generally found “stick in freezer ” generally works just fine) but is worth the read.

One of the tips on the site that I have learned the hard way is to not pack your freezer with vast amounts of unfrozen food.  This will increase the temperature of the freezer and dramatically lower the quality of your food.  Freezing the freshest fruits in a single layer (on a cookie sheet for example) before throwing them in a sealed container has been a great secret of my mother for many years.

We have a friend who freezes whole fruit in the busy days of summer and makes her jam in the slower (and colder) nights of winter.  I’ve read that jam from frozen fruit can be runnier though she insists it’s not (I suspect that using commercial pectin would assist with this).

The major disadvantage for freezing is space and equipment (a freezer).  We have neither.

Dehydration also requires equipment but it’s results are fabulous.  Anyone who has ever reduced a sauce by boiling (i.e. removing water), knows the impact on flavour by removing inherit water content that appears in our food.  Imagine doing that to a strawberry.

Home-dehydrated food is often very different from commercially produced fruit (often bought in bulk) as the commercial stuff which is often dehydrated chemically.

There’s not a lot to describe when it comes to dehydration.  Cut your fruit evenly – precision is essential for even dehydration and will save a lot of work pulling thinner pieces out of the dehydrator before the thicker ones are done).  We use a mandolin for this process and cut our strawberries 1/4 inch (about 6mm) thick.  Strawberries cut this thick will end up paper thin after about 6-8 hours in the dry heat (typically around 135 degrees for fruit).

A lesson learned: take the time to individually place your fruit slices in the dehydrator.  loosely throwing them in will cause them to stick together and will increase your work – 2 slices will become the thickness (and timing) of a thick slice.

Don’t miss dehydrating the hulls to make tea through the fall and winter (or iced tea in the summer).

This is part of our Preserving Summer series (click the link for access to all of the articles to date)  that supports our recent article in Edible Toronto.  We welcome any and all questions, comments and your ideas!