Preserved your vegtables and than what?

I was reading up on how to preserve your vegtables and what method is best for which vegtable. I read How to store your garden produce from Piers Warren, which I really liked because it is very clarifying and easy to read. I also read several other books about making chutneys, relish and that kind of stuff.

So after reading all this: What do you do when you have your canned/preserved/ pickled/salted vegtable?

I mean, I can understand what you do with pickled onion/ pickle (or is it gherkin, it wasn't clear to me from the dictionary), because they also sell it in the stores and is commonly used in dishes. But there are a lot of recepies for pickeling and storing otherwise of all kind of vegtables. It sounds really nice and I can imagine that you can eat them like that, but how do you use them in a dish? Because some recipies only state: nice with chicken or something similar, but a lot of recipies don't. Because I think that the problem is that this is not commonly practised here, and a lot of books are translated from English, but if you are not familliar with the English/American/ Australian Kitchen, it is hard to figure out what to do with them. And although I can cook what I need, I haven't the experience yet to invent new dishes myself.

What I really would like is a book like I already have for making jam and jellies, but than about vegtables. The first part of the book are recipies for jellies and jams sorted by type of fruit and the second part has all kinds of recipies where you use the jellies and jams in all kinds of dishes. Does anyone know if there is a book like this but then about (preserved) vegtables?

Zephyros, this is an EXCELLENT question... and I'd like to know the answer, too!

I can tell you that zucchini (rampicante, in my case) bread-and-butter pickles are great on hamburgers and other sandwiches. And pickled pineapple really does not taste pickled at all... it's just a bit spicy (cloves, cinnamon etc) and the vinegar cuts the natural sweetness down so it's not so cloyingly sweet. Very nice with ham.

I know gherkins as a specific kind of cucumber pickle, they are very small, and also sweet rather than sour/dilled.

Good question. I'm not familiar with the book, but bere's my take on the culture part. From what I know about here in the USA is that canning was very popular during the great depression and WWII. (https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t667-are-you-a-victory-canner) I think refrigeration was still new at that time and probably not well spread, so it was a matter of necessity. After that Canning died away as society became more and more abundant. Lately with the green and sustainable living movements it's comming back. So this is new territory for a lot of us.

I know my wife told me about how her grandma used to make a mustard pickled salad. It was a salad of several vegetables that was pickled together with mustard flavoring. She loved it so much that sometimes she would eat chunks of it straight out of the jar. But it was meant to be used as a condiment like ketchup or mustard.

My best advise for you (and always my favorite advise) EXPEREMENT! and let us know how it turns out. Then we can all drool over the sucesses and laugh with you for the failures. Either way you should have lots of good stories.

We use lots of pickles, relishes, chutneys, etc. Sometimes we serve them on the side to accompany such dishes as beans or fish. (My hubby sometimes mixes hot pepper relish or chow chow right into his bowl of white or pinto beans.) I mix pickle relishes into main dish salads such as ham, chicken, tuna, or egg salad. A great finger food sandwich is a slab of cheddar cheese and layer of chutney between halves of a brioche or Hawaiian-brand bread roll. (Or any bread that has a little sugar in it.)

I also spread chutneys on top of roast chicken, venison, or pork before serving.

Mint jelly with lamb is an old standard recipe. A popular appetizer here is pepper jelly spread on top of cream cheese and used as a spread on crackers.

And of course, you can't have an American hot dog without mustard and relish.

Experiment and find your own favorite uses (and share them with us, too, please.)

We've done it all, and all living in the country. My favorite preserving method is drying/dehydrating, second canning. Yes, freezing is the easiest, but one good stretch with out electricity, even in the winter, can make a person sick. Sick from losing all that food after all that work. I also like to cook in bulk, I use a table top oven (aka turkey roaster) to make chili and soups when ever I am able to, eat once, freeze the rest. Last year I finally got my hands on a pressure canner, so next time I'll be canning soup.

When you have small batches of veggies, not really enough to fool with (or heat up the house) you can cut them up, toss them in a bag (or "flash freeze then bag depending on veggie) and put them all in one baggie. You can then use them to add to casseroles or soups.

I plan on trying my hand at "diced" tomatoes, cutting and freezing, then when the weather cools a bit canning them with the water bath method, then making soups. If I need spaghetti sauce I'll just add the other ingredients when I need sauce rather than pressure can it. I live in a mobile home in NE TX and have limited shade, and my husband works outside all day almost everyday and has asthma, so I wear more long sleeves in the summer than in the winter, as he keeps the air set at 60. Spending the day canning really heats this place up, and although I'll use my table top oven and crock pot outside on the porch to cook in the summer, it is nearly impossible to cool the place down after canning, so I freeze than can when I can.

Something else I want to try this year is jalepeno jelly and honeysuckle jelly, both to spread on fresh bread, MMMMMMM, I can smell it now.

I made garlic jelly last year, and oh boy, it was good! (Still is; I have a few jars left.)

So it looks like we have a hole in the market here. Writing our own book about what to do with all those things we have preserved.

First I am going to try to preserve radish, although I still have to wait until it is grown. But this recipe is really screaming at me. I find it hard to cann/ preserve something, when I don't know what I can do with it afterwards.

I think too that the advantage of canning is that you can save it without putting it in the fridge. There is only a limited amount of space in the fridge. It is easier to find a space where it is dark and not to hot.

Something else I want to try
this year is jalepeno jelly and honeysuckle jelly, both to spread on
fresh bread, MMMMMMM, I can smell it now.

Can you share some information about the honeysuckle jelly FarmerValerie? I never knew you could eat honeysuckle. I only know it from the soap.

Here are two different references/recipes. The second one also has candied flowers and several other recipes for flowers. Check your edible flower list, and make sure you are not getting japanese honeysuckle, it is on the poisonous list.
http://www.gardenguides.com/1177-basic-flower-jelly.html http://oldfashionedliving.com/edibleflowers.html

I have not yet made the honeysuckle jelly as I am unsure as to what kind surrounds my yard. I plan on finding out this year and if it is the invasive japanese kind, trying to replace it.

Short and sweet (in a hurry): I pickled my peppers (no pun intended) mild/hot and instead of buying the store bought ones, I used those last year in my pasta salad that I make. SO GOOD! They're even good on a turkey burger.

Green beans, home canned, I'm told, always taste better than anything else. I don't know, I only eat them fresh, but that's what I'm told.

I made peach jelly last year too, was a bit too thick, but I only have 2 (or is it one) jar left out of 3 dozen, so I must have done something right =)

kimbertangleknot wrote:Green beans, home canned, I'm told, always taste better than anything else. I don't know, I only eat them fresh, but that's what I'm told.

I am eating the first of my Dilly Beans I canned last year. They are dragon-breath garlic HOT (guess I used too much garlic and red pepper), but really good. They still have a little crunch to them, which I like, too.

Just so you know, Dilly Beans are great in a Bloody Mary. Who needs celery stalks?

Furbalsmom wrote:Just so you know, Dilly Beans are great in a Bloody Mary. Who needs celery stalks?

I may have to try to send you a jar. I would love to see the expression on Furbalsmom's face after a good swig of Bloody Mary with Dragon-Breath Beans!

I canned homemade ketchup and it's absolutely delicious

When we get a lot of tomatoes, I pull out the steamer/juicer and pack the basket with tomatoes, and a combination of chopped accent vegetables, like celery, carrot, chard or kale, an onion, a red beet for color, and at least a full head's worth of garlic cloves; then I add herbs for flavor, some parsley and a lot of basil. Depending on how hot I want the mix, I'll also add hot peppers--my favorite is jalapeno. One year I tried Bulgarian carrot chilis and WOW! too hot to use for anything but Texas-style chili. After you process the vegetables you have the cooked-down vegetable pulp, and a bunch of almost clear juice. We run the pulp through a Squeezo, which removes all peelings and seeds and leaves a lovely thick puree. Some of the puree we add back to the juice (which, in the meantime, I've boiled down to concentrate the flavor) and can it as Kinda V-8 Juice. The main part of the puree is canned in pint jars and is a ready-to-use base for spaghetti sauce, vegetable soups, pizza topping, the afore-mentioned chili, stews, pot roasts, whatever needs a tomato-y hit. BTW, making up a batch of puree from just tomatoes, an onion and garlic, is easy to turn into catsup or seafood chili sauce, just add appropriate spices, some vinegar and sugar. There was a good recipe in Fine Cooking magazine a few years back.

I was reading a book about canning the other day. They also described how to preserve vegetables in salted water (something about 5 gram a liter if I got it right without looking in the book). They only forgot to tell what to do with them when you want to eat them. What I mean by that is if you want to use them do you still have to cook them or do you only have to heat them up like the ones you can buy in the store? And how long can you store the vegetables like this? Because in my opinion the percentage of salt is quit low, but maybe normal for preserving vegetables like this. (physiological salt is 9 gram salt in a liter water that is why I think it is quit low)

Megan wrote: I would love to see the expression on Furbalsmom's face after a good swig of Bloody Mary with Dragon-Breath Beans!

Just curious - did you make them with Dragon's Tongue beans?

You could always check out the wild fermentation cookbook.

ander217 wrote:

Megan wrote: I would love to see the expression on Furbalsmom's face after a good swig of Bloody Mary with Dragon-Breath Beans!

Just curious - did you make them with Dragon's Tongue beans?

You know, I thought of that pun while I was typing that! But no, I actually made them with Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans -- same crop as your seeds came from, Ander.

Megan wrote:

ander217 wrote:

Megan wrote: I would love to see the expression on Furbalsmom's face after a good swig of Bloody Mary with Dragon-Breath Beans!

Just curious - did you make them with Dragon's Tongue beans?

You know, I thought of that pun while I was typing that! But no, I actually made them with Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans -- same crop as your seeds came from, Ander.

I'm growing Dragon's Tongue beans this year - I definitely need the recipe!

TC

Goosegirl wrote:I'm growing Dragon's Tongue beans this year - I definitely need the recipe!

This is what I did my best to follow:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisanh/4815287435/in/photostream/

I didn't have fresh dill weed, for some reason my dill only produced seed heads and really sad looking leaves, so I used dill heads instead. And I used more garlic cloves than called for, as they were smallish.

I can't wait to try them! Come on spring!

TC

As I understand, you need much more salt for saurerkraut. More than 5 gram a liter. But I can check later

Yum....kimchee!