How to make zucchini pineapple

good morning everybody it's kim i am going to do something with these monster zucchinis that we're hiding out in my garden i'm going to turn these into pineapple yes i have found some recipes online and i'm using the one from the national centers on home canning and preserving i believe it's the name of the website anyway i can link it in the description below and it only needs a couple of ingredients one of which is your zucchini i need some pineapple juice lemon juice and sugar that's the only ingredients i need to do this other than you know my basic canning supplies which i have a video that i made of all the canning supplies i need with some alternatives i will definitely link that below so you will be able to know what i use for canning and instead of having to run out and spend a lot of money some of the alternatives that you can use but what i'm going to do is you could do this as shredded or the like chunks and i think i'm going to do like pineapple chunks because if i want them smaller i can always chop them up later if i were to make say pineapple muffins or throw them in a carrot cake or something like that so anyway the first step is i'm going to peel these up and i'm going to chop them got to get my canner onto the boil get my jars heated up and hopefully i have a pot big enough to put this in if not i'm going to do it in two separate pots but i'm going to get to work peeling and cutting these up and i'll be back in just a few okay now the one thing that the website does not show you or tell you is how to prepare your zucchini now the larger the zucchini the more likely you're going to have of having larger seeds in the middle i'm lucky i don't but if i don't know if you could see that you could see there's like a ring here where it's a little firmer and then you have the center which is kind of squishy and spongy i don't use that sec that center there i just take a spoon or something and it's easy to just scoop out that soft spongy bit because i think it you know it throws the texture off of what you're making especially since it's going to be canned so i just scrape out that bit in the center until i get down past the spongy bit um you can use that in other recipes since there's not a lot of big seeds if you want to save it for zucchini bread or whatever i could dehydrate it but to be honest it's very hot out today i'm going to throw some in the freezer and then i'm going to feed it to my turkeys and my chickens and they like that little bit of coldness that they can get from it so i prepare my zucchini by removing the center bit then i'm going to very carefully chop it and you want it in relatively the same size because once again you're going to cook this a little bit you want them to cook fairly even and i want mine to look like the small pineapple pieces so i'm going to roughly chop them into pieces about this size like they would be in the in the can the tidbits i guess they're called so i want mine to be a little bit smaller you can chop them bigger um if you have a small zucchini you could i would cut them in you could cut them into rings and punch the center out i think that'd be cute but also what i do is i measure as i go as i'm cutting because you need to kind of have an idea if you're going to have enough supplies as far as your liquid goes and things like that to um because this particular recipe if i'm making a full recipe calls for four quarts which is 16 cups of chunked zucchini well i don't know if i have 16 cups worth so i keep track of how i go i may have to have the recipe or something like that but when you know how much zucchini you have it's a lot easier to know how many supplies you need so i'm going to continue to do my zucchini and get it all processed and ready to go before we move on to the next step okay i thought i'd do a little zucchini math for you i have my zucchini as you can see it's peeled and chopped and i took the center out i started out i went back and i met weighed everything i started out with two zucchini that weighed just over five pounds prior to peeling and taking out the center and chopping once it was chopped i got it this bag weighs just over three pounds actually 3.6 pounds three pounds six ounces and that is right at just over eight cups so i'd say a little less than nine cups weighs about three pounds once it's been peeled and the core is taken out and it's chopped just so it gives you an idea now if i use the full recipe you're going to have to start out with about 10 to 11 pounds of whole zucchini and then once it's been peeled and cord and everything you're going to end up with about six to seven pounds um when it's ready to go in the pot so obviously i only have the two so i'm taking the recipe for the national centers on canning and home preserving i'm sorry i'm probably saying that wrong and i'm going to cut that recipe in half based on the amount of zucchini i have and they say that a half recipe will yield four to five pints so just wanted to give you that zucchini math so if you have a bunch of zucchini you kind of know what you need to do this recipe okay based on the amount of zucchini i have which is just over eight cups or just over three pounds of peeled and cord and chopped zucchini i need three cups of the pineapple juice to that i'm going to add three quarters of a cup of bottled lemon juice that's recommended to use bottled juice because the ph on that is kept at a precise measurement and then one and a half cups of sugar i've never tried this without that much sugar i don't know if you can use artificial that would be up to you to try it because you know that i'm not 100 sure on and then excuse me a moment i'm going to gently warm this just to melt the sugar a bit now in the meantime my canner is on i filled it with enough water to cover my jars plus a little headspace in that water i added some vinegar to keep my jars from getting cloudy on the outside or getting a deposit on it and my jars are warming in my oven to about 225 to 250 degrees so i need to warm this up just long enough to start melting that sugar and then i need to add my pineapple i'm going to excuse me my zucchini turned pineapple i'm going to bring it to a boil turn it down and simmer it you need to simmer it for 20 minutes okay so i'm going to go ahead and that's melted i'm going to add my zucchini i'm going to make sure of course that i stir it frequently see if i can do that without splashing too much get that last little piece out of there okay now what i need to do is warm this to a boil and i'm going to simmer it then once it boils for 20 minutes and when i get to that point we'll come back just before it's done and we'll go on to our next step which is putting it into the jars and processing it right there you go my zucchini has simmered for 20 minutes after bringing to a boil now honestly doesn't that start to look like pineapple those little chunks in the jar whoops anyway i'm going to get set up to put these in the cans and we'll get ready to do the next step okay i remember my jars were in the oven they're warm so they're very hot i don't want to touch them the next step i'm going to do is i'm going to divide my pineapple into as many jars as i think i'm going to need i always warm up a lot more jars than i think i'm going to need what i'm going to do let me see if i can get you a good view here of there we go the pot trying to get you a little bit in focus what i like to do it's kind of like a two-step thing because this is wide and a lot of times it wants to fall a lot of times what i'll do is i like to scoop out my food and i can either attempt to pour it directly in there and these are probably going to work today and i bring it up to where my head space which on these it's a half inch i have my little you know d bubbler here all i'm going to do is gently move i'm not packing it down i'm just kind of putting it where i want it to be you don't want to pack it because you need those spaces to get your proper processing time then i can add a little bit more pineapple to where my headspace is what i do it this way simply because it keeps the food from floating so much in the jars a lot of times when you go straight with the liquid and everything everything wants to float up i want to put enough where it's still under the liquid but my jars are not looking half empty okay so that's under my head space and i'm gonna go ahead and do all of these jars it's gonna give me an idea like how many i'm gonna need two because like i said you know you're you always i always do i always get an odd amount and if one's a little bit light i can always steal a couple pieces and so they all kind of float evenly now this one's a little full i'm going to take a couple pieces out i'll get a spoon for that in just a [Music] minute and i know i'm going to get at least four jars hopefully five out of this or four and a half that's why i always warm up some of the smaller jars as well oop probably got that one a little full too now i'm just i'm not packing see i'm just kind of gently moving it around to get rid of some of the air pockets and you'll do bubble it anyway and then now i could tell that i may even be able to add a couple more pieces in there from the other jar that's a little full okay very good i am going to have a little extra here it looks like so i'm going to get i think my small jar out of the oven move a couple pieces around here all right so that looks pretty good that one could use a couple pieces so let me grab a spoon and i'm going to move a couple pieces now this one actually looks pretty good they're all below the headspace let me grab out my other jar from the oven a small one here of course it's in the back hopefully don't burn myself i just want to see what i have left because i might add a little bit more to these i'd rather them be a little full then like i said i just don't like all my stuff all floaty just me this way i can separate it out and put the extra pieces in the other jars that one's going to be too full well maybe not once you pack it down just want to make sure always keep your proper head space if in doubt give it a little extra room never go below what the recommended headspace is on your jars and if you really think that this is going to not taste like pineapple i'm telling you it's it's pretty uh pretty darn close if you don't tell people they're probably not going to know that it's not real pineapple there okay now i have all my if after i add my liquid if these are too low i can always steal it from this oh extra jar i told you it's hot now i get rid of my spider and i'm going to need my ladle so i can do my liquid a little piece of pineapple floaty there i will check my headspace before i'm finished because i have to de-bubble as well i kind of do them all at the same time because then i can like i said if i have too little i can always steal from that last little jar which can always go in the refrigerator to be eaten right away i don't have enough to for it and if you have extra juice you can freeze it so if you decide to do another batch or keep in your refrigerator for i would go no more than three days i'm going to um that extra pineapple juice i had in that jar that's in my refrigerator again no more than three days and then i will hopefully have which i know i will probably have some more zucchini out there all right now i want to go around the jars a little bit just making sure there's no big air pockets most of those are gone and some of these need to be topped up a little bit with some more of the juice there we go hopefully my canner is going to boil soon because i want to put these into hot water it's pretty close i can hear it you can start hearing it almost boiling in there now check your headspace you can either use the mark on a tool like i did basically i hold it to the edge and i have proper headspace or like i said make yourself something or find something that has the proper head space they all could use just a tad more liquid which is good i actually do that now with a spoon this way don't overdo probably could use a bigger spoon than that but also to make sure that my pineapple is under the liquid a little bit i will have some extra juice left i guess if you want to you could can this extra bit to save for later certainly put that in a jar and label it that way when you need to use it you're ready to use it all right those are still good just a tiny bit more another teaspoon or so in each jar i am a little picky about how i do things because you know what i spent a lot of time growing it and now i want to preserve it so that i can have it for another time so take your time with this you know i know sometimes you get tired and you're in a rush but you want the best quality possible canned goods that you can get at home what i'm doing right now and i'm off to the side i apologize i got a towel paper towel and i soaked it with some vinegar because you have to make sure that these rims are scrupulously clean or your jars seal could fail now in my video where i told you your canning supplies i did forget to mention two or three little things one is to have paper towels you always need them or something you know dishcloth always have a pot like i mentioned i do simmer my lids see they're at a simmer not a boil but it also if you don't think you have enough boiling water in your canner it's nice to have extra water so that you have to make sure that you get a minimum of an inch over the top of these jars so that you know they're safe anyway i have some extra juice i'm going to see here if i don't know if i have a full point but i do have that 12 ounce jar i would like to just put some of this liquid into a jar to see if i can save it here i'm going to have it's going to be close it's not enough then i won't transfer it to my other jar but i'm not going to waste it because you never know i might have a little extra next time and need the juice and it is pretty darn close for now i'm just going to put that put it in my other jar i do want to try canning it and see i don't want to waste it because you can also use it as a pineapple drink because it is the juice after all the little extra vitamins in it from the zucchini it's going to be a bit perfect it might be a little full ooh that's a little full all right scoop off a little bit good all right so that's what i'm going to do and i'm going to just keep the rest and probably drink it jar is pretty warm there all right so i have my jars i'm going to put my lids on they've been wiped well with the vinegar put my lids if i was smart i would have warmed up that extra pineapple juice and canned it but i'm just going to freeze it then now i need my lit my rings now the rings i don't warm but you could if you wanted to you put them on what's called finger tight so you put your put them on and then you just give it a tight you don't want to crank it you just want it use your fingers to tighten it you have to allow these jars to bend a little bit you may need to use something to hold on to the jar when you tighten them just a little bit and my fingers are getting kind of used to it all right so i'm going to do this one too almost forgot into the water bath canner you bring it back to a boil and have the bubbles have to be coming to the surface and you want to process both pints and half pints this is a three quarter pint for 15 minutes at a boil and then you turn your canner off oh i better get it think of that and wait for five minutes before you take your jars out now my boil is really it's boiling really heavy there so i'm going to carefully place my jars into the canner i don't know if you could see me i apologize if you can't see me back here but i'm just putting my jars i put them i'll show you let me show you real quick how i arrange them in the jar i mean in the counter here i like to go kind of like the four corners in a way because then it's balanced and then i can add my other ones in between or in the center however you want to do it it just makes it a little more balanced oop there sorry about that when i drop them down so anyway i'm going to process these at for 15 minutes and wait the five and then we'll take them out of the can we go they were processed accordingly sorry i didn't get to show you taking them out of the canner but my battery died as they were getting ready to come out and there they are ready to be labeled i use a sharpie and market on the top and i will let them sit here for about 24 hours before removing the rings and onto my shelf they go so they can be eaten during the winter time when i don't have a million zucchini coming so let me know what you think if you have any questions please leave them below any comments if you've ever made it before let me know what you thought and have a wonderful day

Channel: Life Prepared

Views: 9,414

Keywords:

Id: 6oglTgnNDm8

Length: 24min 51sec (1491 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 21 2020