Preserving the Summer Harvest for Winter Enjoyment!

good morning friend welcome back to acre Homestead we have got at least three recipes we are going to be working on today we've done not very much to prepare for today's food preservation Shenanigans other than print off the recipes my jars are clean because we're gonna be doing some canning and oh I did go ahead and this is something I did the other day though not something I did today but this was kind of in preparation for today I shredded a whole bunch of zucchini that we are going to start turning into some yummy recipes we also need some bell peppers I'm going to go ahead and pull out of the freezer refrigerator today so what we're going to do today is we're going to work on preserving this zucchini in a few different ways and I have never preserved zucchini in any of these ways we are about to do today the first one we're gonna do is a zucchini relish that you can use just like you would use a dill pickle relish or a sweet relish you could top it on brats or put in potato salad egg salad deviled eggs whatever you would use a relish for I've never made a relish before so I'm excited to do this today now the first thing I'm going to do because I'm making this recipe is I did not realize that we need our onions to sit in some salt for a little bit to draw out some of the moisture along with our bell peppers the zucchini has already been sitting and drawing out moisture for the last day but the onions need to go ahead and do that so what I'm going to do is I'm going to start by chopping four cups of onion and I think it said two bell peppers but my bell peppers are small so I'll probably do three or four I am getting this recipe from my canning cookbook I can link this candy cookbook along with all of the canning equipment down below if you're interested the other recipe we are going to be making is mock pineapple I've been seeing this recipe I've been seeing Rachel from that 1870s Homestead make this for years and years and years and I've never had enough zucchini to make it so today's the day we're gonna take this product that we're gonna make and we're actually going to go ahead and make a pineapple cake with it too so we are going to not only make the mock pineapple we're going to turn it into a cake this recipe calls for two cups of crushed pineapple and we're going to use our zucchini pineapple mop pineapple in this cake recipe I also have all these peppers I need to preserve up I also have some hot peppers I would like to get canned possibly today and some banana peppers I've never canned any of those either for banana peppers for like sandwiches and things like that so we will see if we get to that today as well that is on my list today is an in the kitchen kind of day so we'll just keep checking things off as we go so I need these onions diced pretty finely so I'm gonna peel these onions and then I think I'm gonna go ahead and throw them in the food processor just to make my life easier and I'm going to do the same thing with the bell peppers so I'm just going to give them a rough chop [Applause] post Bowl these this kind of day is one of my favorite kind of days where you just get in the kitchen and spend a ton of time enjoying the process of preserving food and it feels like it's been a while since we've been able to preserve food that comes directly from the garden and this is only the beginning we are going to preserve so much stuff over this year the garden is producing like crazy and this is so fun I'm excited to share with you these recipes because I am blown away by how they turn out we do get to all the things on the list today and the we get so we get to the pickled peppers we get to the relish the we make the cake and it is such a delicious and easy cake recipe I hope you try it this relish recipe says to chop all the vegetables by hand but I wanted a really fine texture that's why I'm going with shredded zucchini and I'm using the food processor for the onions and peppers I'm going to process the onions and pepper separate so that I can measure out the proper amount of each one of these and I'm going to use the food processor just to make this a little bit faster foreign I've got a colander here and I'm going to measure my onions directly into the colander into the sink so that it can drain into the sink let's see I need four cups of onions one two three and I think this is going to be the perfect amount four [Music] now we're going to take salt and we're going to put the salt on the peppers and onions and we're going to have that salt draw out moisture from these peppers and onions and while this sits here we will get going on the mock pineapple as well go ahead and get the pineapple measured out for this while it's here this pineapple has been draining since I shredded it the other day so we're just going to get it in here anyway so that this recipe is all measured up so that was two three we need 12 cups now that we have our relish veggies soaking we're going to get going on the mock pineapple I've got my Dutch oven here we need to make the pineapple mixture so in this Dutch oven I just store it in my my oven because I don't have a ton of space for it get wiped out let's go ahead and put our ingredients in here that we need so I will link Rachel's video down in the description box the one I am following for this and let's see the first thing we need is 48 ounces or 46 ounces of pineapple juice which is exactly one of these cans now we need three cups of sugar one and a half cups of lemon juice and we're going to warm this up until the sugar dissolves 12 cups of shredded zucchini for this recipe as well and I don't know if I have 12 cups over there but I've got a whole basket here so let's go measure out the zucchini see if I need to shred any more zucchini because I definitely have more zucchini than just what I have in this bowl if I need to I think I have 12 cups I am squeezing out the excess liquid there's a bunch of it in the bottom here so that's four cups right there probably have one more Cup in here and then I will shred some more zucchini up all right that's five cups I just washed my food processor and I will go ahead and use that to shred the rest of the zucchini we need I was just thinking that if you shredded all yellow zucchini because that's what I have over here it would look even more like pineapple than using the green zucchini I have more than just these five right here and if I need to I can run out into the garden or so we will definitely be able to get our 12 cups here I'm gonna grab a new cutting board because I don't want to use the only cutting board for the zucchini this has been one of the best zucchini years I've ever had last year I had hardly any zucchini so I wasn't able to preserve it up in any other way other than shredding some freeze drying some and then we ate most of it fresh and this year I have a bumper crop so not only are we able to eat these beautiful small tender ones fresh but we are able to get them in different forms preserved up for use later this winter oh if they have pretty mature seeds I'm cutting that out and those will go to the chickens so we had five cups in here six seven is 12 cups right here absolutely perfection 12. our juice is simmering which is perfect we're gonna get our zucchini in here and this needs to simmer for 20 minutes so this is perfect we officially emptied this basket of zucchini minus this one this one's going to the chickens because it's got a really hard skinned I probably could have used that I guess in this but that's okay but we emptied this basket if you're with me when we made all those zucchini breakfast freezer meals we probably had 50 pounds of zucchini so that is encouraging that we have now emptied that basket there will be plenty of zucchini still to harvest throughout the season but hopefully they won't get quite so big and we'll be able to eat most of them fresh so we're gonna go ahead and get going on the brine for the pickled peppers and for our relish I'm going to use the same brine for the pickled peppers and for the relish so it's equal parts of white distilled vinegar five percent acidity when you're canning you want to check to make sure on the label it says five percent acidity which mine does right there on the label I'm gonna do four cups whatever brand I don't end up using today I'll put in the fridge and as other veggies come in through the garden season I can use this brine for that thank you now we're going to cook the salt sugar and vinegar together until that melts I used sea salt in this brine the recipe calls for pickling salt the only difference between pickling salt and say a table salt is pickling salts don't have iodine in them and my sea salt is not iodized it's just sea salt from the ground so I don't mind using that in my canning but what iodine can do in canine is it can kind of change the color over time and if you want it to look pretty in the jar it's best to use a non-iodized salt so here this has been simmering away so we can go ahead and get this Jarred up but before I do that I kind of want to give my kitchen a little bit of a reset it's gotten a little bit messy here and I want to get the dishes in the dishwasher that I can get in the dishwasher all these goodies are going to be going to the chickens and they will be grateful for it [Applause] I should mention the zesty zucchini relish that I'm making that's on page 233 in this cookbook has a bunch of other ingredients other than just the vinegar salt and sugar it has horseradish turmeric nutmeg as well I am going to leave those things out because I just want a cleaner I don't think that's the right word I just want a more pure relish flavor I don't really want horseradish Josh isn't a big fan of it I did put a hot pepper in there so that that will give a little bit of heat to balance the zinginess and the sweetness from the vinegar and sugar but I don't want to add nutmeg or horseradish or turmeric because the turmeric is more for color than flavor so maybe I should maybe I will add the turmeric actually because I'm going to be doing banana peppers with that brine as well and I would like those banana peppers to have that bright yellow color I've never canned banana peppers before I'm really looking forward to it all right that feels a lot better to kind of have this kitchen tidied up a little bit here are the peppers we're going to be planting this pineapple smells so good my mother-in-law the other day made a zappel crisp where she took zucchini peeled it deseeded it and turned it into a crisp and it was called a zappel crisp and it was really good the texture held up just like it had the same kind of texture like an apple would it tasted a little different obviously because it was zucchini not apple and Josh really enjoyed it as long as we called it a zucchini crisp if we called it a mock apple crisp he it just messes with his brain a little bit so I think when I make this pineapple cake today I'm going to call it zucchini pineapple cake and I think he's really gonna like it instead of trying to pretend it's mock pineapple because I think it's going to taste good even if we call it zucchini pineapple cake so I'm just rereading my recipe here all right so I did not realize this this was my mistake when you're when you're canning or cooking it's best to read the recipe all the way through before you get started and we are supposed to simmer the onions the peppers and the zucchini and the Relish in the brine for a good 45 minutes it says so I did not realize that because the video I watched they took the relish mixture like the vegetable mixture and they pack that into a jar and then they poured the brine over the top of it they did not simmer it together I don't think that affects the safiness of the canning if your new canner definitely definitely definitely follow the recipe to the tea because canning is a science and I know that I can long enough that I am comfortable omitting spices that's not going to affect the safetiness of it when you're talking affecting the safetiness of it it's when you're messing with the quantity of vegetables to vinegar because the vinegar is what makes it an acidic product which makes it safe to water bath can so you cannot mess with the ratio of vinegar to vegetables but I am totally comfortable omitting spices but I didn't realize it needed to to simmer so what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut up my Peppers these are already washed and I'm going to get these Jarred up and then I will take the brine out of there and I will pour it into the jars with the peppers foreign because I doubled this brine recipe that was in this book what I'm doing now is looking in this cookbook for a pickled pepper pickled pepper recipe so that I know what canning time I need to process my banana peppers for so I'm gonna do the Pickled hot pepper recipe because I have banana peppers and hot peppers in here and this recipe doesn't call for sugar it's just vinegar and water so maybe I won't use that no I do want to use that brine because I want some sweetness to this all right I've changed my mind for the banana peppers well I keep changing my mind this is what happens when you don't go into a canning day with 100 of a plan I have two plans and then these peppers were kind of a question mark whether I was going to get to them or not since I'm candy and I figured I might as well let me see if I can find a banana pepper recipe in here or I'm gonna do this hot one and I'm not going to use the sugar brine I'll pour half of that out and use it for something else while I'm trying to figure out what exactly I'm going to do one thing I know I can do is get these Peppers chopped up so while I'm chopping I'm gonna figure out a plan [Applause] now that this mixture has been sitting I'm going to rinse off some of the salt [Music] and now I'm going to squeeze out any of this moisture and as much of this moisture as I can get our brine is all dissolved and beautiful so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to remove half of this brine from this pot because we only needed half of it and there's marks on the side of my pot so I can see where the half mark is and we'll use this for something else now I'm going to turn the stove back on then we're going to take our relish mixture and put that in here now we're going to let this simmer together and while this is simmering we are going to can up our jar up our pineapple I want a clear this countertop so I'm going to finish cutting the rest of these peppers I finally figured out my plan for these peppers and that's just going to be to do a simple vinegar brine which is kind of like what you would think of that you would get at the store if you were to buy pickled banana peppers just a simple vinegar no sugar brine I am going to try to take out some of the juice when I pack these zucchini pineapple bits into the jar oh it smells so good I'm supposed to leave a half an inch headspace headspace refers to from where the top of the jar is to where the food product is and on this we want about a half an inch so we're gonna make sure we get that on each one I just preheated the oven to 350 because we are going to make that pineapple cake right now now that I have this done I need to get the canner out too so that I can get these as soon as they're guard up and have lids and everything I can get them on the stove canning that I want to get that pineapple cake in the oven so that can be cooking while we finish our other kitchen tasks we're doing to the kitchen trying to get a good balance of solid zucchini to juice I don't want there to be in some jars a ton of juice and then in some jars a ton of zucchini my goal is to kind of get the the ratio of what you would expect crushed pineapple to be from the store and I do think if you used all yellow zucchini or summer squash that would be the best play here or to peel the green zucchini too that could have been a good option as well I didn't even think about that but if it was all yellow squash you wouldn't even know I don't think that it's not pineapple I'm going to use my 30 quart Bowl to can my all of the things we're going to be canning today you don't have to have when your water bath can in a specific pot that is a water bath canner you just need a pot that you can fill you can put the jars in and fill the jars about an inch over or two inches over with water now I have been seeing people use this year kind of for the first time I haven't really noticed it that much a steam canner and I think let me know if any of you have used it and if you like it I think I might invest in a steam canner it seems like a whole lot less to deal with than a whole entire pot of water I can link a steam canner down below the one that I'm looking at if you're interested in even seeing what it is if you've never heard of one but if you have experienced Pro or against steam caners please let me know because I think that might be my next canning investment I think it's going to be a lot less to manage than water bath canning now the thing is though when you're using a pot that does not have a rack that goes in the bottom for canning you don't want to set your jars directly on the bottom of the pot because it's too close to the flame and they can crack so just take a towel and lay a towel down and that way they'll rest on the towel as opposed to resting on the bottom of the pot while my pot is filling with water I'm going to go ahead and get the lids on these one of these I'm going to set aside because we're going to make the cake next and I don't need to can it if I am going to just make a cake with it the recipe calls for two cups of crushed pineapple and so we're going to use two cups of the zucchini the reason you want to clean your Lids is so that you can get a good seal and I always feel around to make sure there's no chips or anything I'm gonna put my favorite canning lids on I can link these down below with a discount code I don't have to sterilize or boil my jar or lids or my jars anymore that is not required if you are going to water bath can for over 10 minutes but I do like to make sure everything is clean from the manufacturer especially the lid so I just washed the lids with some warm soapy water and then I always run my jars just through the dishwasher before I can in them just to make sure everything is nice and clean the reason I'm using this pot and not my water bath canner pot is because I couldn't find it I went out to where I usually store them I have two of them and I could not find it this water is very very warm we have a hot water tank under our sink these jars are very very warm you want the water and the contents of your jar about the same temperature to reduce the risk of breaking jars I think I could actually fit more jars in this 30 quart pot that I can in my water bath canner once this water comes to a full boil I will set that timer for 15 minutes that still needs to simmer for about 20 minutes so while that simmering we'll go ahead and make our cake this is one of the easiest cake recipes I have seen in a long time it's really a matter of just dumping everything into a bowl and mixing it together so the first thing we're going to do is add a quarter cup of sour cream a half a cup of oil three eggs vanilla we're gonna mix that together two and a half cups of all-purpose flour one and a half cups of granulated sugar teaspoons baking powder this is a half teaspoon so I'm gonna put four of them one teaspoon baking soda and our two cups of pineapple plus the juice this recipe is called to be baked in a 9x13 baking dish but I think because there's not a frosting that goes on it you just make whipped cream for it I thought a bundt pan would be a lot prettier so I'm going to make it in a buck pan hopefully it turns out I'm gonna grease this really well a lot of you guys have recommended using it's called now I can't remember what it's called but something like baking magic or something like that and it has flour and the oil in the spray and I guess you can make that so I need to look into that but this smells incredible this was super easy to whip together I'm gonna get this in this bundle pan and it says that it needs to bake for 30 to 40 minutes I'm thinking probably 40 because a bundt pan I feel like is deeper than a baking dish would be but if this works this is a great way to use up zucchini for a party or whatever it might be because all of these zucchini jars are going to be shelf stable and I could just pull them out and put it together in less than five minutes this is going in the oven our relish is done Marine on the stove and it smells incredible so now I'm going to go ahead and get it into these jars these are four ounce jars I don't want any more than that because when I open them I'm not going to need a ton and I don't want you know a big jar of relish just open in my fridge for a long time so we're going to can them up in these jars so this needs to can at the same time as the pineapple and my water is not boiling yet but it's very hot water these are very hot jars because the contents of this is very hot so I'm gonna get as many of these into that canner that will fit as soon as I have the lids and the rings on you all know the drill you're going to fill the jars up to the appropriate amount of head space that the recipe calls for the reason there's a headspace recommendation is because it has to do with how the product in the jar heats up and how much space it needs for proper sealing so we're going to fill it up to the appropriate headspace and then we're going to wipe the rims we wipe the rims because if there's food or sugar or anything on the rim when you put the lid on then that could inhibit a good seal so we will put our our lid on I always use a new lid when canning that is recommended and then I will put a ring on you can reuse the Rings as many times as you want because the Rings aren't going to be left on the jar for proper canning they are just used during the canning process so new lid reused ring and then we will process it for the amount of time it calls for all right this is the last one so now I'm going to get as many of these in the canner with the pineapple as I can these jars are very hot this water in here is very hot I won't be able to get all of them in here but I'll be able to get a few so we'll just get as many in here as I can so both the relish and the zucchini pineapple need to camp for 15 minutes so that's why I can can these together okay I figured out what I'm gonna do with these peppers and I'm going to use the Pickled hot pepper recipe on even though the banana peppers aren't hot this is the recipe I'm gonna use and I need a total for this recipe of 16 cups of peppers and I need a ratio of two to one for the vinegar to water I don't have 13 cups of peppers I don't think I don't not even close so I'm going to measure out how many peppers I have into here and the reason I decided I'm going to cook them you could cold pack your peppers I could take these peppers and put them directly into my jars and then fill my jars with the vinegar water brine solution but I'm not gonna do that because you can get more in a jar if you cook them first there's something that happens with the pepper they release something and it shrinks them just a little bit so I want to get more peppers in my jar so that it takes up less shelf space and less jar space so that was three that's four I'm going to turn the stove on five six so I'm about half so I'm gonna put half of what this recipe calls for vinegar and half of what it calls for for water I'm doing the same ratio so I'm not worried about it being safe or not I'm just basically cutting the recipe in half I'm going to add my water and a few cloves of garlic I'm going to cook this for five minutes once it comes to a simmer and then we'll get these in the jars cake it's almost done or the timer went off but we have to check this this is done I'm gonna give it a few more minutes so I'm going to close this I'm going to give it five more minutes and we're still waiting for the peppers to cook while those are cooking I'm gonna grab something out of the freezer and get that packaged up while I have time in the kitchen I might as well go ahead and package up these garlic pucks because these have just been in the freezer and I want to get them packaged up so they're not making the freezer smell like garlic so these are the garlic cups that are just garlic and water no there's no water it's just garlic the other garlic cups that I did last year I added some oil and these ones I didn't in the bottom these are the garlic scape pucks I'm gonna put these in the same container so I can use them exactly the same way I'm going to use garlic it doesn't matter if I use the garlic scapes or garlic okay this feels good to get this packaged up and I think I'm gonna put this back out in the freezer and then this is our garlic butter I want to get this packaged up okay into the freezer these goats now we can jar up our peppers our canner is boiling so I now have the timer set for 15 minutes so these peppers are good for putting in Salsas or sandwiches anything you'd want a pepper pepperoncini banana pepper you can use this I'm starting by packing the peppers in and not really any of the brine once I've got the peppers in the jars I'll go back and fill the jars with the brine I just pulled the cake out of the oven I'm gonna let it cool for 10 minutes and then we're gonna attempt to take it out of this bundt pan it smells absolutely incredible our pot is done boiling for 10 minutes what I did is I turned the stove off and I kind of let the pot just cool down for about five minutes before now I'm gonna go ahead and take the jars out and I have some cloth over here those called placemats I have some placemats and I'm going to just take these out and I'm going to set them on the placemat and I'm going to let them cool here for 24 hours tomorrow morning I will label them what they are it's pretty obvious for me to tell what they are coming out of the canner I'll label them I'll take the Rings off and then I will put them downstairs and our cake has been out of the oven for 10 minutes so I need to try to take that out of the bundt pan so we'll see if we're able to do that all the jars are out now I'm gonna get the peppers in here and I'm gonna can these for 10 minutes so it is the moment of truth let's see if we can get this pineapple or mock pineapple cake out of the bundt pan I've been having a hard time lately getting cakes out of a bundt pan so I do think I need to research making that magic release or or cake release or something like that basically you make a paste of flour and oil I have tried doing the dusting the flower on the bundt pan before you need to spray it and then you dust it with flour and that doesn't seem to help that well so it did come apart just a little bit but I think I can do a little bit of surgery and I just taste tested it there and friend this is a delicious cake what a great way to spend the morning we used up 24 cups of zucchini we got 22 4 ounce jars of relish we got two four six seven pints of pineapple what would you call that mock pineapple plus the one pint that went into the cake and we have eight nine little jars of pickled peppers it is still really early in the day and what I'm gonna do while I'm waiting for my Peppers to finish cooking they've got another well they started boiling so I set the timer for 10 minutes is I'm going to cut myself a piece of cake I'm gonna have my cake and my second cup of coffee we did have to put this cake back together we had to do a little surgery on it right here but I think that's going to be just fine I'm gonna have a warm piece of cake and my second cup of coffee while I wait for that canner to finish canning oh look at that so this is I took the piece that kind of fell apart that looks cool amazing that's really good this kind of fell apart this piece but I will definitely make this again it's kind of like a light pound cake I was just thinking about this cake I like that it has a very light pineapple flavor it's super mild and I like that it doesn't have any cinnamon or anything like that like you would think of a traditional like zucchini cake or something like that it's definitely a good Twist on a cake perfect it's gonna be really good so after this comes out of the canner I'm gonna go change and spend my afternoon out in the garden it's not too hot today and it's still early in the day it's gonna be the perfect time to go out into the garden and get a couple things done out there so thank you friend for being here as we got these candy projects done if you want any of these recipes I will link them down below along with any of the canning equipment and I can also link a canning playlist if you are interested in kind of getting a little bit more comfortable with canning I can link some videos down there some resources with some different canning projects I have done over the years so thank you for being here if you want to watch a couple of my other videos I'll pop some videos right here you can go enjoy between now and my next upload thanks for being new thanks for being here and I can't wait to see you next time bye friend

Channel: Acre Homestead

Views: 183,810

Keywords: Acre Homestead, Freeze drying, canning, home food preservation, home canning, preserving the harvest, food preservation, bulk food storage, freezing food, water bath canning, pressure canning, freeze drying food, dehydrating food, homestead, preservation, garden harvest, buying local food, growing food, eat what you grow

Id: 3Bga2a6q6go

Length: 42min 14sec (2534 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 14 2023