while summer is snoring...

[vaznetti]

Among the many reasons to love the BBC: the CBeebies autumn song begins, "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness..." Because it is never too early to introduce the great English poets.

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I am planning to make chutney next week (green tomato, since ours are never going to get any riper now, and if that works, apple in weeks to come), so I have a question for my friends list. A few of the recipes I see call for processing after putting in the jars; is this really necessary? It's been a long time since I made any kind of preserves, but we never bothered with that when we made jam, although we did sometimes seal the jars with wax.

I am also thinking about making quince jelly later this year. I have never made jelly, but we have some japonica quinces and it doesn't look too scary.

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Yesterday I became quite wistful about the thought of leaving this garden, despite its complete unmanageability. We have a weed apple tree which bears huge numbers of small, greenish gold apples which have the most incredible sweet fragrance. (They taste sharp, but cook well.) As it happens, leaving may be more complicated than we thought, due to the presence of a squatter. If anyone knows someone looking for a reasonable-for-Oxford 3 bedroom house (in need of some work, very close to the A34) with a badger in the bottom of the garden, I can tell them who to contact.

Comments

[cofax7]

You have a badger in the bottom of the garden! That's kind of awesome! (Well, to me. I had a possum nesting under the house once, but they're not nearly as cool as badgers.)

[vaznetti]

It is kind of awesome -- although I have never seen it in the flesh, we're pretty sure it's there.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

If you're going to be 'putting up' (in the old sense of the word) the chutney, then yes, you need to process them. If you're only making a couple of jars and will keep them in the fridge, then no. You can just throw the stuff in any old container.

[kerlin.livejournal.com]

Unless you're planning on freezing the chutney, it should be processed. I would do a bit of looking around to see whether a boiling water bath is sufficient. (I think it should be; iirc it has to do with the acidity of what you're canning. We only ever boil our jams and jellies. Some foods, though, need to processed in a pressure canner and that's a whole complicated thing.

[vaznetti]

I think processing is an American thing -- the British don't seem to usually use a water bath on chutney (or actually, anything with high sugar or high acidity -- and given that chutney gets cooked in vinegar for anywhere from 2-8 hours, the acidity is pretty high). Instead they put it hot into the hot jars. If I do process them, do they actually get submerged in water, or just sat in it? I can use the big pot I'll be using to sterilize the lids.

[vaznetti]

Poking around a bit more online, it seems that processing is an American thing -- the British just use hot, sterilized jars and lids. They're much more casual about the whole thing. If I do it, do I submerge the jars, or just sit them in the water?

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Submerge them. That's the whole point. ;)

This (http://www.fcs.uga.edu/pubs/current/FDNS-E-37-1.html) more or less explains it. You don't necessarily need two-part lids, but they're easier to tell what's going on for beginners. You also don't need special tools; you can make do with what's currently in your kitchen. Most recipes require 10-15 minutes processing.

[kerlin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, submerge them completely. It basically sucks the air out and creates a vacuum seal on the lid. If you look in the pot while they're processing you can see the air bubbles come up from the lids, and then when you take them out and sit them on the counter you'll hear them popping away. Before you put them up test each lid by pushing it down - if it hasn't popped down it's not sealed and not safe.

Putting the preserve hot into hot jars *can* seal them, as all the heat basically creates a similar environment to the hot water bath, but it's not as sure. I've had jars pop even before I put them into the hot water, but I always do 10-15 minutes in there just in case.

Tip on sterilizing - we always run everything through the dishwasher without any soap, and with the heated dry option. Jars on the bottom, lids on the top.