Preserving Your Harvest

[Sammster]

I'm somewhat new to pressure canning.
Does anyone have any good "meal in a jar" recipes they can recommend?

I'm looking to stock my shelves with jarred meals I can just heat and eat, and I think now is a good time to do it while I still have my own garden produce or can purchase produce from the farmer's market. So, does anyone have any recipes to share?

I really like this site:
https://www.healthycanning.com/recipes

 

[Smokerbill]

After 3 days of air drying the basil leaves are now leathery- flexible but not brittle. I stacked the leaves and packed them into a jar with a cloth pouch filled with silica gel beads to finish drying.

The silica has indicator beads that are blue when dry, turning pink when saturated with moisture. Baking the beads at 200°F for 20 minutes or so dries them back out and the pink beads become blue again.

Before...



After...

 

[Smokerbill]

I'm making/canning salsa today. For the first batch I'm using only my homegrown veggies- tomatoes, onions, jalapeno and green bell peppers, garlic.

I'm using this recipe, increased by 33% to compensate for the amount of chopped peppers I ended up with. It should make 8 to 10 pints.

https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can/canning-salsa/chile-salsa-ii/

Adjusted recipe:

Chile Salsa II. (increased by 33.33333333%)

13-1/3 cups chopped tomatoes
8 cups chopped peppers
5-1/3 cups chopped onions
1-1/3 cups vinegar
4 teaspoon salt
3/4 tsp black pepper

 

[HenriettaPizzaNolan]

I'm making/canning salsa today. For the first batch I'm using only my homegrown veggies- tomatoes, onions, jalapeno and green bell peppers, garlic.

I'm using this recipe, increased by 25% to compensate for the amount of chopped peppers I ended up with. It should make 8 to 10 pints.

https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can/canning-salsa/chile-salsa-ii/

Adjusted recipe:

Chile Salsa II. (increased by 25%)

12.5 cups chopped tomatoes
8 cups chopped peppers
5 cups chopped onions
1.25 cups vinegar
3.75 teaspoon salt (make it 4 teaspoons)
1/2+1/8 tsp black pepper

Sounds delicious. You should post a pic of the end product!

 

[Smokerbill]

Sounds delicious. You should post a pic of the end product!

OK I will. And it is good. Tastes better than Pace to me, but maybe that's because of all the work I put into it. I got 11 pints plus about 1/4 cup to taste. All of them sealed (Ball jars and lids).

I started chopping peppers at 6AM. Finished canning, washed the dishes and all the towels are washing by 2PM. An 8 hour work day.

26 and 2/3 cups of tomatoes/pepper/onions (and 3 cloves of garlic) takes a long time to clean and chop, that's for sure. 4 cups of the peppers were jalapenos from my garden, and I have to think real hard to detect any heat in the sauce. Heatless Jalapenos.

I peeled and removed the cores and seeds from the tomatoes, and it took a lot! I had to use a bunch of tomatoes that weren't quite ripe yet, but was able to come up with just enough chopped tomatoes- 13 and 1/3 cups.

 

[Smokerbill]

I started my first batch of sauerkraut yesterday. Five pounds of shredded cabbage sure doesn't look like very much in the gallon container. I think I'm seeing bubbles from fermentation today.

 

[Birdsonghill]

I dehydrate usually, perfectly, in my dehydrator basil and most other common herbs, in abundance, putting away a years supply and giving away quarts of dried basil to family and friends. Basil is so easy and grows tons of leaves, that fresh pesto and dehydrating basil is a regularly repeating event all season long. I use a low setting that is recommended by the manufacture for drying herbs and the results are perfect, better than store bought, every time. Chilis steal the show here. I grow more peppers than any other vegetable crop and dehydrate most. Smoked, powdered, crushed, diced or whatever, I have years of supply stored in vacuum packed bags/jars and sale or swap chili powders and other dehydrated items, especially Shitake mushrooms, Oyster mushrooms, Lions mane mushrooms and Rieshi mushroom supplement powder with friends, family and neighbors. I can a lot of hot sauce recipes and experiment all the time. Gardening is only part of the fun! Creating recipes and preserving them is almost as much fun as eating your own home grown recipes. We get to enjoy the bounty and enjoy the sharing of our gardens, what a blessing we can receive in honest toil in the soil! MY chickens and previously my other livestock are all part of the equation that enables a balance in my homestead and life. Thanks be to God!

 

[pennyJo1960]

I have been making my own Pesto to many years now.

 

[Sally PB]

I've never had pesto...

 

[Sammster]

I've never had pesto...

Same