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Saturday, February 11, 2012

HOME & GARDEN

Canning Makes a Comeback

 

(Photo Credits: photographer Rinne Allen)

“When I was growing up, canning was for old folks and cranks and separatists,” writes Liana Krissoff in the introduction to her new book out this week, Canning for a New Generation: Bold Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry.

Not anymore! Canning is making a comeback (not that it ever truly went out of fashion on the long dirt roads of my youth). eBay has seen a 56 percent jump in listings for Mason jars since this time last year, while canning entries are up 38 percent. The benefits and pleasures of “putting up” foods are increasingly finding new audiences and appeal beyond the management of garden surplus. Celebrated chefs like Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene and Holeman & Finch Public House, both in Atlanta, are adding full-time preservationists to their staff to extend the fresh flavors of seasonal harvests year-round. Others can to avoid the possible contaminants in commercially canned foods. “I do it mostly because it’s a fun, productive way to spend time in the kitchen,” says Krissoff, who has been a freelance recipe tester, editor and writer for more than a decade.

Organized by season and with inventive spins and flavors on the centuries-old techniques of preserving food at home, Canning for a New Generation is filled with recipes for more than 150 canned, pickled, dried and frozen foods (plus 50 recipes for dishes using these foods).

We caught up with the author, who lives with her husband and daughter in Athens, Georgia, as she prepared to tackle late summer’s harvest. With her book and with canning essentials (all found on eBay) she sets us up to do the same.

 

The Inside Source: Who introduced you to canning and what are your fondest memories of the ritual?

Liana Krissoff: I grew up pretty much surrounded by canning. It was something I thought was normal and something to be avoided at all costs. My parents, when we lived in Georgia and northern Virginia, would put up just insane amounts of produce from their garden every summer and fall, and my brother and I were either in the middle of it or trying to get out of helping.

When I moved out on my own, to New York, on the one hand I started to miss all the homemade foods I’d been so used to—the watermelon-rind pickles, the relishes, my dad’s salsa, real applesauce—and wanted to learn how to make those preserves myself. On the other hand, being in the city was like floodgates opening: I was suddenly exposed to just about every kind of food imaginable, and I wanted to try it all and cook it all. For years, and even long after I left New York, I looked for a book about canning that explained the process clearly and fully, but one with recipes for the kinds of interesting foods I love to eat. I couldn’t find such a book, so eventually I gave up looking and wrote it myself.

 

TIS: Is the canning process the same as it was fifty years ago?

LK: There have certainly been some updates to accepted practices in the last half-century. For example, the USDA no longer considers the open-kettle or inversion method to be safe—you need to process even high-acid foods like fruits and pickles in a boiling-water bath, and make sure the jars are sterilized in boiling water. Processing times for things like tomatoes have been increased.

But also, people canning fruit preserves nowadays don’t necessarily want to add as much sugar as the older recipes tell them to, and the newer books, including mine, do a better job of clarifying the role of sugar in preserving high-acid foods like jams: it helps the jam set, it helps fruit retain its color and form, and it increases the life of the preserve after it’s been opened, but it isn’t strictly necessary for preservation.

 

TIS: Do you visit the farmer's roadside market stands for your berries or the organic farmer's market?

LK: I like to go to pick-your-own farms as much as I can—that way I can be sure to get some just-under ripe fruit, which is higher in pectin than ripe fruit. A ratio of about three quarters ripe to one quarter under ripe is ideal for jams and jellies.

 

TIS: What is your daughter's favorite preserve?

LK: She tells me her favorite is blueberry jam, but that may be just because it’s the preserve we’ve made most recently. She’ll eat any kind of jam, preserve, marmalade, or fruit butter. And though she hasn’t really associated the tomatoes she’s helped me put up with the pasta and tomato sauce she loves so much, she might eventually consider that one of her favorite preserves.

 

TIS: Do you ever use eBay to find hard-to-source items?

LK: I buy all my vanilla beans on eBay from a seller called Vanilla Products USA (and I think I actually mention the seller as a source in the back of the book). They have good, plump Bourbon, Tahitian, and Madagascar beans at amazing prices.

 

TIS: Is it too late in the summer to start canning? If not, what are we "putting up" during the month of August and into September?

LK: Not at all! In fact, August and September were always the biggest canning months of the year in my family. You have the best tomatoes (some people can only late-season tomatoes, believing them to be tastier and more acidic than earlier ones), peaches, plums, and many areas still have blueberries. Pears and figs are just starting to ripen. Green apples are just starting to come in, which means you could be making green apple pectin stock to use for jellies in the winter. And chiles are at their peak too: you could pickle a bunch, roast and freeze some, or just chop them up and freeze them raw.

Here are Krissoff's tips on what you need to get started:

Roll over items for details
NEW Case of 12 Ball Pint Wide MTH Canning Glass Jars
3 Weck Rundrand Glass 100 Canning Jars (from $1.99); and 3. 
(buy it now price, $11.99)
NEW All Clad Stainless 6 Quart Stock Pot With Lid
and 5.
(buy it now price, $224.95)
NEW Vollrath Stainless Steel Stock Pot
“If you’re making jellies I highly recommend investing in a very-fine-mesh-wire bouillon strainer so you don’t have to mess around with jelly bags.”
(buy it now price, $71.47)
Update China Cap Bouillon Strainer Reinforced Wire
“You’ll want a jar lifter for moving hot jars around and a canning ladle too.”
(buy it now price, $26.03)
NEW NORPRO JAR Lifter
and 9.
(buy it now price, $3.15)
NEW RSVP Canning Ladle Stainless Steel
“A wide-mouth funnel helps in ladling the preserves or pickling liquid into the jars without making a huge mess.”
(buy it now price, $9.99)
NEW NORPRO Stainless Steel Wide Mouth Funnel With Strainer
Amy Flurry is a freelance writer and style editor whose work has been featured in Lucky, Refinery 29, InStyle, Conde Nast Traveler, O @ Home, Four Seasons magazine, House Beautiful, Country Living, and The Atlantan.
(buy it now price, $8.99)
Canning Makes a Comeback

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