Canning with Chef: Frozen Vegetables

 Monday, I learned a dear friend of ours lost his battle with cancer. You may remember me talking about our youtube subscriber I stay with when I make the trip to NC Amish country each year. It was her husband. He'll be sorely missed. He was 82 years young, left a wife, five sons, 12 grandchildren, and six great grands.  He wore many hats over the years, but the main one was a follower of Jesus. He will be missed but we rejoice in knowing he's in heaven waiting on us.

Now, on to the post...

I really never saw the need to can or dehydrate frozen vegetables before. I mean why double my work load, right? But the last two years without much of a garden producing and purchasing case or bushel lots of vegetables from the wholesale place or other organic farms, I can see the beauty of doing so. Especially the past two years with abundant medical issues that I've been plagued with. It's so much fun getting older and having a broken body.

Before you can, dehydrate, or freeze your own produce you blanch it first, right? Buying frozen packaged vegetables this step is done already for you. So it saves you a step. If you have multiple times constraints, like I've had it isn't always easy to process vegetables at the peak of freshness. 

So blanching and freezing the bulk produce is the next best option. So why can it into jars at all? I don't know about y'all, but I don't have limitless freezer space. Freezers take electricity or propane to operate. We found out almost two years ago how fragile this is when we went without power for a couple weeks. We lost a couple hundred dollars worth of food stuff by not having a generator or solar powered freezers. I just couldn't can it fast enough even with three pressure canners going almost 24 hours a day. Our freezers held a lot of food stuff.

Sure, I'll hold tomatoes in my freezer for 12 hours to 4 months to make processing easier. But greens like spinach, mustards, turnips, and squashes (except for pumpkins) I do not can. It's a personal preference and a mouth feel thing, even though I know you can can them. Having vegetables and premade meals canned is convenient and shelf stable for months if not years. When I mentioned storing tomatoes in my freezer, someone said I must have had a huge freezer, but honestly I don't. I just use my freezers for short term storage. My meat freezer had only 1/2 a lamb, a couple pork butts destined for sausage making, 2 lbs of bacon, 1/2 a deer haunch, a couple of whole chickens, and some frozen veggies. The freezer was half empty so extra tomatoes could go in there also. I purposely keep this freezer stocked low at this time of year for this purpose. You see there is a method to my madness.

Other than dehydrating or freeze drying, it the next best way of preserving shelf stable food. It doesn't depend on electricity or propane to keep or even to prepare. I can opt for a wood or charcoal fire to can or prepare my food like I do in the winter. And really, when it comes to storing food, freezing is only an option for 3- 12 months tops. Canning and dehydrating is good for about 1-5 years and freeze drying takes the prize at 25-30 years in long term storage. 

I catch sales on commercially frozen food stuffs all the time, rarely do I pay full price for any of it. Sales combined with smart coupon use saves the budget even on non GMO/organics. I don't save as much as growing it myself but it's a savings over full priced commercially canned goods plus I know what's in it. No rat hairs nor bug bits and pieces are in my canned goods. I know who processed my food (except for prior to freezing and bagging it.

When canning already frozen foods I do take the following steps:

• Always rinse the frozen produce thoroughly. 
• I pack my jars to 1" headspace.
• I'll fill the jars with my hot stock or boiled water for liquid.
• For pressure canning, I always use clean, new flats.
• I follow published guideline for canning food stuff.

So even without a garden, I can process my own food stores. This year was the first year I've had to do this. So there is an alternative to growing your own. It pays to develop relationships with other homesteaders and farmers. That's how we supply our homestead with mutton, pork, lamb, and beef each year. Our homestead isn't big enough to grow our own. A half of each supplies all the meat we consume for a year. Sometimes it's a barter deal with vegetables, eggs, chicken, and quail, and other times (like now) it's just straight cash deal. Either way, I know how the meat we eat was raised, and processed. In today's environment, it's just smart, healthy eating.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Chef Jo