It's autumn here, which is busy-preserving time for me. Except, I don't make preserves. I hate bottled fruit, neither I nor my partner like chutneys or much in the way of pickled stuff, and I've never tried pressure canning on my own and am too old to start now. Fortunately, we have both a dehydrator and three chest freezers. And an ex-neighbour who likes to make jam, so we give her fruit and she returns some of it in the form of a jar of jam. It's a great mutually parasitic relationship.
Fruit that I've found dries well in the dehydrator and tastes divine later in the year: apples and pears. Fruit that dries well but that I find I don't actually like eating (though the commercial variants are good): peaches and figs. Dunno why. I tried drying shiitake mushrooms but must not have dried them enough, because the entire jar went mouldy within days. I've also tried berry leather but that is just too danged much work, even though it tastes nice.
I've stopped freezing down fruit for the most part because I find I rarely get around to using it. Berries are okay, I make muffins with them, and toppings for cheesecake, but I have hiffed so many bags and bags of frozen apples to the cows and chooks that now I'm yeah nah.
Veggies I do freeze a lot of. In general I wait till I have a big bag of beans or a couple dozen ears of corn, then do a big lot all at once: pre-cut the beans (usually frenched) or cauli or broc, parboil for a couple minutes, put into ice water until cool, then shake dry, package them in cling film in one-meal-sized bundles (usually a cup of corn or beans). I line a baking tray with a large ziplock pre labelled with the year and content (e.g. 2025 blanched scarlet runner beans) and lay the wrapped bundles on top of the bag, then put the tray in the freezer. That way a day or two later even if I can't remember what the heck is in the bundles, I can look at the bag label. Chuck the packets in the bag, seal, and stash somewhere for later in the year.
Leeks and chokos I cut up and freeze raw. Roast pumpkin doesn't really package well in cling film so for that I use little ziplock bags, then pile then into a labelled big ziplock. Zuke I shred (food processor or spiralizer) and then pack raw into little bags. When you thaw it, all the water has leached out so it's like you've pre-salted them to reduce the water content. That way you can skip that step in recipes.
Tomatoes I cut in half, simmer until soft, then put them through a ricer to get rid of the skins and seeds. I cook the resultant puree down to a paste to reduce the volume, then mini-bag and freeze it. I go through a lot of tomato paste during the year.
Or tackling a new recipe that takes hours and requires heaps of stuff and that is really finicky to put together. That includes anything with the word "pie" or "pastry" in its name.
) But my understanding is the reaction is between acetic acid and the iron to make iron acetate or something like it which does something to tannins … but will also stain cardboard and wallpaper and washcloths, although not any color you want them to be. Just, uh, from personal experience.
My recipe is now for five pounds so I guess I’ll end up with three pounds of links and two pounds of ground for each batch.
