Preserving the Harvest

Preserving the Harvest by Deborah Niemann ThriftyHomesteader.com !1 Now that you have grown all of these wonderful herbs, fruits, and vegetables, what do you do with them? I once mentioned eating seasonally in my status update on Facebook, and a friend commented, “The only problem with eating seasonally is that we’d be eating snow three months a year.” The ironic thing about that statement is that people who don’t eat fresh, seasonal food are eating preserved foods every day of the year. Yet they do not realize that it is possible to freeze, can, and dehydrate food grown in a home garden or purchased in bulk at the farmers’ market. !2 Tomatoes Let’s start with tomatoes because they are the most popular crop grown in home gardens. Like most gardeners, we grow a lot of tomatoes. To preserve the harvest, we can salsa and pizza sauce, freeze tomatoes for making soup in the middle of winter, and dry slices of tomatoes for using in quiche and other dishes. Freezing tomatoes We freeze most of our tomatoes so that we can have peeled, whole tomatoes available for cooking year-round. We freeze them in one-pound increments for using in recipes that call for a twelve-ounce can of tomatoes or an eight-ounce can of tomato sauce. Frozen tomatoes tend to have a high water content, which is why they are roughly equivalent to smaller cans of tomato products. You will need to reduce the amount of other liquids in a recipe or cook a bit longer to reduce the liquid when you use frozen tomatoes in cooking. If you thaw the tomatoes before using them in recipes that call for tomato sauce, you should drain off the liquid before adding them to the rest of the ingredients. Two-pound or three-pound packages of tomatoes are great for making tomato soup in the cold winter months. Some people simply wash tomatoes, drop them into a freezer bag, and stick them in the freezer. However, there are a few reasons for blanching before freezing. If you don’t do a great job of washing the tomatoes or if there are some microscopic germs, blanching will kill pathogens. Food scientists also say that blanched food will have a brighter color, better texture, and better flavor than food that was not blanched before freezing. Personally, I love the convenience of having peeled tomatoes in the freezer, ready to use during the winter. To blanch tomatoes, choose a medium-size pot unless you are working alone, in which case a larger pot is worth using because you’ll blanch all the tomatoes, then peel and chop, then package. When we freeze tomatoes, there are usually two or three of us working together. One person washes and blanches; the next person peels and chops the tomatoes; and a third person, if there is one, packs them into freezer bags. Three people can make a nice assembly line where everything continues to move smoothly. If there is a backup in one spot, there is usually a slowdown somewhere else, and we pitch in and help. The slowdown usually happens in peeling and chopping, while washing, blanching, and packaging each tend to have slow moments. So, anyone who is idle starts peeling tomatoes. This is why it is not worth using a larger pot—blanching usually goes quickly enough with a medium pot. You need the following equipment: • pot of boiling water • slotted spoon • kitchen timer • large bowl or pot of ice water • large plate for cutting up tomatoes • sharp knife • large bowl or bucket for peels and cores !3 • bowl for chopped up tomatoes • scale • freezer bags or containers Most of the equipment is available in the average kitchen, but you may be wondering if you need to vacuum seal bags of produce before freezing. Although it is not absolutely necessary, food will last longer in the freezer without getting freezer burn if it is vacuum packed. So, it does not make it any safer to freeze food, but it does improve the quality over time of some frozen food. Tomatoes are one of the few foods for which we do not use our vacuum sealer. They have a high water content, which makes it easy to manually squeeze the air out of zipper-style freezer bags before freezing, and if you use the smallest bag possible for the quantity you are freezing, there is almost no air in the bag. A pint bag will hold one pound, and a quart bag will hold two pounds. Step-by-step freezing Organize equipment—Assemble all of your equipment and supplies and set them up in a logical order. The pot of boiling water is obviously on the stove with the slotted spoon. The bowl of ice water is next to the stove. Next is the large plate for cutting up tomatoes, and behind that is the bucket for scraps and the bowl for tomatoes. Next are the scale and freezer bags. Our counter is not big enough to include the scale, so it is usually on the other side of the kitchen or on the dining room table. Blanch tomatoes— Wash four or five tomatoes and drop them into the boiling water. Set your timer for one minute. Some books tell you to remove the tomatoes when the skins pop, which is fine as long as it happens within a minute. If the skin pops within twenty or thirty seconds, go ahead and lift the tomato out of the boiling water with the slotted spoon and put it into the ice water. All of the tomatoes should be removed at one minute, even if the skins have not popped. The skin will be loose enough to slip off the tomato, unless the tomato is not ripe. Usually if you stab the tomato with a knife, the skin will split, and you can pull the skin off with your fingers. But, you don’t want to do that until the tomato has been in the ice water for at least a couple of minutes, or until you can comfortably handle it. I’ve heard sad stories of people burning their fingers because they were not putting the tomatoes in ice water after blanching. The other reason you put tomatoes in ice water is to stop the cooking action. You don’t want the tomatoes to cook and turn to total mush, which makes them difficult to handle. Prepare tomatoes—When you can comfortably handle the tomatoes, pull the skins off. Depending upon how you plan to use the tomatoes, you can chop them up, quarter them, or simply remove the core, which is the firm part where the stem was attached. Don’t use a cutting board. Tomatoes are very juicy, and liquid will be running off the board, all over the counter, and onto the floor in short order. We used to put a dishtowel on the edge of the counter to absorb the liquid, and then we realized that if we used a plate, it would hold the juice. Package tomatoes—If you have enough room for the scale to sit next to the chopping plate, and the scale is not one that has an auto-off after a minute, you can weigh the tomatoes as you chop them up. Set the bowl on the scale before turning it on, or press “tare,” so it will read zero. Put the chopped tomato right into the bowl, and once the scale reads the amount you want, the tomatoes can be dropped into freezer bags, which are labeled with the date and type of tomato. I like to keep my tomato varieties separate when freezing so that I know what kind I’m eating. !4 And I do have favorite varieties for different dishes. For example, I prefer yellow or orange tomatoes for tomato soup. Your backyard chickens or turkeys will love the peels and cores, or you can put them into your compost pile or feed them to your worms. Creamy Heirloom Tomato Soup Makes 4 servings. 2 pounds frozen orange or yellow tomatoes 1 teaspoon garlic salt 1 teaspoon paprika 1/8 teaspoon cayenne 2 teaspoons oregano 1 teaspoon basil 1/4 cup butter 1/4 cup flour 1 1/4 cups whole milk Cover the bottom of the pot with about half an inch of warm water and place it on medium heat. Tomatoes only need to be thawed enough to break into pieces. The thawing will finish over the heat. Once the tomatoes are thawed, add the spices and stir. Use an immersion blender (also known as a stick blender) to blend the tomatoes until smooth. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a separate saucepan. After it is melted, whisk in the flour until it is a smooth paste. Add milk to the pot with the tomatoes, and then whisk the paste into the blended tomatoes and milk. Mix well and continue to stir until mixture boils. Turn off heat as soon as it boils. The total time from start to finish is only about 20 minutes, which is quicker than take-out. Gazpacho I crave the harvest of the first tomatoes every summer for two reasons— salsa and gazpacho! While salsa is one of the most popular snack foods today, most people have never even heard of gazpacho. It is a cold vegetable soup, which takes only a few minutes to make, is incredibly nutritious, and does not heat up the kitchen on a hot August day. It gets bonus points for being really delicious, and it can be frozen for enjoying later.

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