Put Up: Can, Freeze or Dry Crops for Longer Enjoyment

I was walking through an old farmstead upstate a couple of decades ago marveling at an early 1800s farmhouse, the attendant sheds and big red barn. All had been abandoned years earlier when the Department of Environmental Conservation was gifted the land. All the buildings were showing their age and beginning to deteriorate.

Behind one of the smaller outbuildings was a covered porch with a handmade and very simple wooden bench running the length of the porch. On the bench were more than 20 sealed mason jars filled with pickles. Oh, the stories these pickles could have told. They’d been there for years and survived the cold winters and hot summers looking none the worse for their age. It harkened back to the days when rural residents had little choice but to know how to “put things up.” It’s nearly a lost skill.

If you are a vegetable gardener, or if you are fortunate enough to know a vegetable gardener who is always looking to unload some of his or her produce, now is the time to start thinking about Mason jars, that new pickle recipe, and all of that spaghetti sauce that you’ll be needing come next winter that you’d wished was homemade sauce from the garden. Buy it in a store? Poo bah on you. Make it yourself and freeze, can, pickle or learn how to otherwise store the bounties of your labors and your garden.

None of this business about it being too hard or time consuming either. I like to call it slow food. I know of one Southampton gent who lived in a house that we all envy. Few of us know of his vegetable garden, but this man who could afford to buy every beet in America prided himself on being able to pull one out of cold storage in his basement in the depths of winter and offer a slice to astonished visitors who never believe that it actually came out of his garden — in August. Now surely if he can keep his beets for five months you can put up a few jars of tomatoes or dry some beans.

As for canning, your best bet is in the tomato department, where you can use them whole or quartered, in sauces, paste, catsup, juice, etc. In the fruit area, apple sauce and pie fillings, peaches, pears, apricots and cherries can be canned as well.

If you’re short on freezer space, you can also store beans, limas, beets, carrots, zucchini and a long list of others, but you must have the proper equipment to process these low-acid vegetables. Jars of low-acid foods like beans and beets absolutely must be processed under controlled pressure in a metal, stove-top pressure canner made for handling the job safely.

Tomatoes, peaches and many other fruits — you do remember that tomatoes are really fruits don’t you? — have enough acid to kill the harmful bacteria that can thrive in canned foods, and therefore jars of high-acid foods can be processed in a boiling water bath in any large pot. The pot must be deep enough so the boiling water covers the tops of the jars.

Use only quality equipment, as this is an area where you can pay dearly for skimping. In addition, you should use “Stocking Up” (Rodale Press) by Carol Hupping as a resource in the actual step-by-step preparations for any canning or food preservation. The book is no longer in print, but you can find it used on Amazon.

The Cooperative Extension Service in Riverhead also has a wealth of information that is only a phone call away, 631-727-7850. There’s also an excellent resources on the web at uga.edu/nchfp.

Freezing is probably the best way to have that garden-fresh taste and texture preserved until next winter and beyond. Most vegetables freeze well (including Brussels sprouts) and now with the newest generation of fast-freeze freezers, the results are even more flavorful.

There are, however, a few exceptions that do not freeze well, such as eggplant, beets and tomatoes, which are best canned, and cucumbers, which are best pickled. Apples don’t freeze well, but cherries, berries, melons and nectarines taste almost fresh picked when properly frozen and then thawed just enough to be edible at serving time.

Harvest fruits and vegetables at their prime for freezing. After preparation, vegetables should be blanched (briefly boiled), cooled fast, then quickly sealed in airtight containers or packages, then quick frozen. A vegetable blancher, a large pot with a perforated insert, makes the blanching process quick and simple. Many excellent plastic containers are available. You may want to invest in one of the small heat-sealing appliances that leaves your goodies in boilable bags.

Different kinds of fruits need different methods of preparation. Berries are among the easiest. They should be washed, dried and immediately frozen. In some cases you may want to sugar them first, but this step has nothing to do with the actual preservation of the produce. Again, study information on freezing before your start.

Since freezing doesn’t require elaborate preparations, you can process small amounts of produce regularly throughout the season. Whenever there are more beans or broccoli than you can handle at a single meal, you can blanch and freeze the extras while cooking dinner. If you are fortunate enough to live in an open area where low-bush blueberries are plentiful, send the kids out to pick some, and even if you don’t have a large freezer, set half aside to freeze and “discover” in the depths of wintertime.

Cucumbers are obviously the top choice for pickling — from sweet midgets to big dills. Beets, beans, cauliflower, carrots, peppers, green tomatoes and melons can be pickled as well, as I am reminded by the poem by John Tobias. “Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity.”

Processing pickles sometimes takes several days, but it’s easy and there are dozens of recipes to choose from depending on your particular tastes. My obsession is new green pickles.

Drying is another method of food preservation dating from the beginning of agriculture. It’s an easy, practical and space-saving way to prepare and store food for winter use. Many kinds of appliances are gaining popularity to aid gardeners in drying foods (dehydrators). Some are heated by electricity to a temperature that dries food quickly and evenly. Others are systems of trays that are placed in a warm oven while others depend solely on the heating and drying abilities of the sun. Microwaving is the newest method, but the sun prevails as the original and most reliable method — though it can be somewhat iffy here on the moist East End.

Many foods can be dried besides the familiar staples like grapes (raisins), plums (prunes), apricots and sliced bananas. These fruits and others including apples, blueberries, peaches and pears develop a concentrated, sugary sweetness that makes them delicious as health snacks and foods. Dried fruits are also nice for dessert compotes and other cooked dishes in winter.

Vegetables, too, retain much of their taste and nutrients in drying. When reconstituted by soaking in water, they are handy to fortify soups, stews and casseroles. Beans, of course, are perfect candidates for drying — not just limas and soybeans, but also the less familiar ones like horticultural beans, pinto beans and kidney beans, as well as chickpeas and black-eyed peas. If you have so many green snap beans you can’t keep up with them, let some pods mature on the vines, shell them and use them like other dried beans.

Herbs such as lavender, oregano, parsley, sage, sweet basil, sweet marjoram, summer savory and thyme all dry well. Hang the stems up in an airy, warm, dry place until dry.

And last, but by no means least, are the hot peppers. When these red zingers are mature and red, string and hang them in a dry, warm place away from the sun. Be careful not to get juice on your skin or eyes as it can burn. Store the completely dry peppers on strings in a handy, warm, airy place or seal them in airtight containers at room temperature. Use as needed, or as you dare.

No garden and no friends offering you their bounty? Try a local farm stand. Here you can usually get premium local fruits and veggies and freeze them until you need them in the months ahead. They’ll taste at least as good as the produce you can buy today that’s trucked in from California or other spots after spending days on a train or truck.

Don’t forget to harvest and dry your garlic. Done right, garlic will last for months. Like the sweet corn at the local farm stand? You can fast-freeze it in plastic bags or use a corn stripper to remove the kernels for freezing. And don’t forget the jellies and jams. Keep growing.