When autumn (fall) starts to creep in, it’s definitely time to start preserving the harvest from your garden or the hedgerows. People have been preserving food since ancient times. Evidence shows that Middle Eastern cultures were using the heat of the sun to dry their foods as early as 12,000 BC—for reasons of survival or culture or both. Fast forward to the present day, and preserving our food, perhaps home-grown, seasonal, local, organic, or free-range, is an essential and enjoyable part of a healthy, sustainable lifestyle.
About the Author
Garden and food writer ROBIN RIPLEY has been growing, cooking and preserving fresh food from her garden since moving to a small farm in rural Maryland 15 years ago. She is an enthusiastic experimenter of all things related to food, including bread and pastry baking, wine and cheese making, canning and preserving. She is co-author of Grocery Gardening and also raises pet chickens. Robin writes and talks regularly with groups about gardening, potager design and the importance and joy of supporting locally-grown and fresh foods.
Here are a few of the useful tips:
- Tip 158: Pick the right bowls and pots for pickling
Avoid containers and utensils made of unlined copper, iron, zinc or brass when pickling. These materials may react with acid and salt and can cloud or discolour your pickles. For pots, pick such materials as stainless steel, heatproof glass or hard-anodised aluminum.
- Tip 254: Set your freezer temperature to -18 Freezer temperatures settings should be set to -18 C (0 F) or lower. Not all freezer settings are accurate, though, so get a freezer thermometer, available at supermarkets and kitchenware retailers, and regularly monitor the temperate and adjust the setting if needed.
- Tip 279: Create your own herb meat rubs
With herbs rolling in from the garden by the basketful, don’t forget you can mix the match them to make unique and delicious rubs for meat and poultry. For poultry, try combining dried lemon thyme, sage, rosemary, salt, and pepper. For beef, try a combination of dried thyme, sage, marjoram, garlic and onion powders, pepper and salt.
Author: Robin Ripley, Publisher: Apple Press RRP: £12.99
Spiced Blackberry Jam
As Wisdom for Home Preservers doesn’t have any recipes, I am sharing a recipe that I have adapted from a variety of sources. Blackberries, particularly wild blackberries, contain a lot of seeds. When I made the recipe, I used whole berries, however, you can also puree the cooked berries. You do this by putting them through a food mill or push them through a sieve to make a puree which will make a smooth jam with no seeds.
WHY NOT PIN THIS IMAGE FOR LATER?
More Blackberry Recipes from Farmersgirl Kitchen
Blackberry and Vanilla Cordial
SPICED BLACKBERRY JAM:
Ingredients
- 1 kg blackberries
- 1 star anise
- 3 whole cloves
- 1 small cinnamon stick
- 2 lemons juice
- 3 kg white sugar warmed
Instructions
- First sterilise your jars, by washing and rinsing them, the placing in the oven at 100C for about 20 minutes until they are dry. Leave them in the oven as they should be warm when you fill with the jam.
- Wrap the star anise, cloves and cinnamon in a piece of muslin and tie with string
- Put the blackberries and the spices in a large pan with 2 tablespoons of water
- Cook until soft.
- Mash the fruit with the back of a spoon
- Remove spices, you can then either leave the berries whole or press them through a sieve or food mill
- If you are making the puree, wash the pan then return the blackberry puree to the pan and add the lemon juice. I
- Heat, stirring to prevent the blackberries sticking.
- If you are using whole berries no need to wash the pan, simply add the lemon juice to the pan and proceed with the following instructions.
- Add the warmed sugar stirring until dissolved
- Turn up the heat and boil rapidly until the jam has reached the setting point
- Pour the hot jam into the sterilised jars.
Notes
Nutrition
I’m adding this recipe to The Great British Blackberry Recipe Round Up, a Linky party which Karen at Lavender and Lovage and I are running throughout Blackberry season 2015. Click through to the GBBR post for full details. You will see that I used the photo from this post for the Linky badge!
I love making – and eating – pickles
i have just started growing lots of food & now have an allotment – yay! would love to start some pickling next year & going to grow lots of shallots & beetroot to try, just need the perfect book to help me now 😉
@emmav6
Pickling.
Making chutney of some sort
I love preserving fruit
I make jam and I pickle too!
I love preserving fruit, good hobby!
i love to make a plum jam/chutney my grandfather has a plum tree in his garden so always has so many left over so i snap them up 😉
Jam. Or pickle. Or jam – LOL – I can't choose! Jam I think!
Love making Jam
Jam, I haven't attempted anything else, but I love eating almost everything 🙂
I am very new to preserves so this would be ideal to get me going 🙂
Jams, pickling
I love making jam.
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Jam making. The book looks great. @millizilli
I WOULD love to win this book and I love to jam, jelly, chutney and bottle!
I love jam making. It's so nice to make jam and give to friends.
I really want to make the spiced blackberry jam x
I love chutney and it would be great to.make some of my own!
PS My other half makes jams and he would love the new suggestions in this book.
I love making jams and soups
I love making jam to have on my scones 🙂
I make wine from our fruit…does that count?!?!
I love jams
I prefer making jam as I never have any luck with making pickles 🙂
Jam!
Pickling 🙂 but would love to learn more about preserving – thank you x
tupperware
I'm into bottling at the moment. I like seeing the jars of food in my pantry
I make jams, chutneys, cordials .. I love seeing my produce in jars in my cupboards
Pickling x
i so want to get into i all, never tried before. we have a raised veggy plot in our garden which has spent this year establishing, hopefully we will get some decent crops next year, we also have a cherry tree and apple tree so hoping to have good hauls from them next year too. mine & OH's first place and with our young fa,ily were looking at doing as much our selves as possible. i need a bit of a hand though!
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I like to dry food. My next step is to get a dehydrator so I can do more
making jam
Making jam
I've never tried preserving, apart from bunging it in the freezer, but I would like to.
I have to agree with the majority here – jams and jellies 🙂
I bottle a lot but would love to learn about salting for veg…
pickling
Jam making
I really want to try and make a meat rub
I do like making jam 🙂
I like to make my own piccalilli 🙂
Make jam and pickles but would love to have a go at making chutneys.Looks like a great book
I like freezing
chutney, jam or pickle it.
I love making chutney. I would love to try jam but have been scared to so far
Jam
Pickling
I enjoy making jams although I sometimes find jellies a bit tedious. I recently tried making damson ketchup & it turned out surprisingly well.
This is my first harvest this year so am looking at chutneys and jams which I have never done before – before I started growing food the only way to preserve it was to hide it from the tribe!