Food storage methods

[sumi]

@tortoise You can make candies with it. Peel and remove seed from LARGE heavy walled zucchini. Cut into 1 inch cubes. Simmer cubes in 4 -5 cups water with 3 packets Kool-Aid and 2 - 2 1/2 C sugar or sweetener to equal. simmer until cubes begin to get translucent. Drain and spread on dehydrator trays. Set at 125 degrees and dry about 16 hours until no longer sticky. Shake cooled candy in powdered sugar and store in sealed container.

I make a dish using about a pound of the stuff, creamed sweetcorn, cheese and loads of eggs, so I grate and freeze pound bags of zuchs when I have a glut. But I want to try the above candies next year when I'll hopefully have a dehydrator and a bit of a vegetable patch

Which reminds me… for some odd reason the Irish do not "do" creamed sweetcorn and the tinned whole kernel corn we buy here is a bit chewy and not very nice. Anyone have any suggestions for home-made creamed sweetcorn? Either from fresh corn or tinned whole kernel.

 

[Beekissed]

I can get you to the sweet, crisp and flavorful home canned corn but I've never creamed any of our corn, so can't take you any further. The reason the corn in the store is so tasteless and chewy is that it's been cooked to death in a pressure canning situation.

We have canned our corn in a boiling water bath method for almost 40 yrs and when you open that jar it taste like you just cut it off the cob, it's that fresh and sweet, crisp in texture. Back when we first started canning corn Mom did it in the pressure canner as recommended but it rendered a discolored, rubbery/mushy and tasteless result in the jar, so she asked the older ladies at church how to correct this and they told her of the following method.

Cut the corn off the cob~no blanching needed....

... place in the jar, a tsp or tbs of salt(your preference)...

Cover the corn with water(doesn't need to be hot), then place a thick slice of green tomato on the top to add acid to your jar...

Cap it and use a boiling water bath or steam canner for 45 min. (for the steam canner, you start that timer when the steam plumes are 10 in. high or higher)...

When opening the jar for use, just remove the green tomato and use the corn as per normal. We find our canned corn to be far superior in flavor and texture to any frozen corn we've done, so we don't bother to freeze corn any longer.

 

[Beekissed]

You know what's weird? I obtained some retired battery hens last year at $1 per head for canning up, but didn't want to consume the meat due to the taste of where they had been, so I confined them and fed them up on fermented feeds for a month. I then processed them, but retained two that were still laying for additional rooster fodder for the winter.

Those RSL hens free ranged all fall, winter and into the spring and were fed fermented feed, which normally makes eggs taste simply lovely....nutty, sweet and no sulfur egginess to be tasted, but their eggs never did change in flavor. They STILL tasted like commercial eggs no matter what diet I had them on~pale and watery too, so I finally culled them.

Then I finally tasted the ones I had canned after feeding up on FF all month, which usually takes a strange bird from who knows where and removes the barnyard/gamey flavor from the meat....their meat STILL tasted like the feed they had been fed while at the battery. Ick. Those jars are still on my shelf, waiting until we are desperate for meat before we will likely use them.

 

[Britesea]

Salmonella and e coli are indeed, easier to prevent with good hygiene. They are also more survivable by most people (even if you wish you would die). Botulism is a whole different critter. The spores are everywhere, they just don't produce the killer toxin except under very specific conditions. If you get sick from botulism and manage to survive, it can take years to recover.

If you insist on using this method of preserving corn, please at the very least, boil the contents for a minimum of 15 minutes at a high rolling boil; it may neutralize any toxins present. You are dicing not only with your own life, but those of your loved ones.

If there is anything like a Master Food Preserver's class offered in your vicinity, I highly recommend taking it; it would be very educational.

 

[Britesea]

My concern is that when you state how you can, you don't explain that your method is not considered safe by the Agricultural Extension Office, which has extensively tested many ways of preserving foods for safety. People who are new to canning may read your directions and blithely go ahead with your directions without being aware of the safety issues. They may not be as sanguine about the risk of botulism as you are.

I agree that we are all grownups here, and entitled to make our own decisions about what risks we will take or not take, but before you can make an informed decision, you need to know all the facts.
I have made my point about the risk of water bath canning of low acid foods like corn. If people choose to ignore those risks, at least now they know that using a piece of green tomato to make the corn more acidic will not be enough.

 

[Beekissed]

If there are any spores of clostridium botulinum present on the corn when you start processing, 1 piece of green tomato is not going to add enough acid to allow you to safely water bath corn. It needs to be 4.5 ph or lower to be acid enough.

What is true and what you surmise may be two different things. Green tomatoes can have a pH value of low as 3.67 or lower and canned sweet corn a pH as low as 5.9, with an average of the two combined being a pH of 4.7. Not too far off the proposed 4.5 and close enough for consideration of safe pH. IF the corn has botulism spores on it, the combined acid and heating time of processing could potentially kill the spores. IF it has no spores of botulism, it's a moot point....and your whole premise is that it MAY have botulism. My premise is that there is an equal chance that it MAY not. You have absolutely no proof whatsoever that a piece of green tomato will not add enough acid to a jar of corn to prevent botulism spores from developing. None.

The Extension Office determines corn canned alone to be unsafe for boiling water bath but has no information whatsoever about corn canned with acid added to it, so you are merely surmising what would or would not be safe according to the EO but have no real statistics or information on this at all. Your information is about corn alone, therefore, it does not apply to corn with acid added to it.

The fact that we've used this method for 40 yrs on thousands of jars of corn and have personally eaten that corn with no incidents of botulism is not "Russian Roulette" statistics. In Russian Roulette the chances are 1 in 6 that a person will be killed by a bullet. There really is no comparison with this game of chance and the calculated risk of adding acid to a low acid food and canning it.

For 40 yrs we've taken that calculated risk and have not had a single incident and those who informed us of this method had as many years under their canning belt with the same results. At this point, the method would appear to be as successful as other methods of canning that have actually BEEN tested by the USDA and the Ag Ex Off.

Since this method has, in fact, not even been tested by the USDA at all, it has not been found to be safe or unsafe and the only thing you have to go on is the pH of corn canned without added acid, you are only surmising it is a dangerous practice. I am living proof that it is, in fact, not dangerous at all and not even in the realm of the over dramatic comparison with "Russian Roulette"...if it were, then 1 out of 6 times we ate the corn over a 40 yr span, we would have the potential of contracting botulism. Since we've had not one single incidence of any sickness at all by using this method, there is no real comparison. We have not just been lucky for 40 yrs and anyone suggesting such a thing would have to be somewhat delusional.

I consider a method that has been tried with 100% success for thousands of jars of corn to be a successful and safe canning method. You still may not consider it so, but you have no proof at all on your side of the debate, while I stand on 40 yrs of proof of success.

I thought long and hard about even responding to this topic of debate but considered it worthy of pointing out the truth of the matter instead of leaving it to what MAY happen if you don't follow the rules as determined by the USDA, which have no rules about this method of canning at all, as they've never done testing on it. We, on the other hand, have been testing it for 40 yrs and found it safe, and that is the basic truth.

 

[sumi]

You know what's weird? I obtained some retired battery hens last year at $1 per head for canning up, but didn't want to consume the meat due to the taste of where they had been, so I confined them and fed them up on fermented feeds for a month. I then processed them, but retained two that were still laying for additional rooster fodder for the winter.

Those RSL hens free ranged all fall, winter and into the spring and were fed fermented feed, which normally makes eggs taste simply lovely....nutty, sweet and no sulfur egginess to be tasted, but their eggs never did change in flavor. They STILL tasted like commercial eggs no matter what diet I had them on~pale and watery too, so I finally culled them.

Then I finally tasted the ones I had canned after feeding up on FF all month, which usually takes a strange bird from who knows where and removes the barnyard/gamey flavor from the meat....their meat STILL tasted like the feed they had been fed while at the battery. Ick. Those jars are still on my shelf, waiting until we are desperate for meat before we will likely use them.

Funny you mention this, I found an advert online offering some rough looking hens "free to good homes" and was wondering if I feel like going through the hassle of rehabilitating them now. I decided against it. I stopped eating chicken meat some years ago already, but I found when I raised pigs and sheep for meat, that the feed really does have a huge influence on the flavour of their meat.