Food Preservation – Jams, Chutneys and Pickles

Before the days of refrigeration, scientific advances in food treatment and the ability to fly in foods out of season, it was mandatory to find ways of preserving produce such that families could have food supplies all year round.

With meats, they were often times salted (cured as in salt beef, bacon and fish), air-dried (as in Biltong) or Smoked as in Salmon.

With softer fruits and vegetables, each culture has its own way of dealing with the short term excess of supply; for example, in Italy there is a long tradition of drying tomatoes under the scorching sun and these are available to us through delicatessens either packaged dry or preserved further in olive oil.

Africa, particularly Morocco preserves lemons in salt and use these year round in tagine dishes, whereas in the Eastern Bloc Sauerkraut preservation of cabbages is an acquired flavour for many.

In the UK, we have a long tradion of making Jam and Chutney preserves when fruits and vegetables are cheap and in season to prolong our ability to use our fruit and vegetables well past harvest. Those who grow their own probably still practise the traditions of preservation while many find it easier to shop at the supermarket

You may be tempted to think that this is all unnecessary with the advent of supermarkets flying in produce from across the world every day of the year. Is there any month in the year when you can’t now buy strawberries for example? Is that actually a good thing …?

In Food with Passion’s view, we should observe our own UK food seasons :

1. Food delivered out of season is much more expensive
2. Food delivered out of season tastes inferior
3. The joy of catching the first strawberries, first English asparagus, even humble new potato is lost.
4. We should support our own UK farmers before we support other countries, unless we cannot physically grow the produce in our climate.
5. We lose the art of the skillful cook to capture the seasonal flavours and in some instances to accentuate those flavours
6. Home made jams and chutneys are typically better  than shop-bought varieties and the recipes are tweakable to your own taste rather than blanded down to suit the majority.
7. Feel good factor – you feel good having made your own jams and chutneys and even if the first tryout isn’t perfect, you will still love it and want to try it again.

So .. please think about the seasons and do try making your own preserves when fruits and vegetables are in a glut. There are plenty resources on the web with great recipes to try out and there is nothing complicated or particularly time consuming about chopping a few fruits and veg and simmering with sugar, vinegar and spices as necessary.

Storage Jars – ‘Kilner’ type

If you do decide to heed our campaign to respect the fruit and vegetable seasons, you will need some preserving jars. These typically come in two forms – either screw top (two part – a disc lid with a separate screw ring to clamp the lid down) or a cliptop with a rubber seal (like the Grolsch beer bottle).

Some jars sold as preserving jars have only a one piece screwtop lid. These may be OK, but generally we would avoid these as they may pit and you may have difficulty in locating replacement lids.

These jars were traditionally made by the Kilner company (long since disappeared, but the brand name now owned by the famous Ravenswood glass company I believe) and were in such popularity that any jar of those types have now come to be known as Kilner jars irrespective as to who manufactured them; somewhat in the way that we use ‘Hoover’ to describe any vacuum cleaner.

So whether it is making jams (oohhh!! home made bitter Seville Marmalade with chunky peel.. yummmm!!), chutneys, salting lemons for your tagines, pickling walnuts, onions or beetroots, then do make sure that you have the right type of jars. They don’t have to be made by Kilner, but jars of that generic type (usually referred to as ‘Preserving Jars’) are a must (a) to withstand hot jams and pickles and (b) to keep the contents fresh, but do keep them out of sunlight. Another good tip is that for pickled (includes chutneys), they do benefit from a maturation period of at least a week to allow the flavours to mellow and blend.

So where can you get the preserving jars to get started?