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Category Archives: Kitchen Tips

7 Ways to Use Eggshells (and tips you need to know)

07 Apr
Eggshells can be ground in a blender and used for many purposes, indoors and out.

Eggshells can be ground in a blender and used for many purposes, indoors and out.

If you eat eggs, make sure you make the best use of those shells! Most of an eggshell is calcium. In fact, about 95% of shells are calcium carbonate…the same stuff that sea shells, coral, and limestone are made from (the other 5% includes proteins, calcium phosphate, and magnesium carbonate). Here’s a list of what you can do with those shells so the calcium and its brittle shell don’t go to waste.

USE EGGSHELLS FOR THIS

1) Give your hens a calcium boost. Eggshells contain 95% calcium, and hens need calcium to lay eggs that have those strong shells. There is nothing unhealthy about feeding your hens eggshells, as long as those shells have been sterilized to kill bacteria (see below on how to do this) and offered in ground form. Pay special attention to shell sterilization if you get some of your eggs from another source where you can’t be sure of the laying hen’s health.

2) Give your pets a calcium boost: In the case of eggshells, what is good for chickens is good for your pet. Adding pulverized eggshells to their food provides extra calcium for bone health. And just like using shells for chickens, be sure to sterilize the shells first.

3) Give yourself a calcium boost: Consuming calcium from eggshells can help you, too. In a 2003 study published in the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology Research, eggshell consumption helped stop bone loss in postmenopausal women. While you can consume pulverized eggshells for added calcium, remember that calcium amounts very greatly in shells, so there is no way to tell exactly how much calcium you are getting (but we know you are getting more than if you didn’t consume the shells at all). Be sure you bake the shells before consuming to prevent ingesting any bacteria if you haven’t washed the shell before eating the egg (see below).

The finer your grind your eggshells, the sooner the calcium will be available to garden plants.

The finer your grind your eggshells, the sooner the calcium will be available to garden plants.

4) Incorporate them into your soil: It’s a great practice to add ground eggshells into your garden soil (and your indoor pots, too). But realize that it takes awhile for those shells to break down enough for the calcium to be available to your plants. In fact, eggshells can take many years to decompose fully and it will take several years to see the benefits of those eggshell additions to soil. But don’t let this deter you as adding eggshells to soil is great for plants! Start now…in a year or two you’ll start to see benefits (the finer you grind the shells, the more quickly you’ll see benefits). And don’t forget to sterilize those shells before adding them to the soil to prevent adding bacteria to your garden.

5) Keep garden critters at bay: Slugs are slippery little devils, and they dislike the chalky sharpness of ground eggshells. Cutworms don’t like it, either. Sprinkle the eggshell around plants like tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, and cabbage to keep their stems safe and destructive critters away. Make sure you cover the surface of the soil around the entire stem.

6) Clean your pots and pans: Yes, you can grind your eggshells into a powder and use it as an abrasive. But, it being an abrasive and all, it will scratch! I’ve used this for especially stubborn spots on cast iron pans or stainless steel (on the insides). Don’t use this on any surface that you want to see a scratch on.

7) Make your coffee sweeter: Adding crushed eggshells to your coffee grounds helps to lessen the acidity of your coffee. Then you can toss the used grounds and eggshells in your compost bin. Better yet, toss them both into your garden soil! The eggshells have the calcium, but the coffee grounds provide the nitrogen.

You can use a blender to grind eggshells fine. (Bowl by the Little Pottery Venture.)

You can use a blender to grind eggshells fine. (Bowl by the Little Pottery Venture.)

PREPARE EGGSHELLS LIKE THIS

For most eggshell uses, it is better to make sure they are clean and free from bacteria. If you don’t wash the eggs thoroughly before using, bake the shells at 150 degrees Fahrenheit on a cookie sheet for about 10 minutes.

You can grind your eggshells either wet or dry. I personally find grinding  them dry to be easier, but decide which method works best for you in your kitchen:

To grind eggshells wet, simply take all of your eggshells, place them in a blender and fill the blender with water to about 1/2 way up the eggshells. Then whizzzzzzzzz, and drain. What to do next is where I find the difficulty. Small bits of wet shell are not necessarily cooperative, and most uses for eggshell are easier to implement when the shells are dry.

To grind eggshells dry, you can either leave them sit in a bowl until they are thoroughly dry (I keep the pretty bowl shown above next to my sink and simply stack eggshells as they accumulate), or you can bake them. Baking to dry and sterilize them can serve double duty here! If 10 minutes baking at 150F doesn’t dry all of the wet egg remnants inside the shell perfectly, just leave them bake in the oven until the insides of the egg are perfectly dry. (To see a video on how to use your blender and a mason jar to grind your eggshells and other foods, click here.)

DON’T USE EGGSHELLS FOR THIS

I just can’t recommend that you use eggshells to start seedlings, even though this is a popular infographic on Facebook and all over the interwebs as an eggshell tip (I know…I’m the problem child sometimes). Seedlings are like icebergs…at best what you see above the soil is equal to what is going on below the soil. In fact, sometimes the root system is much larger than the seedling. Half an eggshell just doesn’t have the space necessary to support a growing and intricate root system unless you transplant it pretty quickly to the garden. In drier climates it is also difficult to keep such a small amount of soil moist enough to keep a healthy seedling happy.

Eggshells do not sharpen garbage disposal blades. I don’t think it harms the garbage disposal any more than anything else, but I have read that egg shell bits in the drain, because they are heavier than usual kitchen sink refuse, can contribute to drain clogs. The idea being they settle into a pipe at some point, and slowly start to trap debris. Even more reason to use eggshells for one of their many beneficial purposes!

Rural Spin

 
16 Comments

Posted by on April 7, 2013 in Animals, Gardening, Home Remedies & Apothecary, Homesteading, Kitchen Tips

 

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5 Benefits of Cleaning Wood Floors with Tea

20 Jan

You can keep your wood floors clean and looking great using black tea.

Tea is more than just a tasty beverage–it can do wonders for cleaning wood floors! This goes for both hard wood and laminate flooring. Just buy the cheapest black tea you can find, brew it up, clean the floors, buff the floor with a dry cloth, and you’re done. Here are the 5 benefits of cleaning your wood floors with black tea:

IT’S EASY: Simply brew 3 tea bags with four cups or so of boiling water. Let it sit to cool a bit, then use a funnel to transfer it to a spray bottle. It’s ready to use. Spray it on your floor enough to see a sheen of wetness, but don’t overdo it; too much moisture takes too long to dry and can warp your wood through time. After you spray it, wipe or mop to remove dirt. I use wash cloths that I attach to a Swiffer sweeper. Or I get on my hands-and-knees and clean the floors old-school. Rinsing isn’t required.

Black tea is strong enough to clean the dirt, but not strong enough to damage your finish.

Black tea is strong enough to clean the dirt, but not strong enough to damage your finish.

IT’S CHEAP: A box of cheap black generic tea can be had for a few dollars, and only three tea bags are needed to fill an empty spray bottle with the black tea cleaner. How long that will last depends upon how much floor you have to clean, of course.

IT WORKS: This is the most important benefit–it actually cleans the floors. The slight acidity of black tea (about pH 5) is enough to lift the dirt off the floor and onto your cleaning rag. Water doesn’t quite cut it, soap can be too hard to remove from the floor, and vinegar is too harsh. Which leads me to…

IT WON’T STRIP THE FINISH LIKE VINEGAR: White distilled vinegar has a pH of between 2.4 and 3.4 (apple cider vinegar has a pH of 2.8 to 3.0). These acidic levels are too harsh for a floor’s finish and as a result shouldn’t be used to clean your wood floors. Tea, however, won’t strip the finish. It is strong enough to remove the dirt, but you won’t have to refinish your floor every few years.

IT MAINTAINS THE WOOD’S PATINA: The color of the tea is enough to deepen and enhance the natural color of your wood floor. This is also good for floors that get a lot of traffic or dog nails–the tea helps disguise the lighter wood color that results from buffs and scratches.

Colors2

 
2 Comments

Posted by on January 20, 2013 in Home and Living, Kitchen Tips, Saving Money

 

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Home-roasted Coffee: Morning Beverage or Nectar of the Gods?

16 Sep

Home roasted coffee is a good argument for scratch-n-sniff photography.

For 10 minutes worth of work, you can have the best damn coffee you’ve ever put in your mouth. No, I’m not exaggerating. Coffee I used to rave over at the local cafe where they roast their own now tastes like swill since I’ve learned to roast my own. The main reason is that coffee begins to lose its flavor after it’s roasted; only seven days after roasting the taste is seriously deteriorated.

There are different methods to roast coffee. You can buy a home roaster, but those cost about $90 and are a waste of money in my book…use that dough to buy a lot of coffee. You can roast the beans in a popcorn popper, either an air-pop style or a stove-top model. I own neither but once you learn the physics behind roasting you’ll be able to adapt roasting to the popcorn popper easily. Here I’ll show you how to roast coffee in a skillet and in the oven (watch a video of this here). 

Green coffee can be purchased from different sources. I get mine from Camping Survival. Their organic green Costa Rican Monte Crisol coffee beans (available here) are canned so I can buy in bulk and they keep on a shelf until needed. After I open a can, I keep the green beans in the freezer until I’m ready to roast a batch, which I do twice a week or so. How often and how much you roast depends upon your own personal needs, but don’t roast less often than once a week or you’ll defeat the purpose of home roasting. One guy I talked to roasts his coffee every evening, ready to grind the next morning when he wakes up. Roasting only takes about 10 minutes, so this is the ideal scenario.

SKILLET ROASTING

A heavy skillet, be it cast iron or heavy stainless steel, is necessary since high heat is needed to roast coffee. And take note: roasting coffee is smoky business, especially if you like darker roasts. The longer and darker the roast, the smokier the process is because you are caramelizing the beans and burning off more and more sugars. Make sure you have your kitchen vent set to high. A window fan doesn’t hurt, either.

To roast in a skillet, place the skillet on the stove (or a hot grill outside) and heat on medium until it is hot. Do NOT put any oil or anything else in the pan; coffee is roasted dry. Dump the green coffee into the skillet and start stirring using a whisk. You’ll need to stir constantly to keep the beans moving for an even roast.

Stir until your desired level of roast is reached, turn off the heat, and immediately dump your beans into a colander. Shake the colander to cool the beans and remove the papery chaff from the beans. That’s it…your done. You can either grind all of the beans immediately, or just what you need each morning. It’s up to you.

OVEN ROASTING

This is easier in many respects, but I prefer the taste of stove top roasted coffee myself. Try it both ways and see which one works for you. For this method, just heat your oven to 500F. Place your green coffee on a heavy duty cookie sheet with plenty of space between beans. You’ll still only want to roast smaller quantities at a time even though your cookie sheet can hold much more; the more coffee you roast, the smokier it is.

After your oven is fully heated, pop the beans into the oven and wait. You’ll have to experiment a little bit with your oven and determine how long it takes for the beans to reach your desired roast. In my oven it takes about 15 minutes to get a very dark roast, which is what I aim for.

Once your desired roast is reached, remove the beans from the oven, dump them into a colander, and shake to remove the chaff and cool the beans. Then you’re done! As with stove-top roasting, you can either grind it all at once or grind each morning. It’s up to you.

THE PHYSICS OF ROASTING

Coffee roasts best between about 375F to 540F and there are several stages coffee goes through while it is being roasted. You’ll quickly learn what these stages are and be able to customize your own roast based upon what you hear, see, and smell.

“First crack” is the auditory signal that a very light roast has been reached.

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The “first crack” occurs at about 3 to 4 minutes. Here the sugars will start to caramelize causing some smoke to appear, and steam starts to escape. First crack indicates a very light roast, which is rarely brewed into coffee but it’s your coffee, so you get to decide on your own whether you like it.

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Second crack indicates that a Full Medium Brown or City Roast has been reached.

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The “second crack” can be heard at about 6 minutes, and is louder than first crack. At this stage you’ll also see the beans jumping around a little bit as the steam escapes; sometimes a bean will explode like popcorn. At second crack the coffee is considered a Full Medium Brown or City Roast. Still not dark enough for me but  this is a common roast for people to drink.

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The roast darkens after this and develops a wonderful oily sheen; at what stage you want to stop roasting the coffee depends upon how dark a roast you want. But be careful, over-roasting coffee can burn it, and then it tastes like charcoal.

I stop roasting at about 13 minutes using the skillet method, when the coffee is a dark roast and shiny. This would be a French or Espresso Roast. Or maybe the Rural Spin Roast. If you like a darker roast, try going a minute or two longer as the beans darken and get even shinier to see if you like that taste; this Dark French or Spanish roast is not readily available in the United States, but is in parts of Europe and elsewhere.

At about 13 minutes, the Rural Spin Roast has been reached…aka a dark or French roast.

 
15 Comments

Posted by on September 16, 2012 in Home and Living, Kitchen Tips, Recipes, Saving Money, Uncategorized

 

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Rediscover Peasant Cooking: 3 Cheap, Healthy, and Tasty Unrecipes

06 May

Minestrone is a well-known peasant stew from history, and you can make your own variation of this pottage by following some simple guidelines.

Every culture has its own peasant food staple: a low-maintenance dish that turned cheap ingredients into a wonderfully flavorful meal that almost cooked on its own while the entire family worked in the fields. Today, cheaper cuts of meat and less expensive grains, beans, and vegetables are typically full of delicious flavor for a frugal and satisfying meal that can be cooked in a slow cooker while you’re at work, or made enmasse on a weekend and saved for later. It also provides those who are into food storage with a way to cycle through dried and canned foods that need to be replenished.

Here is a collection of what I call unrecipes inspired by traditional peasant foods through history that can be made by busy parents or the budget-challenged among us. An unrecipe is more of a cooking guide than a hard-and-fast list of ingredients that must be manipulated in a particular order. This allows you to make the most of local sales, family favorites, and whatever happens to be languishing in your refrigerator, cellar, or cabinet.

These dishes become easier when you add unrecipe food anchors to your kitchen. Food anchors are staples you can keep in your kitchen on a regular basis and use at-will for meal preparation, and which give these dishes desirable tastiness. Examples of food anchors are rice, barley, or other grains; beans such as lentils, pintos, garbanzos, and more; taste boosters like olives, garlic, and ginger; herb and spice mixes to reflect Mediterranean, Mexican, French, Cajun, or other flavors you enjoy; or liquids like lemon and limes, vinegars, wines, tomato sauce, or broths.

The trick to peasant cooking is looking at it more as a method than a list of ingredients. It’s true that peasant food historically was made up of cheaper foods (at the time) like ox tails, beef stomachs, pork shoulders, beans, potatoes, or rice. But it was also the layering of flavors with multiple, well-chosen ingredients and letting these cook for a long time to break down tough meats and starches, which was the core of satisfying peasant food dishes that were light on the family budget. And since peasant foods typically are low on fats and meats (which have generally been expensive and reserved for upper classes), these dishes are also very healthy for you and your family.

POTTAGE

This is where it all began. We have been making pottage since man had fire and a pot in which to cook food. Pottage was basically throwing whatever was around in a pot and letting it cook…sometimes for weeks on end…adding to it as a new ingredient came along. The main ingredients are vegetables and grains, with fish or meat thrown in whenever possible, though this was the exception rather than the rule. Here are the basics:

Choose three vegetables for your pottage. Look at what you have in your kitchen, root cellar, or garden, and consider what is starting to look a little on the high side of fresh; pottage is a great way to use what you would otherwise toss. Cabbage or other greens that are looking a little wilted, carrots that are starting to dry out a bit, or root vegetables that you aren’t sure what to do with are great options. The addition of onion or garlic helps to boost flavor, too. For all of your vegetables, remove any rotten/soft bits and wash and chop the rest. Throw everything into a pot or a slow cooker.

Select fresh or dried herbs and spices to add to your mix. Some great herb and spice combinations include oregano, basil, marjoram, and parsley for an Italian flare; parsley, thyme, tarragon and chives for a French taste; or garlic, cumin, oregano, cilantro, jalapeno, and coriander for Mexican.

Next, add a grain to the pot, such as barley (a personal favorite), brown rice, or even steel cut oats. Try to keep your grains to about 25 to 30 percent of your vegetables. At this point you can also add meat products like soup bones or ham hocks. Lastly, add stock or water to the pot, making sure everything is covered with about an inch or two of liquid.

If you’re using a slow cooker, set it to low and let it cook all day. When you get home, taste everything and add salt and pepper if needed. You may need to increase the heat (set it on the stove if you’re able) to boil off any excess liquid, depending upon if you feel like something that is more like a soup or a stew (the choice is yours). If you’re cooking the pottage on the stove, simmer until the vegetables and grains are cooked through, stirring occasionally to avoid burning.

Serve in bowls with grated cheese or a spoonful of yogurt or sour cream. Bread is a wonderful traditional and wonderful accompaniment to pottage.

Beans and simple ingredients turn into gourmet offerings in an oven, such as this simple peasant food, a French cassoulet.

DRIED BEAN MEAL

The name says it all: dried beans are the basis for this unrecipe. I make this a lot using all manner of bean and adjusting the anchor ingredients depending upon what mood I’m in. Dried beans are high in protein, low in fat, extremely nutritious, and very cheap; they should be a common staple in everyone’s kitchen.

From pinto beans to lentils to split peas, there is a version of a dried bean meal to fit any mood. And they can be either slow cooked in an oven, as is the case with New England baked beans or a French cassoulet, or cooked in the form of a soup such as chili or split pea soup.

For a serving of 6 you need about a pound of beans. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different beans here; lentils, garbanzo beans, black beans, and split peas are wonderful choices, along with your own personal favorites. Rinse your beans and throw them in a slow cooker or on the stove in a large pot (feel free to soak the beans in water overnight if you wish).

To your beans add a selection of vegetables you might have on hand, including things like sliced carrots, celery stalks, onion, and garlic. Keep in mind that you want to the focus to be on the bean, so keep your vegetable usage simple and no more than, say, one whole chopped onion and a few stalks of celery or carrot. You can also add a grain like rice (think the famous red beans and rice from Louisiana).

To your pot add herbs and spices, but keep these simple; beans have much flavor on their own. Options include a few whole cloves, a bay leaf, sprigs of rosemary, dried thyme or sage, and salt and pepper to taste. You can again add soup bones or ham hocks if you like.

Cover everything with water by an inch or two. If you’re using a slow cooker, just set the pot to low and let it cook all day. If you’re cooking this on the stove, let it simmer several hours until the beans are cooked through and soft–it is preferable to cook the beans long enough to allow them to begin to break down. In the case of lentils and split peas, they will disintegrate into a lovely smoothness.

Barley is the grain staple of choice in my house, but brown rice, quinoa, wheat berries, oats, and more can be yours.

GRAINS GALORE

I make this dish quite a bit, the main reason being that I love it and it is very simple. And cheap. I favor barley as the grain of choice in my kitchen, but brown rice (a hearty mix) is always appreciated, too. Try making larger batches of the grain one day a week, and have it on hand pre-cooked in the refrigerator to throw together a tasty, delicious, and cheap meal after a long work day. Here’s how it works:

Take your pre-cooked grain out of the refrigerator and place the amount you need in a bowl. How much you need depends upon the other ingredients you plan to add, how many people you are feeding, and how hungry you typically are. I tend to use about 1/2 cup cooked grain per person.

Using a fork, break up any clumps of grain; the starches in the grain can cause them to stick together in the chilly refrigerator.

To the bowl add chopped garlic and onion. You can also try things like ginger root, or even horseradish root, which is not as nose-singeing fresh as it is prepared.

Cook in an oiled frying pan set to medium heat. Add to this a chopped green such as spinach or kale, and fresh herbs and spices. A favorite herb of mine is rosemary, and just some salt and pepper. Cook until the green is tender; if you’re using kale place a lid on the pan to allow the kale to steam a bit until cooked.

To individualize the meal, add things like shredded cheese, chopped olives, bacon bits, leftover cooked chicken, a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, or hot sauce. You can even do things like add beans and Cajun spices for a quick red beans and rice. This can be handy because the dish can be served in individual bowls, and each person can add what they like.

 
3 Comments

Posted by on May 6, 2012 in Kitchen Tips, Recipes, Saving Money

 

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Cheap and Decadent Chicken in a Pot

23 Mar

Chicken is a pot is a versatile, cheap, and tasty meal! Making soup with the bones and leftovers adds to the savings.

This meal is satisfying, tasty, and is quick to throw together . You can toss the ingredients in a pot and let them cook while you’re changing out of work clothes, cleaning kiddos, or taking the dog for a walk. Not only is it frugal by using the whole chicken, it also allows for a second meal the following night in the form of soup (stay tuned for a future ‘Spin on that). And, it is amazingly versatile, meaning you can literally use whatever food you have in your kitchen, besides the chicken of course.

But mostly this dish is simply delicious! You won’t miss the crisp chicken skin at all, trust me. The taste and juiciness of the chicken will make you forget all about crisp skin, and you’ll be turning to this chicken in a pot time and time again.

HOW-TO

To make a chicken in a pot you need only four types of ingredients. I’ve even used vegetables that were starting to turn to the low-side of fresh and saved them from the compost bin. Below I give you two versions of this dish, but here are the basic ingredients. Let your own culinary tastes be your guide:

  • 1 whole chicken
  • 3 or 4 kinds of vegetables
  • Seasonings or spices
  • 1/4 cup of liquid (your choice)

The basic process is to first grab a large dutch oven or pot that will hold a whole chicken plus vegetables. You can fill it to the brim, just as long as there’s room to put a lid on it. No stirring is necessary in this dish, so your pot doesn’t need to be ginormous; just-big-enough is fine.

The first step is to place about a tablespoon or two of oil (olive, vegetable, or any sort of fat will do) in the bottom of your pot and brown both sides of your bird. Be sure to sprinkle some salt and pepper on the chicken, to taste. You can brown the bird as deep a color as you like–once I even accidentally burnt the damn bird, and went with it anyway. It worked out fine and gave the dish a nice “smoky” flavor. Another time I was in a huge hurry and bypassed the browning altogether, simply throwing everything in a pot and calling it good; it still tasted great!

After the chicken is browned on both sides, add your chopped vegetables. I always like to include onion and garlic in mine if I have them on hand, so I tend to pop those in before the other vegetables and let them brown a bit, too. Next, add the rest of your vegetables, which have been chopped into chunks or slices. Keep in mind that root vegetables need to chopped smaller than something that will take less time to cook, like cabbage. But this dish is very forgiving and you can easily leave the pot cooking until everything is cooked through. There is zero worry that the chicken will dry out.

Lastly, toss in about 1/4 cup of liquid, cover the pot, and turn the heat to medium-low. Let the chicken cook, covered, for about 45 minutes or until the internal temperature of the meat reads between 165F to 180F.

GET CREATIVE

Here are some variations on this theme. Feel free to make up your own!

Cabbage, onion, and garlic chicken in a pot. I keep it simple by adding just salt and pepper, and white wine for the liquid. This simple version is a favorite.

Sweet and white potatoes and purple kale were the main vegetables for this version. Salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary added abundant flavors, as did chicken broth for the liquid. This was very tasty!

 
5 Comments

Posted by on March 23, 2012 in Great for Kids, Kitchen Tips, Recipes, Saving Money

 

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Dyed Eggs, All Natural!

18 Mar

Dyeing eggs with natural ingredients offers the chance for a LOT more experimentation, imagination, and fun than buying a kit from the store. And you can save money dyeing eggs this way–onion skins, and veggies that are ready to go bad can be used to dye eggs. These food scraps can make dyeing eggs almost free, except the cost of the eggs.

You can dye eggs using foods that you already have in your kitchen, and the results are more beautiful than when you use synthetic dyes. It can either be a fast process, or one that unfolds overnight for marvelous effect; the choice is yours!

The basic recipe for dyeing natural eggs is:

  • Your dye object (fruit, vegetable, spice)
  • Salt: 1 tablespoon
  • White vinegar: 1 tablespoon
  • Water: about 3 cups
  • Optional items include leaves, wax crayons, muslin, thick and thin rubber bands, and whatever else you can think of to create different effects on your egg.

My favorite ingredients for dyeing eggs include blueberries, turmeric, grated beets, and red cabbage sliced into strips and chopped. I also use chlorophyll for green, which I know is hardly common in the average household but it makes for great green eggs (I use it in smoothies, so I have it on-hand). I’ve tried other ingredients for green and orange colors (spinach, carrots, chili powder, paprika) but the results were not that great and in the case of carrots and chili powder, didn’t work at all. I know other ingredients are touted as good egg dyes, but the above four give me everything I need and can be combined for different color effects. If you have egg dyes that you have used successfully, please feel free to share them in the comments at the end of this ‘spin!

These are my favorite eggs, dyed using beets, blueberries, red cabbage, and turmeric.

MAKE YOUR MIXES:

Making the dyes is pretty easy, though it does involve some grating and spooning. The basic concept for all mixes is to place your “dye” (food or dried spice) in water (enough to cover your eggs) and add 1 tablespoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of vinegar per 3ish cups of water. From there you can either hard boil your eggs directly in the dye, or you can hard boil your eggs first, then let them sit in the dye for a few minutes or up to overnight.

The temperature of the dye has a huge effect on the colors you get. Boiling the eggs in the dye will create much more intense effects, while leaving cooled eggs sit in cooled dye (even overnight) will create more pale colors. But this is influenced by whatever you’re using as your dye. Blueberries create very dark colors overnight, while beets are more subtle. You just need to experiment.

There are literally an infinite amount of variations, combinations, and tools you can use that will change how your eggs will look. The only limit is your imagination! Here’s the step-by-step description of what I did to create the eggs I’ll show you today! But be sure to come up with your own recipes…it’s soooooo much fun!

TURMERIC

Turmeric can create wonderful effects on eggs. At right, the egg on the left was hard boiled then placed in a turmeric/salt/vinegar boiling bath for 1 minute (leaving it in for about 15 seconds creates a light yellow color). The egg in the center was wrapped in rubber bands then left to soak in warm mix for about an hour. The egg on the far right was hard boiled in the solution for about 15 minutes then left to cool for an hour.

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At left are two tablespoons of turmeric bubbling away with vinegar and salt. The egg on the far right from above is boiling away somewhere in there.

Turmeric can create a range of yellows, from a light canary yellow to an intense burnt butter color.

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The egg at right is wrapped in rubber bands before being dipped into its dye. These rubber bands created the striped center egg from the photo above. You can also use things like stickers or crayons to create negative space.

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BEETS

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I grated two beets to serve my egg-dyeing needs this year. It can be a mess, but beets are one of the best dyes and grating them compared to slicing them allows the release of more dye. Not only that, the gratings themselves can create lovely mottles on your egg shells.

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Eggs can be left to sit in their dyes for anywhere from a few minutes to overnight. Here, an egg sits in grated beets, salt, and vinegar; I’ve mounded the grated beet pieces over the egg to create a mottled effect.

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In addition to creating your different dyes, you can also “treat” the eggs in different ways. Here, I’ve wrapped a raw egg in muslin and secured it with a twist tie…

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Then the egg was hard boiled in boiling grated beet/salt/vinegar bath for about 20 minutes, then left to sit for about 15 minutes after I turned off the heat. It created a lovely pink color.

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Beets were also used on the two eggs at right. The egg on the top had two thick rubber bands placed on it before being left to soak in a cooled beet mixture over night (notice how the egg is yellow under the rubber bands; I dipped the eggs in turmeric for a few minutes before placing the rubber bands on the egg). The bottom egg was also left to soak in cooled beet mixture over night; notice the difference in color since this one had not been dipped in turmeric first.
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This beautiful egg was made by taking a hard boiled egg and wrapping it in muslin and soaking it with beets and juice over night. I wrapped the muslin in bunches, making sure it was uneven in places and secured it tightly with rubber bands. I then placed it in the dye, making sure that grated beet pieces were mounded on the top and around the egg.  You can see the wonderful effect.

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BLUEBERRIES AND RED CABBAGE

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This is my favorite egg. It is a hard boiled egg that I wrapped in red cabbage leaves then wrapped in muslin to keep it held together using a rubber band. I then boiled the egg for 15 minutes in a blueberry solution and left it soak there overnight.

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Here are the raw red cabbage leaves, laid out to be wrapped around the egg and then wrapped in muslin. You could also place a leaf or flower next to the egg if you wanted to create an image on the egg.

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Here I used frozen blueberries to boil in water, vinegar, and salt. I used about a cup of blueberries in 3 cups water. This egg was hard boiled, then I took some of the blueberries from my boil and laid them underneath and on top of the egg. The egg spent the night in a bed of blueberries.

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Here is the egg, getting put to bed with blueberries.

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This egg was made by taking about a dozen blueberries from the dye mix, and wrapping them next to the egg using a piece of muslin to hold them in place (closed at the top with a twist-tie). It was left to soak in beet juice for about an hour.

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This egg was created by creating a solution of cabbage leaves and blueberries together, then boiling this hard boiled egg for about 30 minutes in the mix.

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This egg was dyed using liquid chlorophyll. I tried spinach for green and it just looked dingy, and I’ve read elsewhere that chlorophyll works. It obviously does, but there’s a trick to it. The best way to get the green from the chlorophyll onto the egg is to rub it on with your fingers (no salt or vinegar needed). You only need about two drops of liquid chlorophyll to do the job as it is very concentrated. But it really works great.

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If you have tried any other natural ingredients or techniques to dye eggs in your kitchen, please share with us! And if you try my methods illustrated here, let me know how it worked for you. Don’t forget to have fun!


 
22 Comments

Posted by on March 18, 2012 in Fun Experiments, Hobbies and Arts, Holidays, Kitchen Tips, Saving Money

 

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Food Preservation: Let’s Talk Methods

10 Mar

Canning is just one of many food preservation methods. Other methods include food burial, pickling, smoking, candying, and more.

In our two-part series on food preservation basics, we talk about methods, which include the ingredients discussed in our ‘Spin, “Food Preservation, Let’s Talk Ingredients.” Make sure you read that as well; it’s just as important to understand the food preservation ingredients at your disposal as it is important to understand methods.

This is an overview of all of the traditional food preservation methods that are available to the homeowner. People can be surprised when they learn about all of the available methods and how they work. It’s beneficial to know the landscape before planning how you’re going to preserve surplus food.

BURIAL

Most people don’t immediately associate food and burial, but it just goes to show you that assumptions don’t get you anywhere useful in life. The constant temperatures, darkness, and humidity levels associated with burial are ideal for preventing spoilage of root crops in particular, but also foods like onions and cabbages and foods that have been previously dried. The root cellar, a wonderful way to preserve root vegetables and other hardy vegetables such as cabbages, is one form of burial.

Cache pits used by Native Americans is a form of food preservation via burial (image from lewisandclarktrail.com)

Other forms of burial storage include the storage clamp and the cache pit. Storage clamps recreate the conditions found in a root cellar where top soil is scraped to create a shallow, rectangular depression, food such as potatoes are piled into a ridge-shaped heap, then covered with about six inches of straw or hay. On top of this is placed the soil that was removed during scraping.

The cache pit, used by agricultural Native American tribes such as the Mandan and Hidatsa, is a combination of a root cellar and a storage clamp that was used for winter food storage. Pits were dug into the ground to store the important crops of corn, beans, sunflower seeds, and dried squash.

Burial has been used in conjunction with fermentation, and was common in the making of kimchi and sauerkraut. Desiccation (drying) has also been associated with burial in desert locales, such as in Egypt. In fact, drying was first used in ancient Egypt as a food preservation method after it was noticed that burial of food caused it to be dried and, therefore, preserved. Ultimately this method included mummification of humans and not just food.

Candied fruits can take a fair amount of time, but it is a sweet way to preserve treats.

CANDYING

Candying fruits, also known as Glacé or crystallized fruit, involves placing whole or pieces of fruit in a heated syrup, then draining it, and repeating this cycle using increasingly strong concentrations of syrup over weeks or even months. It is the intense saturation of the fruit in sugar that enhances desiccation and creates an environment unfavorable for bacterial growth. Plus, it’s tasty!

CANNING

Canning is probably the best known method of home food preservation using glass jars (or metal cans) with pressure-sealed lids, and includes processing by water bath or pressure canner. The water bath method of canning can be used with foods such as high-sugar jams and jellies or acidic tomato products and pickles. Water bath canning is accessible to most homeowners who have the desire to dip their toe in food preservation methods. Canning a fruit jam is a recommended first step for the soul who is interested in stepping into the world of home food preservation.

Pressure canning of foods is needed for non-acid foods including many vegetables like beans and potatoes, and meats. A pressure canner (as opposed to a pressure cooker) is required for canning these items, and it is recommended that someone have some water-bath canning experience under their belt before purchasing and using a pressure canner. But the versatility a pressure canner brings to the home storage kitchen is worth its weight in gold.

This capicola, an Italian sausage, is cured with salt and hung for 60 days to dry and age.

CURING

Curing involves using salt (sometimes in combination with sugar) to preserve meats and fish. Curing is one popular way to make sure meat is available in winter for the home larder. Salt at different concentrations inhibits the growth of dangerous food bacteria such as Listeria, Staphylococcus, and Salmonella.

Salt can be added to meats as a liquid brine (strong enough to float an egg), or as a dry cure, such as with sausage making. Dry salting is also known as corning, because in early British history Anglo Saxons preserved meats with “corns” (coarse pieces) of salt. Irish corned beef is the most famous example of this, but any meat can be corned in this way for preservation.

Nitrites can also be used in meat curing because they allow meats to retain a pink color, and they help to prevent the growth of bacteria such as botulism. However, nitrite use can be tricky business as it is toxic at high enough levels. For a review of nitrites in curing, read “Nitrite in Meat” from the University of Minnesota Extension office. (Note: nitrates are no longer allowed for commercial meat curing, with the exception of dry-cured, uncooked meats. It is a suspected carcinogen.)

But not all salt curing can prevent the growth of bacteria; because of this it is recommended that home meat curers start out their curing adventures by using pre-made mixes, which have been tested for food safety. Potential sources for ready-made curing mixes include sites like Morton Salt, or Wedliny Domowe, which includes a cure-calculator on their website so you know exactly how much of a cure mix you need for different meats. But there are other sources for cures, and you’re encouraged to seek out trusted sources.

Hanging herbs must have good air circulation to dry properly.

DRYING

There are several ways to dry food, and drying food is arguably the most efficient, and oldest, method to preserve food. It is not uncommon to find dried fruits and vegetables in Egyptian tombs that are thousands of years old, and still edible. Dehydrating food removes enough moisture to prevent decay. The secret to good drying include heating the food so the moisture is eliminated quickly enough to not affect food flavor, but not so hot that it cooks the food. But getting the heat to the right point is important; if the temperature is too low bacteria can grow, yet if it’s too high the food may harden on the surface before the inside has had a chance to dry. Air circulation is also paramount when it comes to properly drying foods.

Dried food can come in many forms — from fruit leathers to jerky — and they all can be dried using the power of the sun, electric dehydrators, or the oven. But all methods must have good air circulation to carry the moisture away from your food. If you live in a drier climate, the sun may be all you need to dry foods. You can dry food outside on racks covered with screening to protect from insects and birds, or build a solar dehydrator like the one provided in this great article from Home Power Magazine, “Indirect, Through-Pass, Solar Food Dryer.”

If solar dehydration won’t work for you, you can always purchase an electric food dehydrator. Electric food dehydrators can cost anywhere between $20 and $190, but I’ve used $30 models with great success in the past. You can also use your oven to dehydrate foods, though this method can be tricky as ovens can run too warm. The oven should be about 140F and the oven door should remain open the entire time to allow moisture to escape. And since ovens frequently don’t hold the temperature accurately, the use of an oven thermometer (and frequent checking) is advised.

One last method of dehydrating food involves just leaving the food “on the vine.” Beans such as lentils, lima beans, kidney beans and more can be left in their pods on the plants until the plants and pods are dried and shriveled. At this point, the beans can be shelled and stored, but be sure that the beans are completely dry before storage, or they will mold. If you feel the beans are not dried enough, dehydrate them more using one of the above methods.

FERMENTING

This might be one of the all-time favorite methods of preserving nature’s bounty! From beer to wine, fermentation can be our friend. But most people don’t realize that there is a huge array of food preservation via fermenting; even sourdough starter is considered a fermented, preserved food (it lasts for hundreds of years)!

Alcohol is just one form of fermentation, but fermentation by different types of bacteria include lactic acid, alkaline, and acetic fermentation. Lactic acid fermentation produces foods like yogurt, sauerkraut, and kimchi. Vinegars are the most common form of acetic acid fermentation, and include apple cider vinegar, kombucha, and wine vinegar. In alkaline fermentation, protein in foods is broken down into amino acids and peptides, and during the process ammonia is released giving the foods a distinct smell. Alkali fermentation is popular in countries in Southeast Asia and Africa, such as a soybean dish called natto in Japan, or dawadawa from African locust beans.

JELLYING

Pickling, such as these hot peppers, can be accomplished with vinegar, oil, or alcohol.

Jellying does not refer to the making of sweet fruit jelly (that’s a form of canning). Instead, jellying is a form of food preservation where the food to be preserved is cooked in a substance that forms a natural gel, thereby inhibiting bacterial growth by decreasing oxygen levels. The gelatinous substance is typically something like gelatin, arrowroot, or agar. Aspic is probably the best known form of jellying, where meat is potted (see below) in a combination of gelatin and meat broth.

PICKLING

Pickling is the use of an anti-microbial brew to preserve produce and meats. Typical pickling liquids include vinegar, brines, alcohol, and oils, and additional ingredients to flavor the food include salts, herbs, and spices. (Note: pickling in oil is not recommended for canning.) Pickling can be a form of fermentation for foods such as kimchi and sauerkraut, but in these cases the food itself is the preservative.

Popular forms of pickles include just straight-up cucumber pickles, but also delectable dishes from all over the world, such as the Italian giardiniera, pickled onions and eggs in British fish and chips shops, pickled herring in Scandinavia, and Achar in India, a pickle made from mangos, lime, vegetables, and an assortment of other ingredients.

POTTING

Cooked meats were sometimes placed in hot earthenware crocks and pressed to eliminate as much oxygen as possible to preserve them. Then the meat was covered with a hot fat that hardened at room temperature, such as lard. The fat prevented oxygen from reaching the meats. Duck confit, potted shrimp, and Pâté are forms of potting, though potted meats traditionally were eaten by the British. It is crucial that as much oxygen as possible is eliminated from the meat, or bacteria will grow.

Smoking fish, such as this herring in Denmark, is one of the oldest methods of meat preservation.

SMOKING

No discussion on food preservation would be complete without smoking, where meats and fish are cure-smoked with smoldering wood, which also serves to add a layer of desiccation to the preserving qualities of the smoke itself. Smoking is one of the oldest food preservation methods along with drying and burial, when food was cooked over open fires. Smoked meats traditionally were sliced thin and placed over a fire where three modes of preservation took place: The heat of the fire killed harmful microorganisms, some of the chemical compounds in the wood being used for smoking had an anti-microbial actions, and dehydration prevented degradation.

If you have any tips on any of these food preservation methods, please share them in the comments!

 
9 Comments

Posted by on March 10, 2012 in Food Preservation, Homesteading, Kitchen Tips, Saving Money

 

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The Best Canned Bacon: Plain, Maple, Tabasco

27 Feb

Tabasco bacon, right out of the can and ready to eat: truly one of the seven wonders of the world.

Let me just start out by saying that I spent hours pouring over other peoples’ videos and recipes to learn how to can bacon. I tried them all out and found them sorely lacking. I then proceeded to can about 20 pounds of bacon on my own to come up with the perfect canned bacon, which in my opinion just didn’t exist…until now.

And canning bacon is worth the effort. It’s a great way to make your own customized flavored bacon with ease, and it’s just handy to have pre-cooked bacon on-hand for recipes and snacks. It’s great while traveling or car-camping, and it’s nice to have canned bacon when the electricity goes out, or the weather makes it impossible to make it to the store.

All the recipes and methods I found for canning bacon involved taking strips of raw bacon, slapping them down on parchment paper, rolling them up tight, jamming the role into a quart-sized jar, and canning for 90 minutes. I tried this method and it missed the mark for several reasons:

  • While the bacon was cooked through it didn’t look cooked and it didn’t act cooked. It looked close to being raw, with the color of the meat and fat resembling what it did before it was put into the jar. It also remained limp. So while it was technically edible, it wasn’t appetizing.
  • To get it remotely close to being appetizing, after prying the canned bacon from the jar you had to fry it in a pan to crisp it up. But I found that taking the bacon straight from the jar to the frying pan caused a lot of popping and general grease rebellion. The moisture build up in the jar caused by the canning process just didn’t mix well with frying bacon, and the bacon didn’t fry up the same as raw bacon, either.
  • The jar was full of bacon grease but it also had moisture mixed in with the grease,which just made the grease more of an annoyance than a useful ingredient with which to cook other dishes. You really had to scrape the grease off the bacon, or wait to fry all the bacon up at once to gain access to the grease. It just didn’t work well. Trust me on this.
  • After the canned bacon was removed from the jar, I found that it fell apart readily in the frying pan while trying to crisp it. So I was left with parts of bacon strips instead of strips.
  • In short, it was a pain in the ass.

I wanted my canned bacon to meet certain criteria so I could eat it with the most enjoyment and least amount of hassle, and use it in recipes to the best possible advantage:

  • I wanted it to look and taste awesome straight from the jar.
  • I wanted it to retain the crisp and caramelized goodness that comes from fresh-fried bacon.
  • I wanted to be able to use it immediately in recipes and as snacks without having to cook it again.
The secret to meeting these criteria is to fry the bacon before canning. This solves all of the above issues, plus it allows room to include enhancements with the canned bacon, including making bacon bits ready for recipes and making flavored bacon. Here’s what I did for each:
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(Note: Make sure you follow the pressure canning guidelines found at the National Center for Home Food Preservation called  ”Selecting, Preparing and Canning Meat: Strips, Cubes or Chunks of Meat” found here. You cannot safely can meat without a pressure canner and canning bacon, though it is done often, is not recommended so you need to decide for yourself if you want to do this. Many can bacon strips without problems.)
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CANNED BACON STRIPS
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Here are step-by-step instructions for the process:
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One pound of thick-cut bacon fits perfectly into a pint-sized, wide-mouthed jar (this will likely hold true for regular bacon, too). Weigh the bacon raw. Before cooking you will need to cut the bacon strips in half so they fit in the jar, but I find this to be a benefit after opening the bacon instead of dealing with full strips. The half-strips are easier to manage for recipes and they are easy to throw in a frying pan for a quick heat-up. Also, opening a pound of bacon at one time is sufficient; if you used a quart-sized jar you’d likely have to deal with two pounds of cooked bacon at once, which seems like a lot to handle at one time.
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Weigh about 1 pound of bacon for a pint-sized, wide-mouthed jar.

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Fry the bacon in a skillet on medium heat until almost cooked through. It will continue to cook after you remove it from the pan and you don’t want it to be over-done. Remember that you’ll be pressure canning this bacon for well over an hour and while that cooking won’t contribute to the browning of the bacon, it will cook it a bit more.
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Fry the bacon until almost cooked through.

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After your bacon is cooked, lay it on a plate with some paper towels to soak up the extra grease. While it is draining, cut a 24″ piece of brown parchment paper and lay it on your counter. Lay your bacon strips out on the paper as shown below. Notice that there are several inches of paper left at the end — this will ensure that your bacon is nicely tucked in while you roll your bacon package. If you use thin-cut bacon you will have more slices of bacon to put on the parchment paper. It’s ok to overlap them on the paper. You just want to make sure that you still leave about 3″ of paper at the end.
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Lay your bacon on 24″ of brown parchment paper.

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Now it’s time to add any desired flavoring to the bacon. Two of my favorites are Tabasco sauce and 100% pure maple syrup. For the Tabasco sauce, just take a bottle of Tabasco and sprinkle it liberally over the bacon. Have a really heavy hand with this — if you want Tabasco bacon why go half way? For the maple syrup, it’s important to only use 100% pure maple syrup; synthetic syrups just don’t stand up under the rigors of pressure canning. I use Grade B syrup and it works great and is easier on the budget. Make sure you brush plenty on to the bacon here, too.
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You can consider other flavorings for your bacon besides just maple syrup and Tabasco sauce, including brown sugar, chili powder, cayenne pepper, dried thyme, dried basil, cinnamon, or a mixture. For dried herbs and spices, just sprinkle them liberally over your bacon before rolling.
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Now you can add flavors to your bacon. Here I’m giving the bacon a 100% pure maple syrup wash.

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Now it’s time to start packaging your bacon for the jar! You’ll notice that the width of the parchment paper allows you to fold it in thirds around the bacon. Just take both sides of the paper and fold them around your bacon. Use your hands to press the paper lightly around the bacon to ensure that the sides are creased in preparation for rolling the bacon.
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Fold the parchment paper in thirds over your bacon.

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When you roll up your bacon, start at the end that has the bacon closest to the edge of your parchment paper. When you start rolling, make sure your first few turns are nice and tight. The bacon almost rolls itself, but you do need to guide the parchment paper, ensuring that the folds remain in tact. You want your roll to be firm, but don’t smash the bacon. There’s no need for that and why do you want to punish perfectly good bacon in that way? You’ll notice that when you get to the end of your roll that the extra paper left when you laid your bacon strips on the parchment paper secures your bundle.
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Roll your bacon up nice and tight, without smashing your strips to smithereens. You should love your food, not torture it.

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Your roll of bacon will look adorable, and it will fit neatly into a wide-mouthed, pint-sized canning jar, which you have already sterilized and prepared for canning (follow standard protocol for pressure canning meats, which can be found at the National Center for Home Food Preservation). You might need to nudge the roll in the jar a bit, but you should not have to jam it into the jar; if you do your parchment paper will tear and your bacon will be crying out in agony. This is the reason it’s so important to use a wide-mouthed jar; a narrow-mouthed jar will obviously cause problems when you try to insert your roll. If you find it is too hard to push the bacon into the jar, unroll it and remove a few pieces of your bacon, re-roll your bundle and try again until it fits snugly but is still easy to insert into the jar.
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A completed roll of bacon, ready for the jar.

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Place a lid on your jar and it’s ready for pressure canning (see below.)
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The roll fits neatly into a pint-sized, wide-mouthed jar.

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CANNED BACON BITS
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To make a jar of bacon bits, take your raw bacon and cut it (kitchen scissors are easiest) into large pieces about 1″ square. Cook through and place into your jars; it’s not necessary to use parchment paper when canning bacon bits. Before placing them into the jar you can add flavorings like pure maple syrup, Tabasco sauce, brown sugar, pepper, or herbs like thyme or basil. Screw the lid on and pressure can (see below).
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PRESSURE CANNING
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Now it’s time to pressure can your bacon. You’ll need to process your meat following the times and pressure guidelines presented in “Selecting, Preparing, and Canning Meat” found here.
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Make sure you label your cans of bacon with a sharpie before putting them in the pressure canner.

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Follow standard protocol for pressure canning meat.

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Maple syrup bacon, pressure canned and pulled from the jar the next day.

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USING YOUR BACON
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Now is the fun part. After you open the jars of pressure-canned bacon there are different things you can do:
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  • Eat it right out of the jar. It will actually be difficult to prevent yourself from doing this. Bacon will disappear before your eyes, I guarantee it. Be ready to take on a strict running regimen to keep up.
  • Use the bacon bits in all manner of dishes, straight from the jar. From salads to casseroles to soups, and even as an ingredient in breads and corn muffins, the bacon bits can’t be beat when it comes to cooking versatility.
  • The bacon strips can be used in a similar way, but are great for sandwiches and to enhance other dishes, such as laying strips between pieces of fish, or as a tasty ingredient in tacos. The possibilities are endless!
  • Reheat it for breakfast. This is a no-brainer…it’s bacon.
  • Take your canned bacon camping with you. The jar might weigh too much for backpacking, but for car camping it’s a dream!
  • Stockpile canned bacon in case of emergencies such as electrical outages or heavy storms when you can’t make it to the store.
  • Accept the inevitable accolades from friends and family.
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Yoders Canned Bacon from Camping Survival if you can’t can your own.

NO PRESSURE CANNER?

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If you want the benefits of canned bacon but don’t have a pressure canner, there are pre-canned bacon products available. Our favorite is from Camping Survival, which sells Yoders Canned Bacon. This bacon doesn’t have the amazing caramelization our version does, but for camping trips or to have on hand for recipes or if the electricity goes out, it’s good stuff if you can’t, or don’t want to, can your own.
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55 Comments

Posted by on February 27, 2012 in Kitchen Tips, Outdoor and Survival, Recipes

 

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Food Preservation: Let’s Talk Ingredients

21 Feb

Acids, sugars, honey, syrups, and salts are common ingredients in food preservation.

Most people can probably list some general ingredients for preserving food: salt, vinegar, sugar, maybe one or two others. But most people have never really thought about the total “lay of the land” when it comes to ingredients that are used to preserve food worldwide. Knowing these basics, however, can open up your understanding of, and ultimate success with, preserving your own food. Let’s take the ingredients one-by-one (we’ll cover food preservation methods in a future Spin):

ACID

When people think of acid, they automatically think vinegar. Vinegar is, indeed, an important acid that is a key ingredient in food preservation. But there’s more to the world of acids than just vinegar. Lemons, citric acid, and vitamin C help to prevent discoloration when preserving food and, in the case of lemons, can help jams and jellies to set. These ingredients can also be good antioxidants, which help prevent food degradation. Acids make the physical environment in preserved food too acidic for harmful bacteria to grow effectively — vinegar is especially good at this.

In fact, vinegar is the king of acids when it comes to food preservation. Vinegar comes from the French word meaning “sour wine,” which indicates the long history of vinegar paralleling wine-making. For food preservation, there is a wide range of flavored and plain vinegar available to the homeowner. Ranging from a clear liquid (distilled white vinegar) to a rich maroon (malt vinegar), there is a vinegar to suit your food preservation needs be it a chutney, pickle, or spiced fruit.

ALCOHOL

Ah, alcohol…so many uses, so little time. Alcohol is used as an ingredient in different food preservation techniques such as pickling or with sugar to preserve fruits as jams, jellies, and spirits. The fruit and alcohol marriage, in fact, was discovered in Medieval monasteries where the preserved fruit was eaten first, then the fruit liquor enjoyed later.

Alcohol is a toxic inhibitor, meaning it prevents the spoilage of preserved foods. In fact, nothing can grow in pure alcohol and depending upon which kind of alcohol you use, it can blend wonderfully with just about any ingredient. From rum to brandy to vodka, alcohol has earned a place as one of the most useful and versatile of all food preservation ingredients.

Thick layers of fats and oils have been used as ingredients in food preservation.

FAT AND OIL

Before refrigeration fats and oils were important ingredients in food preservation. The main role was to seal in moisture and keep out oxygen, which spoils food, as a thick layer on top of the meat they were meant to keep. Butter, lard, fats from fowl, and vegetable oils all had a regular place as a food preservation ingredient.

But it can be a tricky to use fat as an ingredient to preserve foods; the layer of fat needs to be fairly thick (an inch at least) to prevent the food beneath from spoiling. It is best to get a fair amount of experience with this ingredient before counting on it as a staple in food preservation.

LYE

The function of lye is the opposite of acids; instead of making the physical environment too acid for bacterial growth, lye makes it too basic for bacterial growth. Traditionally lye was leached from hardwood ashes and was used by cultures all over the world as an ingredient to cure food. The Norwegian fish dish lutefisk uses lye and lye is used to cure olives, among others.

Modern food-grade lye can be difficult to obtain, can be expensive, and it is dangerous to use. The traditional method of leaching lye from hardwood ashes was effective in the past and lye is a wonderful ingredient for food preservation. Lye also has other uses such as in making soap and as an ingredient in other food processing such as in breads or to make hominy.

SALT

Salt is the oldest ingredient in food preservation, going back to Egyptian times when it was used to preserve both food and mummies. After the Egyptians, early Christians who could eat nothing but fish during Lent used salt to dry the fish for consumption since fresh fish was frequently difficult to get and transport.

Salt is used as an ingredient to both brine and dry meats and fish. Brine-curing meats involves soaking meat in a very strong salt water for what can be weeks at a time. Meats can also be dried by packing them well with salt, which slowly draws out the moisture. When using salt as an ingredient in preservation avoid table salt, which can have anti-caking agents that affect the quality and taste of your food. The best salts to use for preservation are preserving salt, coarse kosher salt, and kosher salt. Saltpeter is another salt essential for curing meats. Saltpeter is potassium nitrate, which was historically mined from saltpeter rock.

Sugars such as this maple syrup are probably the best known food preservation ingredient after salt.

SUGAR

Sugar is most frequently associated with preserving jams and jellies, but can also be included in pickles and chutneys to balance the flavors. Sugars as ingredients for food preservation come in many forms including granulated and preserving sugar, which are both white and produce the clearest and hardest-set jams and jellies. Other sugars include molasses and honey, maple syrup, and brown sugars of varying shades. These types of sugars add more distinct flavors to whatever is being preserved and also create softer products.

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Read our next installment: Food Preservation: Let’s Talk Methods.

 
7 Comments

Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Food Preservation, Hobbies and Arts, Kitchen Tips

 

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Spinfully Easy Homemade Ricotta

14 Feb

Homemade ricotta is creamy and sublime, and it only takes about 10 minutes of your time.

Really…this is so easy I’m almost embarrassed to write a Spin about it. The main reason I am writing a Spin is to extol the awesomeness that is homemade ricotta and convince you to elevate ricotta in your kitchen. Why? Because store-bought ricotta tastes like crap and it’s no wonder few people use it beyond lasagna (where it is well hidden, I might add). Yes, I’m sure there are those out there who worship the stuff, and I applaud your loyalty and iron-clad taste buds. In a survival situation, no doubt I’d want to hunker down with folk like you because you are ever optimistic, I can tell.

For everyone else, homemade ricotta will be a whole new ingredient in your kitchen. As I said, it’s ridiculously easy to make (about 10 minutes hands-on) and it’s sublime in its tastiness. You can make it creamy and moist, or crumbly and dry. You can use it in savory or sweet dishes. It can be for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. You could probably even throw it in the bathtub for an awesome skin moisturizer (I just made that up, but it sounds about right….).

First, the recipe (to see the video on this process, check out Rural Spin Makes Ricotta):

INGREDIENTS (Revised from The Home Creamery by Kathy Farrel-Kinglsey)

  • 1/2 gallon whole milk (pasteurized is fine, but avoid ultra-homogenized milk)
  • 1/4 cup white vinegar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons cream (this is optional, depending upon if you want it really creamy, like for a dessert)

Heat your milk in a heavy-bottomed pot until it reaches 185F. Turn off the heat and stir in your vinegar and salt; you’ll immediately see the curds starting to separate from the whey. But after an initial stir, don’t stir again. Here’s what it looks like within a minute of adding the vinegar and salt:

Immediately after stirring vinegar and salt into your warmed milk, the curds separate from the whey.

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Put the lid on it and leave it sit for two hours……….THAT’S IT! Two hours later you have ricotta:

After two hours of sitting, your ricotta has totally separated from the whey.

To separate the curds from the whey, place a colander into a large bowl and line it with butter muslin, cheese muslin, paper towels, or a dish towel — just something that will allow the whey to pass through. Using a spoon, ladle, or skimmer, remove the ricotta from the pot and place in the colander. You may end up with a little or a lot of whey in your catch-bowl, depending upon what you used to remove the cheese. You could also just place the colander in the sink if you don’t want to save the whey. But try the whey for cooking (it’s great used in breads or biscuits, stirred into soups, or used to cook beans).

Now you just need to decide what character you want your ricotta to have. If you want it for a dessert, maybe you want it to be creamier. In that case, place your drained ricotta in a bowl and add a tablespoon or two of cream. If you are going to use it in something like lasagna, or as a topping for a stew (yum), you might want it really dry; in this case you can easily take the edges of your towel or muslin and gather them up to form a pouch around the ricotta. Then, gently squeeze the pouch until the excess liquid is removed.

Here are some suggested uses for ricotta, which I have served in my kitchen:

The uses for homemade ricotta are only limited by your imagination.

  • Mix 1/2 cup ricotta with plenty of nuts, fresh fruit, and rolled oats for a great breakfast. A drizzle of maple syrup doesn’t hurt.
  • Drizzle with chocolate and top with chocolate chips for a dessert.
  • Use in the place of cottage cheese in any recipe or use.
  • Use in cheesecakes instead of cream cheese, for a less rich cheesecake with a deeper flavor.
  • Mix with a tablespoon of sour cream as a more substantial side to Mexican dishes.
  • Add to soups and stews for a rich consistency.
  • Use as a filling for ravioli (and of course lasagna).
  • Spread on toast along with honey.
  • Serve on toasted bread along with sun dried tomatoes and lettuce for a tasty lunch.
  • Mix well with peanut butter and chocolate syrup and freeze for an amazing dessert.
  • Mix with fresh herbs and garlic for tasty party spreads.
  • I could go on forever…but you get the idea.

That’s really all there is to it. I encourage you to try homemade ricotta. It’s decadent and rich, and cheaper than store-bought. And if you think you hate ricotta, please try this. You will be pleasantly surprised!

 
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Posted by on February 14, 2012 in Great for Kids, Kitchen Tips, Recipes, Saving Money

 

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