August at Home

August 23.

Kind of a random post here, mostly to share pictures.  :)

Here's more spaghetti sauce I canned the day before.

Here's my lunch.  I sauteed green and red peppers from my garden along with some chopped mushrooms, and put them on my raw salad.  I topped it all with freshly chopped parsley from my garden.  Yum.

Right after dinner, we decided to go to Weigand Riverfront Park to check out the river, since we had had about three straight days of heavy rain.  The river had been very low, which was a concern to us.  You see, Thomas would be baptized there tomorrow, and we needed the water level to be at least a few feet deep--which it was, barely, when we checked it out a week ago.  Now we were concerned that the park would be closed due to flooding!

Here's what it looked like:

Well, we needed more water, and the Lord certainly provided it!

Back home, a spectacular sunset sang praises to the Lord along with us.

Can't wait for Thomas' special day tomorrow!


Back to life,
Christine

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Tomato Preserves Using Agar Instead of Pectin

This summer's garden held a new variety of tomato for me:  Summer Peach.  An online friend suggested I make tomato preserves with them.  I was intrigued, so I took her recipe, researched other recipes online, and came up with my own version, using agar powder instead of pectin to thicken the preserves.  I get to add much less sugar that way!

The taste of the tomato comes out really nicely on my tongue, with a hint of sweetness afterwards.  This would be good on some toast with cream cheese!

Tomato Preserves
Yield:  8 to 9 half-pints

About six cups prepared tomatoes (cored, peeled, loosely seeded, diced)
1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon rind (I love my microplane grater!)
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups cane juice crystals (you may use white sugar, and adjust to your taste)
2 tablespoons agar powder
thinly sliced lemons from a couple lemons (make sure you seed them!!)

water bath canner
half pint jars

While your canner pot is heating up, and after you've prepared your jars, seals, and lids, bring the prepared tomatoes to a gentle simmer, stirring frequently to avoid sticking and burning.  Let simmer about ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

Measure about six cups into another saucepan (I started with a little more than six cups and used the whole thing).  Add the lemon rind, lemon juice, and cinnamon, and stir until it's thoroughly combined.  While this is heating up to another boil, add the cane juice crystals and bring to a full boil.

At this point, I put a small plate and spoon in the freezer in preparation for testing the thickness of the preserves.

Now it's time to stir in the agar.  If you remember, you need to sprinkle just a little bit, whisk it in, sprinkle, whisk, until it's all stirred in.  You can start your 20-minute timer now!  And keep stirring the whole time.  This helps the agar to not settle on the bottom, which it will if you don't stir.

Lemon slices:  If you don't mind them dissolving in the preserves, leaving the rinds to "prettify" in the jars, add them once you incorporate the agar.  Otherwise, add them in at the end (although you will have to make sure the preserves are still at a simmer to maintain correct temperature for canning).

After about 15 minutes of stirring, test the preserves for thickness.  Take your teaspoon/plate from the freezer, scoop a bit of preserves from your pot and put them on the plate, then put the plate back in the freezer.  After a minute or two, take the plate out, and swipe your finger through the preserves.  Is it nicely jelled?  Great and you're ready to go.  Not jelled enough?  Add only a little bit more agar to your pot, whisking it in as before, and wait a few minutes and test again.  Avoid the temptation to add too much agar, since it thickens as it cools!!

When your preserves are at the desired thickness, and your canning pot water is at a good boil, follow typical water-bath-canning procedures and fill half-pint jars with 1/4-inch headspace, wipe rims, place seals on top, screw bands down to fingertip-tight, and place in canner.  Once all jars are in the canner, put the lid on the canning pot, make sure the water is at a good rolling boil, replace the lid and time for 20 minutes.

At the end of the 20 minutes, turn off the burner, take off the lid, and let the pot sit for five minutes.  Then, remove the jars to a cooling rack free from drafts and let cool overnight.  After 24 hours, check the seals, remove the bands, wipe down (or gently wash) the jars, label, and store.  Refrigerate any unsealed jars; use within a week or two.

Back to life,
Christine

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Hello Tomatoes!

August 14-17.

Back home from the Lake, my vegetable garden greeted me with a massive Come harvest me now!!  Here's what I picked.

August 14.

I just jumped right back into real life, and started canning.  I started with spaghetti sauce.  I really meant to can just plain tomatoes, but really, the sauce wasn't too hard to make, and with Thomas' daily football practice, and games starting at the end of the month, it would be so nice and easy to simply open a few cans of sauce to go with our pasta on Pasta Day (Friday).

August 15.

Fernando put in a special request for salsa, which takes me all day since I hand-chop everything.  But, in the end, it was so satisfactory to see 14 pints of homemade salsa, with ingredients mostly from my garden, sitting on my counter to enjoy throughout the winter.  Yum!

August 17.

Back to life,
Christine

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Summer Canning Projects

Here are a few pictures of my canning projects this summer.

Pickled jalapeños.

It's so nice when my dearest cleans the kitchen for me after a long afternoon of canning!

Here's what's left on my counter.

So I made and canned some spaghetti sauce.  Now here's what was left.

I used everything from my garden to make salsa, at Fernando's request:  tomatoes, jalapeños, purple onion, green peppers, garlic, oregano, basil, and whatever else I'm forgetting at the moment!

I finally cleared my countertop of most of the tomatoes.  Now they're in jars in various recipes, and stored in my bomb shelter.  It's a really nice feeling to have my garden produce put up for the coming months.  :)


Back to life,
Christine

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Canning Tomato Soup

I'm looking to the ways of the ant, preparing my food while it's summer.  Even though it's not even hot enough for air conditioning (it's August 2 as I type this!), it's too hot for soup.  Soup, especially tomato soup, is a wonderful cold day meal.  It's particularly awesome paired with a grilled cheese sandwich.  :)

Okay, before I get into my story, you know the drill here.  First a story; or rather, an incident (I laugh about it now), then the recipe is at the end.

Look at all these wonderful varieties of tomato sitting on my kitchen countertop!  I am not going to be able to process them later for long-term storage, so my plan was to process them now.  If I left these tomatoes to my guys, the tomatoes would probably be ignored and go all moldy and get thrown out.  Ugh, especially since they're from my garden.

So after lunch a few days ago, Joseph and Thomas cleaned my kitchen, and then it was ready for me!  See the picture below--my canning pot is already on the stove, and the pot of already-processed tomatoes is, too.

Ahhh.  A clean quiet kitchen in which to work.  I have an awesome kitchen.  :)

I simmered all the ingredients on the stove in my tall Emeril eight-quart stockpot.  I love this pot!

Now I get to my incident story.  I started blending the soup with my Braun stick blender, but I wasn't getting the smooth soup consistency I wanted, so I figured I'd use my super-powerful Bosch blender.  Not a problem!  I filled the blender, put it on the base, put the lid on, and turned it on.

You may not see it so well in the image above, but there are tomato soup splatters all over the ceiling.  I'm not in the picture either, so you definitely don't see the tomato soup facial I gave myself.  Yes, the blender lid was on.  But my blender lid has a little insert that allows me to pour a thin stream of ___ into the blender while it's going.  And the soup was thin enough to shoot out of that little hole and do its damage in my kitchen and on me.  Lesson learned--for the second batch of soup pureeing, I put a washcloth over the opening before I turned the blender on.  Plus, I didn't fill it all the way to leave a little extra room.

I have yet to clean my cabinets thoroughly.  ;)

The lesson for today is--no tomato soup facials!  Seriously, just be careful when processing the soup; it's really, really hot.

The recipe.  My original recipe calls for chicken bouillon, and since I was leery about the chicken part with the water bath canning method, I simply used an equal amount of water and left out the bouillon paste (I use Better Than Bouillon).  When I reheat the soup, I'll add the bouillon at that point.

You may also use this recipe for dinner any time!  Just use chicken broth instead of water (or add bouillon to the water).  You can also use canned diced tomatoes from the store; it's very good that way, too.  Here's the recipe...

Home-Canned Tomato Soup

about 4 pints crushed/diced tomatoes (or, two pints home-grown and two store-bought cans)
1 cup water
1 small onion, coarsely chopped
2 stalks celery, coarsely chopped/sliced
2-3 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (I use home-grown cayenne pepper flakes; can omit or reduce to taste)
pepper to taste (I use fresh--crank the pepper mill 3-4 times)
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon celery seed

For the canning process:
lemon juice -- measure out about 6-8 tablespoons into a pourable cup or a bowl


Start with your garden tomatoes, then you can adjust the recipe accordingly.  Core the tomatoes, then plunge then into boiling water for one minute.  Then, dump them into a bowl of ice water (or at least very cold).  Peel off the skins and put them in some sort of a measuring bowl or cup, squishing them as you do so (that fills up the space to help you measure the amount better).  I have an eight-quart pot with half-quart (and liter!) markings along the inside, so it's easy to tell how much I'm working with.  A Pampered Chef eight-cup measuring bowl works great, too.

Note:  For today's recipe, I used half garden tomatoes, and half organic store-bought diced tomatoes.  I think I did about 4 quarts garden, plus 6 cans diced.  This almost doubles the recipe (I should've used 8 cans diced), so I adjusted all the other ingredients in the recipe accordingly.

Adjust all remaining ingredients for the amount of tomatoes you have, or simply process tomatoes until you get to the four-pint mark (that's eight cups), then continue with the recipe amounts as written above.  Put all ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil, stirring frequently, then simmer 20-30 minutes until all the vegetables are soft.

Let cool slightly and process in batches in your blender to your desired consistency.  Careful because it is hot!!  Return all the pureed soup back into the pot, and return to boil then simmer (don't forget to stir so it doesn't burn, and so it stays blended well (it will separate and be thicker at the bottom).  Meanwhile, prepare canning pot, jars, seals and lids.

When your canning water is boiling and you're ready to can:

To one pint jar, add one tablespoon of lemon juice.  Then fill jar with soup, leaving 1/2" headspace.  Wipe rim, center lid on jar, screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.

Place jars in canner; bring water to a boil again, replace canning pot lid, and time for 35 minutes.  Check every now and again to ensure jars are always covered with water (if the water level is too low, add boiling water to cover).

At end of processing time, turn off burner, remove lid, and wait five minutes.  Remove jars to a cooling rack; let cool 24 hours.  Check seals to make sure they're sealed; gently clean off jars (I remove the rings), label them, and store them in a cool, dry place.

When preparing the canned soup, simply reheat one pint in a small saucepan.

Add a teaspoon of chicken bouillon for flavoring.

Another note, since you can see it in the image below:  Separation is natural!  You can see the watery part separating from the thicker tomato-ey part, and that's completely natural, since I don't have the chemicals to keep it emulsified.  Just go to the store, pick up a can of Campbell's and read the ingredients.  You'll love your homemade and you'll never go back.

Back to life,
Christine

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Natural Strawberry Preserves Without Pectin

Summer wouldn't be summer without certain things:  Warm weather.  Short sleeves.  And summer food!  One of the tastiest is this:

Strawberries from my garden.

We ate up all the strawberries from my garden this year, mostly in strawberry shortcakes.  Hey, summer is really short, okay?  So when Costco had organic strawberries on sale, I snapped up two two-pound boxes.  I knew exactly what I was going to do with them, too.  I had to make them last.

Yes, it was time for strawberry preserves.  I use agar powder instead of pectin, since agar is natural (derived from a sea vegetable), and commercial pectin is chemically processed.  I've already covered that in previous blog posts, and you can click here if you want to read more about the benefits of using agar and how to work with it.  You'll need that link again if you'll be using agar, as well.  Just one more note on that--if you plan on using pectin, you'll need to consult a Ball canning book for the proper amount of sugar--it's waaaay more than with using agar (another reason I go this route!).

For now, here is the photojournal to natural strawberry preserves.  The recipe is at the bottom.  :)

Strawberries, hulled, rinsed, in the colander.

Thomas mashes and adds, mashes and adds.

The canning pot is filled and is at a nice rolling boil for ten minutes.

Natural strawberry preserves!

Natural Strawberry Preserves -- with agar instead of pectin
Yield:  About eight half-pint jars.
Time:  Allow about three hours from start to finish; I was done in about 2 1/2.

Note:  If using pectin, you'll need 7 cups of sugar and 1 package regular powdered fruit pectin.  And I can't guarantee results.  Consult your Ball canning/preserving book!

4 pounds strawberries (about 8 cups)
1/2 teaspoon butter
4 tablespoons lemon juice
1 1/2 cups organic cane juice crystals (can substitute white sugar)
3 tablespoons agar powder

Sort the strawberries (throw out bad ones!), hull them, and rinse with cold water.  Prepare canning pot, jars, and seals.  Click here if you need to know how to do that.  Measure all your ingredients prior to starting the cooking process.  I put that in bold.  It really, really helps.  Promise.

In a three-quart pot (if you're a messy cook, use a four-quart pot), place a handful of strawberries, and mash a little with a potato masher.  Go ahead and turn your burner on about medium.  Continue adding strawberries and mashing, until all the strawberries have been added to the pot.  Add the butter in somewhere in here, too; this will help reduce the amount of foam that forms as the strawberries cook.  You don't have to mash the strawberries to death; they'll soften and turn mushy on their own.  Just smash them and move on.

Stirring frequently, bring the strawberries to a gentle simmer--just get them nice and hot, pre-boiling.  Add the lemon juice and stir.

Now, if you're like me, you can use a stick blender (or process with a regular blender) to puree the strawberries further.  Like your preserves chunky?  Leave them as is.  I have texture issues and like my jams and preserves smooth.  Now you know a weird fact about me.  :)

Okay, now add the sugar and stir it up.  You may want to start with just one cup, then taste test after it's incorporated and add more if you like.  You don't need a lot!  The natural sweetness of the strawberries really gets to shine when you use agar--1 1/2 cups as opposed to 7 cups with the pectin recipe in the Ball book.

Just before adding the agar, put a small plate in the freezer.  I'll explain later.  :)

Time to add the agar!  With your strawberries at a gentle simmer (make sure it gets to this point before you start adding the agar), sprinkle the agar into the pot, little by little and whisking the whole time.  This is important!  It will gel into blobs otherwise--which, if that happens to you, you'll want a stick blender handy.  Just blend the blobs in and you're good to go again. 

Once all the agar is mixed in, set your timer for twenty minutes and whisk away.  Constantly.  This helps keep the agar incorporated, or else it'll end up all at the bottom of your pot at the end.  This is like making a roux (you know, a white sauce with butter, flour, milk?).  Stop stirring and you end up with a congealed mess at the bottom.  I had a son who helped me today, so I didn't have to stir at all.  Sweet!

At the 15-minute mark, take a teaspoon of the strawberry mixture and pour it onto that plate you put in the freezer, then put it back in the freezer.  This helps you test the thickness of the mixture.  Continue stirring!  You have five minutes left.

When the timer goes off, check the freezer plate.  Run a finger through the preserves; it should have gelled nicely.  Too thin?  Add some more agar, no more than half a teaspoon, though, and whisk it in really well.  Stir and simmer for a few more minutes, and you're ready to can.

Fill your half-pint jars, leaving 1/4" headspace.  As you're filling jars, give the strawberry mixture a whisk or two; this will help continue to keep the agar incorporated. 

Remove air bubbles, wipe rims, place seals on, place lids on (screw to fingertip tight), and place in canning pot (or canning rack, if you have one).  Lower the canning rack into the canning pot, or, once all the jars have been added to the pot, and once the water is at a good rolling boil, place the lid on the canning pot and set the timer for ten minutes.  Make sure the jars stay covered with water!  That's not too hard to do, though, since these are half-pints.

When the timer sounds, turn off the burner, remove the lid, and let the pot sit for five minutes.  Then, remove the rack (or remove the jars one by one with canning tongs), keeping rack/jars upright--no tipping!  The water on the tops of the seals will evaporate.  Remove the jars to a cooling rack, and let them sit for 24 hours.

After 24 hours, check the seals and refrigerate any unsealed jars.  With the sealed jars, I gently wash them off (there'll be residue on them) with cool soapy water, then carefully dry them, label them, and store them in our "bomb shelter."  That's what we call our basement pantry.  :)

Sweet summer, canned and waiting until I miss this season.

Back to life,
Christine

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Homemade Ketchup -- Or Is It Catsup??

I've always wondered about those two different spellings.  Apparently they're both acceptable, with ketchup being the more popular of the two.  I hope you were wondering, too.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Commonly ascribed to Plato, and seen as early as the mid-1500s, this phrase took on pertinent meaning for me this week since I was out of grocery money.  As in--none.  And we were out of ketchup.  Those faint noises you heard a few days ago?  That was the guys.  I won't say if it was screaming or crying. 

Either way, we were out of it, and we needed some.  I had a few hours, and figured, why not.  It's a table sauce, technically, and I've made mayonnaise, barbecue sauce, and various salad dressings, so this would probably be just as easy.  And it was.  Seriously.

When I made this recipe, we didn't have any French fries lying around.  But we did have an almost-gone bag of Kettle ridged potato chips.  Seriously awesome on their own, but I have a few sons who love ketchup on them.  Potatoes + ketchup = happy tummy.

I invented the recipe only so far as to tweak one that a dear friend gave me a long time ago.  Dear friends do that a lot.  That's another reason they're dear.  :)

This recipe called for some unusual spices, and I added one more--turmeric root--to the mix as I tweaked.  Side note--be careful with turmeric, as it will stain yellow whatever it touches.  Even my Corian countertops.  (It's mostly gone now, whew!)

On to my recipe!  I feel a little (tiny) bit of tweaking is still in order, but I wanted to get this up on the blog and share it with you.  Plus I haven't blogged in a month--yikes!  You'll see an "Updated" alert under the recipe if I've done that.  For now, here is the recipe!  It is tangy, and a bit sweeter than I'm used to because of the honey.  You may try substituting cane juice crystals (or plain sugar if that's what you use).  I may reduce the honey as part of my tweak.  Here we go...

Christine's Homemade Ketchup
Yield:  Not quite five half-pint canning jars

four cans tomato paste (those little cans)
1 1/4 cup honey (start with 3/4 cup and taste-test, then tweak)
3/4 cup vinegar (I used about half raw cider vinegar and half white)
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1/8 teaspoon turmeric
pinch garlic powder  (literally--pinch a bit between your fingers!)
pinch cayenne powder
pinch allspice

Place all ingredients in saucepan and whisk to combine well.  Heat over medium heat for 10-15 minutes, until it's bubbly and warm.  Allow to cool before storing.  I put mine in Mason jars and am storing it in the fridge.  The ketchup can be made without heating; just combine well (a blender would work great) and store 1-2 days before using to allow flavors to marry.

Since this is mostly tomatoes and vinegar, you could water-bath can it.  I'm going to double the recipe and try canning it next time.  My Ball Canning Book recommends boiling for 15 minutes in pint jars.  I'll let you know how it goes!

If I update this recipe, I'll be sure to let you know!


Back to life,
Christine

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Maple Berry Smooch | Canning With Agar Instead of Pectin

A new blog post in my continuing saga of agar experimentation.  :)

Here's the little bottle of agar powder I purchased from Fruitful Yield:

I ran out of agar I purchased from Country Life Natural Foods, the bulk dry goods food purchasing co-op that Fernando and I coordinate.  So in desperation, I drove the 25 minutes to Fruitful Yield and purchased more from them, since no one else, not even Whole Foods, seemed to carry it.  It was more expensive than the co-op price, but I needed it.

As far as using agar instead of pectin, please read this blog post.  It'll tell you about why I'm doing this, and the advantages of using agar over pectin.

The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving contains this recipe, called Maple Strawberry Smooch.  A smooch is a quick kiss, and you'll get a quick kiss of maple flavor when you taste this jam.

On one visit to Costco this summer, I discovered organic strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries.  Perfect!  I would change this recipe to Maple Berry Smooch and try it out with agar.

I must tell you that since apple juice is involved in this recipe, and apples are a natural source of pectin, you'll use less agar than is typically used.  I found this out the hard way.  My smooch is pretty solid, though still spreadable.  The neat thing about agar, though, is that it softens and liquifies when heated.  So I put a dollop of smooch in my hot oatmeal in the morning, add some chopped toasted almonds or other nut, top it with a drizzle of pure maple syrup, and yum yum.

Enough said about all that.  Here we go...

Maple Berry Smooch -- The Agar Way
Yields about 6 half-pint (8-oz.) jars.

4 3/4 cups pureed berries (I used strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries)
1 1/2 cups pure maple syrup (don't substitute!)
1 cup unsweetened apple juice
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons agar (powder or flakes)

Prepare canning pot, jars, and lids.  Fill the pot with water, put it on the stove and get the burner started.  It takes a long time to bring to a boil!  I place my canning jars (thoroughly washed/rinsed) into a dishwashing tub and fill it with really hot water.  My seals go into a bowl with boiling water poured on top.  I replace the water if it cools off during the time I'm preparing the jam.

In a large, stainless steel saucepan/pot, combine pureed berries, maple syrup, apple juice and lemon juice.  Bring all this to a boil over medium heat, and make sure you stir frequently so it doesn't burn at the bottom.

Once it comes to a boil, sprinkle in the agar powder, a teaspoonful or so at a time, whisking until it's blended in, then sprinkle another teaspoonful and whisk, until all the agar is incorporated into the mixture.  Keep this mixture at a simmer, stirring pretty much constantly for about 20 minutes.  When you first start this, stick a small dish in the freezer (this will help you test the jam for thickness toward the end of the simmer/stir process).  If your agar ends up in blobs, use a stick blender and blend them away right in the saucepan.  This works well, and I speak from first-hand experience.  :)  (Note:  I perfected this sprinkling method on the third canning attempt.)

At about the 15-minute mark in your simmering and stirring, spoon a bit of jam out and onto the dish, then return the dish to the freezer.  Wait 2-3 minutes, then take the dish out and run your finger through the jam.  It shouldn't be liquid; there should be a little firmness to it.  It will continue to thicken as you can it, and as it cools back down to room temperature.  That's what agar does.  :)  So be careful not to add too much!

If you think you need to add more agar, add maybe 1/2 to one teaspoon, sprinkling and whisking like before.  Continue the simmer/stir process until the 20 minutes are done.  I went over that time trying to figure out the thickness thing, so it's okay to do that; you don't have to be exactly precise here.

Okay, now that that's all done, you're ready to can!  Hopefully your water is boiling (if it boiled too soon, turn it down but high enough to keep a good simmer); if not, crank that baby up on high.  Preparing the jars will take 5-10 minutes, so the canning pot has a little more time to come to a boil.

Ladle hot preserves into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace.  I use a ruler to measure this, since I'm terrible with distances and length.  Remove air bubbles (with something glass or plastic, not metal which will cool the liquid too much) and adjust headspace if necessary.  Wipe the rim of the jar, center the lid on the jar, and screw the band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.  Do not crank it closed!

For this process, I usually work with 2-3 jars at a time, filling, placing seals and rings, and placing in my canning rack.  You can do one at a time, or whatever you're comfortable with.  Just try to keep the jars hot for as long as possible.

Place jars (or place canning rack with jars) in canning pot, ensuring they are completely covered with water.  Bring back to a boil (with the lid on the canning pot!) and process for ten minutes.  Make sure it stays at a good boil the entire time!  Remove canner lid and wait five minutes.  Remove jars to a cooling rack.  I remove my canning rack, pulling it up and out of my pot, and place it on a large cutting board.  From there, I use canning tongs to remove the individual jars to a cooling rack, where they sit for 24 hours.

After a day, I check the seals to make sure they've sealed, and refrigerate any unsealed jars.  I gently wash the outside of the jars with warm (not hot) soapy water (to remove any residue from the canning process), then dry them, label them, and store them in my Bomb Shelter (a.k.a. the basement pantry area).


I didn't take many pictures while making this recipe, so here's what I have: 

Adding pureed blueberries to the pureed strawberries.

No in-between pic's, just the final result - jars of sweet yumminess!

Back to life,
Christine

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Cinnamon-Rhubarb Jam With Agar Instead of Pectin

I hadn't canned much jam before experimenting with using agar instead of pectin.  Actually, the only jam I did can was a few years back--some grape preserves, following the Ball (brand) canning book's directions for canning jams without added pectin.  It was grape jam, and it was very sweet.  That's because you have to add a lot of sugar if you're not using pectin, and boil it forever to boil it down and thicken it.  After my friend Lori posted on her blog about using agar instead of pectin as a thickener, I was intrigued, and ended up on a merry summer-long adventure experimenting as different fruits ripened into season.

My rhubarb plants yielded a small amount (they're still getting established in my garden), and I didn't really know what to do besides rhubarb muffins--which were really good, by the way.  I had already used my strawberries, so strawberry-rhubarb jam was no longer on the docket (although I could've used store-bought strawberries).  When a friend gifted me with a bag of rhubarb, I knew I had enough to try using agar and making jam, but what to make?

I eventually found a recipe online (can't find it now; I should've pinned it to my Pinterest canning board!) for cinnamon-rhubarb jam.  Working off that recipe, I made my own.  The jam was very spreadable, and the sweetness of the sugar was balanced with the tartness of the rhubarb.  I could probably get away with adding another teaspoon of agar to the recipe, but since this was my first attempt at using agar, I wanted to stick as closely as I could to the original recipe.

 Agar powder bought at Fruitful Yield.

With agar, you don't have to worry about adding all the sugar as with a traditional recipe.  For instance, Ball's canning book tells me to use 4 cups of strawberries/rhubarb and 5 1/2 cups of sugar.  Whoa.  Surely we can do better than that.  And yes--we can!

Cinnamon-rhubarb jam on toasted sourdough bread.

Here we go with the recipe.  I assume you've canned something before, so I won't go into the minutiae of preparing the canning pot and lids.  Just enough so you remember to do it before preparing the fruit!  Okay--here it is:


Cinnamon-Rhubarb Jam -- Using Agar Powder Instead of Pectin
Makes about six half-pint (8-oz.) jars.

6 cups rhubarb, rinsed and sliced
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon butter (helps retard foaming)
4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) lemon juice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups sugar (or to taste)
3 tablespoons plus 1 1/2 teaspoons agar powder

Prepare canning pot, jars, and lids.  Fill the pot with water, put it on the stove and get the burner started.  It takes a long time to bring to a boil!  I place my canning jars (thoroughly washed/rinsed) into a dishwashing tub and fill it with really hot water.  My seals go into a bowl with boiling water poured on top.  I replace the water if it cools off during the time I'm preparing the jam.

Tip:  I use a large teakettle and boil water, leaving it on a simmer burner throughout the whole canning time.  I'll use the water to replace cooled-off water on the seals, or to add to the canning pot if there's not enough water in it, or if too much boils out during the boiling time.  Now it's on to the fruit part of the recipe.

Speaking of which, here's another tip:  Rhubarb does not need to be peeled.  Wash it, cut off the ends, and use a sharp knife to slice it up.  That will help eliminate the stringy edges.  Plus, when you boil the rhubarb, it softens, making it easier to blend.

Combine rhubarb and water in a saucepot; bring to a boil then simmer until soft.  Puree.  Bring to a boil again, stirring frequently, and add the rest of the ingredients except the agar.  Mix until all ingredients are well-blended.  Whisk in the agar, little by little, until it's all incorporated.

Note on whisking in agar powder!
The agar powder will clump together in lovely (being sarcastic there) jam-covered blobs if you simply dump it into the pot.  Trust me (I say that a lot--it means I speak from experience).  The powder is very fine, so you'll want to sprinkle a bit, whisk it in, sprinkle a bit, whisk it in...  Until it's all incorporated.  Whew.  No worries, though--if you happen to get agar blobs, use a stick blender and attack the blobs.  They'll blend in nicely.  Trust me on this, too!  :)

Once the agar is whisked in, continue to simmer the mixture, stirring constantly (get a helper, have a book handy, switch stirring arms, etc.) for 20 minutes.  This helps the agar mix in and thicken (which it does at room temperature, so don't add extra agar thinking it's not thickening!).

At the 15-minute mark, you can test the thickness by spooning some jam into a small dish that you've placed in your freezer (do that when you start!).  Wait 2-4 minutes, then run your finger through the mixture.  Does it feel thick?  It's probably good.  My issue is that I think it's not thick enough, then add more agar, and once the canning is done, my jam is thick.  Too thick.  Still great for eating, though, in case you encounter this, too.  So, if it feels even a little thick, it's probably good.  You can add a little extra agar; maybe a teaspoon at most, sprinkling and whisking it into the mixture.  But I warned you, so be careful!  :)

Ladle hot jam into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace.  I use a plastic ruler because I just can't seem to eyeball the short lengths correctly!  Remove air bubbles (use plastic or glass knife or rod, not metal which will cool the mixture) and adjust headspace if necessary.  Wipe rim of jars, place seal on top, and screw band down over seal until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.

Place jars in boiling water in canning pot (or place in canning pot insert, which is what I use, then lower the entire insert into the boiling water).  Bring to a full, rolling boil with lid on, and let boil (must stay at full boil!) for ten minutes.  Then, remove canning pot lid and wait five minutes.  Remove the jars to a cooling rack.  I simply carefully lift my canning pot insert straight up and out onto a large cutting board, then use my canning tongs to remove each jar to a cooling rack.  Let cool 24 hours.

After cooling, check jars to make sure they sealed, and refrigerate any unsealed jars for immediate use.  At this point, I gently wash each sealed jar in warm soapy water to remove residue left behind by the canning pot water (there is always some--even if it's lime from harder water).  Then I dry the jars, label them, and store them in our Bomb Shelter (the affectionate name of our basement food pantry).

Here's the photo documentary, so you can see how things are done.  Or, at least when I remembered to snap a photo of what I was doing!

Bring the rhubarb to a boil.

I use my stick blender to puree the rhubarb right in the pot.

I measure out all my ingredients so they're ready to go when I need to add them.

The blur of my helper's arm as he helps to stir the rhubarb/agar mixture for 20 minutes.

Just after removing the jars from the boiling process.

You can see the residue on the seals; I'll wash that off after they're cool.

Cinnamon-rhubarb jam.  Awesome on a PBJ!

I use both Ball and Kerr jars.

Next year I'll be making strawberry-rhubarb jam.  Oh, yeah.  :)


Back to life,
Christine

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