Food Preservation

A Cure for Watery Homegrown Tomato Sauce

With many gardeners in the thick of their tomato harvest, stock pots are bubbling with tomato sauce, marinara sauce, pizza sauce, homemade ketchup, and lots of other bright red tomato goodness. If you’ve ever made sauce from fresh tomatoes, you know that no matter how much you cook it down, the sauce often separates, leaving an unappealing watery puddle under your pasta. Not good. Even worse is a watery pizza sauce (soggy crust!) or ketchup. Years ago I figured out a way to combat this problem. When I feel that the sauce has cooked down to the right consistency, I pull out my metal sieve and set it right on top of the boiling sauce. As the sauce bubbles, the thinner liquid boils up through the mesh. I use a bulb baster to suction it off, saving the flavorful juice to add to soups or stews. Be careful – at this stage the sauce can be quite volcanic in its bubbling, and your hands will be right in there as you work. If there’s still a fair amount of liquid in your sauce, the sieve will fill quickly and may become submerged. I usually try to prop it up...

Recipe: Tomato Chutney

By Kris Bordessa

My friend Claudette is a personal chef. She cooks professionally for people who can afford such things, and sometimes for people like me who scoff at the idea of hiring a personal chef while on vacation. When Claudette cooks, people pay attention. My kids love to have dinner at her house because it is guaranteed to be a noteworthy meal. She makes these amazing sausage rolls and serves them with a tomato chutney that is to die for. I enjoy the sausage rolls, but I have to admit, I’m fully prepared to forgo the rolls and resort to a spoon for the chutney. Seriously. That good. Claudette is not one of those high-falutin’ chefs that keeps her recipes secret, though. So when I raved (over and over again) about the chutney, she shared her recipe with me. Claudette makes hers in small batches, but if I’m chopping and cooking, I’d just as soon make a pot full, so I increased the recipe substantially. I’m happy to report that it’s just as good as Claudette’s. Tomato Chutney Makes 8-1/2 pints Mix the following ingredients in a large stock pot and bring to a boil. 2-1/2 cups red wine vinegar 3-3/4...

Home Canning Hack: Sterilize the Lids and the Rings

By Kris Bordessa

I used to sterilize my jar lids in boiling water as directed by the canning experts, but I always fumbled to get them out of the water with tongs. Nowadays, those experts recommend a magnet for easily lifting jar lids out of the water. Pah. One more expense, one more piece of equipment to store, one more bit of packaging the world doesn’t need. Instead of buying a magnet for your home canning, try this: put your lids and rings together before you put them in the water to sterilize them. When you’re ready to put them on your jars, it’s easy peasy to grab hold of each set with tongs and place it on your jar. I learned this little trick courtesy of the Master Canners at my local extension office a number of years ago. Brilliant!

Preserving Tomatoes as Salsa

By Kris Bordessa

While my summertime has been wet enough to mean very few tomatoes, I know many of you are just seeing the fruits of your labors in the form of juicy red tomatoes. Salsa time! Salsa is one of our favorite canned goods; we use it not only as a snack, but it’s also a staple ingredient that I use in chili and Mexican dishes. It’s a great way for me to preserve not only the tomatoes, but peppers and onions from the garden, too. I’ve tried a number of recipes over the years, and this one is a keeper, getting thumbs up from my entire family. This recipe calls for chopped vegetables. My easy, cheat-y way to do this is with a food processor using the metal blade. I simply core and quarter the washed tomatoes (I do NOT peel them; who’s got time for that?), pulse them until they’re the consistency I like in a salsa, and then measure them directly into the stock pot. I do the same with the peppers and garlic. If you don’t have a food processor, use a knife and aim for a quarter-inch dice on the tomatoes and onions and an even...

Lilikoi (Passion Fruit) Jelly

By Kris Bordessa

Otherwise known as passion fruit, lilikoi is Mother Nature’s answer to a SweeTart. The first sour bite of a lilikoi will jangle all the way back to your jawbone. Stick with it, though, and you’ll catch the tropical sweet undertones if this much-loved fruit. Filled with small black seeds wrapped in a juicy orange membrane, it grows on a vine that can get rambunctious in this mild climate. While I’m told there have been attempts to eradicate the vine as a pest, I consider myself lucky to have one growing in my backyard. One can only eat so much lilikoi fresh out of hand, though, so I find myself juicing much of my bounty to turn into lilikoi jelly and lilikoi bread. Earlier this week, I made a batch of lilikoi jelly in teeny tiny jars so that I can take them with me on my next whirlwind visit to see family and friends on the mainland. There are not a lot of lilikoi jelly recipes on the ‘net – and certainly none that are as low sugar as this one – so I thought I’d share here even though it’s primarily a tropical fruit. (Though if you really...

Watermelon Rind Relish

By Kris Bordessa

A couple of years ago I made a fabulous relish with my surplus zucchini. It was a sweet relish, very much like the Del Monte hamburger relish I grew up with. I’d been having a hard time finding hamburger relish in stores, so I decided to try making it at home. It was a hit. We used it on hamburgers (of course) but also in egg salad and potato salad to really add a nice flavor. Unfortunately, my squash crop hasn’t done very well this year, and I’ve been so sad to not have zucchini to make more of this delicious relish. Yesterday, my son brought home a watermelon, and as I was cutting it I thought about making watermelon rind pickles. I’ve never even had watermelon rind pickles, but it seemed like a great way to eliminate waste, so I cut the rind into pieces. As I set them aside I had a wicked crazy wonderful idea: watermelon rinds might make a great substitute for zucchini in my beloved relish. Following our family credo of “What would happen if…?” I decided to go for it. And oh my. I am so excited about how this turned out. And...

Homemade Grainy Mustard – Yes, Really

By Kris Bordessa

Mm. Mustard. I love mustard. But those fancy pants Dijon mustards give me a headache. I can get organic Dijon that comes in plastic. Or non-organic Dijon in glass. (Go figure, right?) Then it occurred to me that this is yet another product we’ve become accustomed to buying ready to use, when there’s a perfectly good way to make it at home. Never mind that I didn’t know the perfectly good way to make it at home; surely I could figure it out. Score one for me and the internet. I found a number of recipes with a variety of methods – including cooking the ingredients – but when I distilled all of this information, I decided to go with the simplest method. And my, how simple it is. Homemade Grainy Mustard 1 cup yellow mustard seeds (and yes, I bought mine in bulk and put them in my mini bags!) 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar 1/4 cup water Place all ingredients in a covered jar and allow to sit for a couple of days so that the seeds soften. Don’t get too persnickety about the time frame. I can tell you with absolute certainty that if your week...

Anatomy of a Canning Jar

By Kris Bordessa

If you’ve never preserved your garden abundance by canning, the system can be a little confusing. A friend of mine – one who’s never canned before – was asking about canning and I was reminded that although I grew up understanding how a canning jar works, many people just don’t. The jars The jars most commonly used for home preservation these days come from Ball and Kerr. They are glass and come in a variety of sizes, from small four-ounce containers to half-gallon sized. All of these jars are approved for home canning use except for the half-gallon size. The small sizes are good for jams and jellies, especially those that you plan to give as gifts. (Even with a relatively small family of four, I wouldn’t dream of canning anything in a four-ounce jar unless it was for a gift basket; we’d finish a jar of that size in a day!) Pint and quart sized jars come in both a standard or wide mouth, referring to the size of the jar’s opening. Wide mouth jars are useful for preserving larger items like peach halves or for pickles that need the be placed in the jar by hand. Glass...

Dilly Green Beans

By Kris Bordessa

I’ve been harvesting green beans from the garden for a month or so. On one of those days when my harvest didn’t quite match up with my dinner plans, I found myself with more beans than I’d be able to use fresh, so I decided to preserve some. I’ve not had much luck in the past with crispy cucumber pickles, but I like dill green beans. They maintain a nice snap. These don’t need to be processed – just keep them in the refrigerator. It took me about half an hour to put these up – faster, even, than a trip to the grocery store! Dilly Green Beans 3 pounds of green beans 2 tablespoons dried dill weed (or 1 cup chopped fresh dill if you have it) 4 cloves garlic, sliced 2 cups water 2 cups white vinegar 2 tablespoons salt 4 teaspoons sugar 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes Wash and trim the ends from beans. Cook the beans in boiling water for 8-10 minutes, until crisp but tender. Drain in a colander and rinse with cold water to halt the cooking process. Pack beans into glass jars, snug but not too snug (you’ll fill 2-3 pint...

Make Your Own Vanilla

By Kris Bordessa

I’ve been meaning to make my own vanilla for ages, but I keep forgetting. My husband (the baker in the family) sees that we’re low and picks up a big bottle at Costco, perpetuating a vicious vanilla cycle. Every bottle we get from the store is one more piece of plastic that we have to figure out what to do with, so making my own in a reusable glass bottle makes sense from a waste perspective. But here in Hawaii, it makes sense from a locavore perspective, too: we have a vanilla farm right down the road. How ridiculous to buy imported vanilla in plastic! Even if you don’t have access to locally grown vanilla, it makes sense to make it yourself simply because it eliminates waste and a single batch of homemade vanilla can last indefinitely, since you can keep topping off the jar as you use the vanilla. Inspired to try? Split two vanilla beans down the center with a knife or scissors and slip the beans into a recycled glass jar (one that holds roughly 2 cups of liquid) or a pint-sized canning jar. Fill the jar with vodka and allow it to sit for three...

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Reader Favorites

Food Preservation

A Cure for Watery Homegrown Tomato Sauce

Recipe: Tomato Chutney

Home Canning Hack: Sterilize the Lids and the Rings

Preserving Tomatoes as Salsa

Lilikoi (Passion Fruit) Jelly

Watermelon Rind Relish

Homemade Grainy Mustard – Yes, Really

Anatomy of a Canning Jar

Dilly Green Beans

Make Your Own Vanilla

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