Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with preserves

Half preserved

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:43:49 -0800

I made a half-full jar of jam, is it safe to eat? Never thought I'd ever ask a "is it safe to eat" question, but here I am.

I made some strawberry jam for the first time and I was only able to fill the last jar halfway full. The other jars were filled to 1/4" from the lip.

I gave it the same boiling and cooling time as the full jars. Due to the air pocket acting as a floatation device, I had to use a meat tenderizer as a weight to hold down the jar as it was boiled.

The jar lid dimple is depressed, so it looks like a good seal was made. There's some condensation inside the jar's sides, where the jam doesn't cover.

Will it be safe to consume, or should I toss it?

Also, the mashed berries seemed to separate during cooling. There's about 1" of jelly at the bottom of each jar and mashed fruit bits at the top — is that normal, in general?

Jam session

rhoticity — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:15:59 -0800

Home canning filter: do I need to sterilize Mason jars/lids by boiling or oven or some other method if I'm using them for fridge pickles and freezer preserves, or am I okay just washing in hot soap and water? I can find stuff on google about pressure canning doing the sterilizing for you, and about sterilizing if you're processing the canned goods for <10 minutes, but I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to give me and my boyfriend a nasty case of botulism or something by just washing and going.

Also if you have any recommended freezer preserves or fridge pickle recipes, I would love to have them. Working on a farm this summer = lots of free produce and time spent at farmers markets. We just don't have the room in our little apartment for a canner that only gets used a few times a year.

Non-Christmassy items for Christmas hamper gifts

i_cola — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:13:47 -0800

I'm looking for some ideas, recommendations & recipes I can use to make up some Christmas hampers for presents this year. As much home made stuff as possible & I'd like to try & avoid overtly Christmassy things. Things that can be used in January & beyond. My girlfriend & I love to cook and we've decided, in proper credit crunch fashion, to make up a few hampers and individual items for close family & bunch of friends that we're visiting over the holidays.

I've got a few ideas from these previous threads.

Prepared items and ingredient packs with a recipe are where we want to go. Currently, chilli jam, fig jam, a Kerelan fish chutney & a buckwheat pancake mix with (quality) maple syrup are on the list.

We want to do most of the prep from next weekend onward but really want the items to be used after the Christmas gorging season is done and forgotten so preserves, pickles, chutneys, flavoured things (everything from sugar to vodka) are all good, as long as they don't need too much maturing time.

Bonus points for recipes in grammes or ounces rather than cups!

My pepper jelly recipe is not quite right. Help me fix it.

nanojath — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 08:33:10 -0800

I'm looking for a good recipe for hot pepper jelly I love the appetizer where you pour pepper jelly over a block of cream cheese (previously on AskMe). I decided to try canning some from my garden produce this year and I'm not thrilled with the results. I used a recipe from Rodale's Stocking Up. It was more of a true jelly - the peppers were food processed to a puree - there wasn't a high enough hot pepper to bell pepper ration (it's not really hot at all) and the flavor is VERY vinegary. It isn't terrible, just not what I was looking for and I'm sort of wishing I didn't have a pint and a half of it now.

I'm capable of typing "pepper jelly recipe" into a search engine. I'm hoping for personal recommendations - the family recipe. Specifically, I was looking for what I've encountered before, a sweeter, hotter, more chunky-preserves/chutney texture affair. My mom never made this. Email your mom for me? Thanks!

Making/canning preserves

veggieboy — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 06:53:57 -0800

I'm making raspberry preserves. I want to use half-pint jars instead of the pint jars the recipe specifies. However, I'm a little paranoid. I'm an experienced home cook, so I frequently modify/ignore recipes. But it's different when I'm doing home-canning. I scrupulously follow the recipe because there are food safety issues at play.

This is the second summer now that I've done a lot of canning/preserving, using the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. One of the frustrating things is that, for example, on Page 32, it gives a recipe for berry jam and says it makes "3 pints." My question: I can use half-pint jars and process them for the same amount of time, right? Because a full pint of raspberry preserves is rather a lot.

I cannot see how harm would come from using a smaller jar and processing it for the same time as you would process the larger jar (setting aside possible taste issues and focusing only on safety). But I would be comforted to hear from others on their experience here.