How can fruits and berries be preserved?
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Home canning is a convenient way to save for the summer a surplus of gifts of forest, fields, orchards and gardens. Salt, sugar, vinegar and lactic acid are four natural preservatives that have been known for centuries. With long-term storage of fruits and berries, sugar is most often used - canned compotes, jams, jams, jams, jellies, jam, but there are blanks with vinegar and salt, such as chutneys and other fruit and berry sauces.
One of the main rules of preserving - carefully select ingredients! The more fresh you use the products, the more rich the taste and aroma of your dish. Give up the broken and corrupted fruits and berries, the rest is washed and dried. Choose recipes for canning in advance, so as not to encounter an unexpected shortage of ingredients. Try to cook, for example, spicy apples. They will be a great addition to baked or roasted meat, poultry, and also to a cheese plate. You will need 6 kilograms of apples, 12 cups of sugar, 6 cups of water and 1 1/4 cup of 5% vinegar (apple is best suited), as well as 3 tablespoons of carnation buds and 8 cinnamon sticks.
Wash the apples. Clean and cut into slices, previously freeing them from the core. In a large six-liter saucepan mix the sugar, water, vinegar, cloves and cinnamon, heat to a boil and simmer for 3 minutes. In the hot syrup, put the apple slices and cook for another 5 minutes. Now the workpiece can be preserved.
Sterilize the jars. Fill a wide saucepan, equal in height to the prepared cans, two thirds of the water. Place the glass jars on its bottom, turning upside down the bottom, put the covers in the same pan. Some landladies first put a special stand on the bottom or lay a towel folded in several layers, in their opinion, this precaution prevents banks from bursting. Put the pan on a strong fire and bring the water to a boil, boil for 10 minutes. To avoid scalding hands accidentally, put on gloves. Take out the cans and lids from boiling water with the help of large culinary tongs. Put them on a dry clean kitchen towel. Do not remove the pan with boiling water from the fire, it will still come in handy.
Fill the jars with workpieces. In the case of spicy apples, first arrange the fruit slices, and then pour them with syrup, leaving a small space in the top of each jar unused. Close the jars with covers. You can take the usual iron screw cap, or you can, if you have a special machine, roll up the cans. There is an opinion that in order to avoid the formation of mold under the lids, it is necessary to soak a piece of parchment paper with alcohol and put it on the neck of the jar before tightening. Using the same forceps, lower the jars back into the boiling water, also the lids down, and leave there for another 10 minutes, then remove and cool.
Keep the canned food correctly. Keep them in a cool, dark place, such as a basement or lower shelves in the kitchen cupboard. If you have some blanks or a very large refrigerator, place your workpieces in it. Under ideal conditions, canned fruits and berries are stored for many years.
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