What are you preserving?

[indy]

Made some very nice pear and walnut chutney yesterday, am now off to make some tomato ketchup

[Zech]

will be doing sloes
haws
rose hips
and more black berries
but what to do with them

Same here. I plan to make wine with my sloes, fruit leather with hips and haws, and I just made cordial from blackberries, mixed with crab apples. I also used the leftover pulp to make more fruit leather. In fact, I've been making rather a lot of fruit leather this year. I do hope it stores well!

[wabbit955]

made a spicey haw sauce a first for me hope it improves with age
rose hips just peurred and sieved and now drying in oven for tea
makeing a blackberry and quince jam useing leftover pulp from quinces cordial i made the other day
sloes can sit in freezer until i got money for more gin

[Green Aura]

I've been out and about the last few weeks - conferences, training events, bakery stuff - I'm knackered (mentally and physically) so have been using my time in the kitchen as therapy!

So I've made
- 2lb of hedgerow jelly - blackberries, rosehips and raspberries with a cooking apple chucked in for pectin (tons more fruit ready to pick - weather too bad to venture out )
- several small jars of spicy mango chutney (special offer on a box of mangoes in T***o )
- 4lbs of Christmas chutney
- 3lbs of vegan lemon curd (made with marrows instead of eggs (don't ask me how it works it just does!)

- 2lb jars of lard (with the resulting pork scratchings which OH promised to marry me for. Obviously forgot he'd already done that ) and
- a 3lb loaf tin of brawn - HFWs recipe, which is far too salty, I'll do better next time

[Mrs Moustoir]

Phew! I'm worn out just reading that GA!

This morning I was in tears in the kitchen...pickling 3kg of home grown shallots in cider vinegar. Didn't intend to do so many but the shallots aren't keeping too well.

At the mo, I've got an experimental batch of apple butter bubbling away in the slow cooker. It takes 9 to 11 hours.

Never made it before but the theory that you can make a preserve without spending hours stirring the cauldron quite appealed to me. - it certainly smells delish.

[Green Aura]

Didn't do it all in one go Mrs M! It's been over a couple of weeks.

It's rather weird really - I remember attempts at jam or chutney making (in the past) as being very laborious and time-consuming. It seems very little effort now - maybe it's because I've reverted to the saucer in the freezer method of checking if it's done, rather than boiling it for what seemed like days to get it to that point on the thermometer it never seemed to quite reach.

My jams aren't sliceable any more either

Let us know how your apple butter goes - I've seen those recipes and wondered whether to have a go.

Oh, and add 5lb of marrow, rhubarb and ginger jam this morning - rhubarb out of the freezer.

[wabbit955]

just made nuttla
not sure how it will keep but very good so will not last long with my 2 boys
who do not like the brought suff as far to sweet

[boboff]

Wow busy day
Redcurrrant Jelly
Carb apple & Mint Jelly
Raspberry Jelly
Blackcurrant Jelly
Christmas Relish.

about 60lbs in total, 100 jars ish, kitchen was a mess!!!!!

[wabbit955]

it all about the crab apple this week
crab apple corial
crab apple and chilli jelly
currdied crab apple and parnip chutney

[Mrs Moustoir]

GA - I imagined you whirling around your kitchen in between meetings, making all those preserves whilst wrestling with a pig's head for the brawn!!

The apple butter turned out really well and the children like it as it is so sweet. It is delicious on natural yoghurt or squidged in crepes as a dessert.

I adapted the recipe from a few US ones - so I reduced the sugar and cinnamon by half- to fit my medium sized slow cooker.

It makes four 1lb / 370g jars. Prep your jars by washing and sterilising them either in the oven or microwave. Ensure you pot up the apple butter into hot jars. If you use the jars with the pop lids, the hot butter and hot jars will create a vacuum and preserve will keep (hopefully! Time will tell).

Here's the recipe.
3 lb prepared weight of apples - peeled, cored and chopped into 1cm chunks - I used eating apples
8 oz sugar
2 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp quatre epices / mixed spice
Sprinkle of nutmeg

Put the prepared apples into the slow cooker, combine sugar and spices then mix into the apples. You can adjust the spices to taste.

Turn on the slow cooker and cook on HIGH for 1 hour with the lid off. Stir now and again.

After the hour, put the lid on and cook for a further hour on HIGH then turn down the temperature to LOW and cook for a further 6 hours to 8 hours, stirring occasionally. The butter should end up a Brownie uniform colour and the house will smell of cinnamon and apples.

Remove the lid and cook for the last hour on HIGH.

Pot up into the prepared jars.

The American recipes recommend refridgerating the jars but I'm hoping they will keep in my larder.

[Green Aura]

That sounds delicious Mrs M - for some reason I thought it would have lemon juice in it!

We cleaned out the pantry this weekend to make room for all the preserves etc and came across a tin of marmalade "cheat" that my mother insisted on buying a couple of years ago, before it got too unsafe to leave her in charge of hot pans. I suppose this should have been a warning really - she has always made fabulous marmalade from scratch. Anyway, despite it being well past its best before date, I've just made it and I have to to admit it's delicious and the only thing in it is citric acid instead of lemon juice and some pectin, otherwise just seville oranges.

Dare I admit to being tempted to get another tin in?

[thesunflowergal]

I have just finished making Mrs M's Apple Butter, its fab. One slightly complaint I have now run out of apples

[boboff]

I think I'll have a go at that!

[becks77]

Pickled onions ready for Yule!!

[Thomzo]

I have just finished making Mrs M's Apple Butter, its fab. One slightly complaint I have now run out of apples

Then get yourself down here at the weekend. I've got plenty that need using up

Zoe