Saturday, January 15, 2011

Preserving in the winter

It was time to do something about the two gallon bags of hot peppers in the freezer.  That and my last jar of hot sauce was all gone so it was time to make Red Hot Sauce from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.  I made this same sauce last year and it came out pretty tasty.

I took out two bags of plum tomatoes from the freezer and thawed over night.  Once they were chopped, it was apparent that there wasn't going to be enough tomatoes so I dug into the back of the freezer and found the last bag of plum tomatoes.  In years past, farmer Allan has given me buckets of tomato seconds but this year he didn't have a very good crop of tomatoes - as a result, there are no more tomatoes in the freezer.


Mixed batch of hot peppers

Thawed tomatoes


The chopped seeded peppers and tomatoes (not seeded) were combined with white vinegar and simmered until soft.  Puree with hand blender, then combined with spices and sugar and more vinegar, simmer for awhile until right consistency.


Ready to go into the canner

Next day - this sauce is HOT.  There was some leftover that I just put into the fridge and hoo wee.  It's hot.


There is still a bag of peppers left so I'm going to dehydrate the rest.

This morning I went to the local farmer's market and bought a couple of organic grapefruit from FL.  I used the fruit in a salad and as I was about to put the rinds down the garbage disposal, I thought about candied peel.  I've never done it but thought what the heck.

Chopped peel.  It was boiled several times in water to remove the bitterness.

Make a sugar syrup, then add peel and boil until syrup is gone.

Drying on the rack.  Once dry, the peel can be rolled in sugar or melted chocolate.

Aside from eating out of hand, what else can be done with candied peel?

2 comments:

  1. I'll have to forward you post to DH - he presently has some kind of peppersauce evolving in the cabinet (peppers in olive oil, perhaps?)

    curious about the lack of compost - no space? ordinance? something I don't know about garbage disposals (never having had one).

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  2. oh I have a compost - 2 bins in fact with a worm composter waiting for warmer weather to get worms - I just like to put the peels down the garbage disposal because it makes it smell good.

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