Inspiring Canning Stories

CHEFTALK

Inspiring canning stories

Retort, canning, jarring, bottling, name it as you like, we should add pouching to the list of words for retort don’t you think so.

Retort experiences are quite inspiring when you listen to what people have to say about their canning adventures. Many of them are already canning since childhood, you know that ‘my grandmothers recipe thing’ that you find when people talk about cooking their favorite dish, I found the same experiences when I was looking for retort tales.

From here

                              

To here

                            

Many of them were really very inspiring and I like to share a few of them. If you are inspired after this read, share your story here and inspire others to eat healthy homemade food made with their own retort produce.


Inspirational

In abundance 

I found this story of a lady who says that she has been canning for 45 years now and started when she was with her, now husband, in college, the budget was tight and behind their house was a yard with apple trees, she gathered the apples and made apple sauce and apple butter from it. Canning is work she says, but unlike house work it is very rewarding to have rows of jewels on the shelf that you can pull out in winter and have the taste of summer.

Her favorite canning memory was that her daughter once called her in the middle of the night and asked how to can peaches; because her husband loved the mother’s canned peaches to bits. She gave her the recipe and her daughter has been canning ever since.  

Juicy and Succulent

Another lady said that she loved canning tomatoes, crushed and stewed with onions and peppers. She makes salsa’s, pizza sauce, taco sauce, pickled jalapenos, dill and sweet pickles, soups and apple pie filling from their own green house and garden. She grows a lot of vegetables on their 1 acre land and says ‘Yes it’s a lot of work but I have so much fun doing it’.

Then I loved this comment, ‘A trip to the local farmers market is better than taking a vacation for me,’ working with the herbs and vegetables I bring home with me extends the sensory experience I brought with me from the market.   

‘I can fresh produce and control what ingredients go into my family’s food and that makes me feel good. The reason that I retort, is the sense of accomplishment I feel when I watch my shelves fill up with food that is not only safe and healthy but which is as nourishing to my senses as it is to my body’.  How true

One man said, ‘the amount of money we have saved by canning produce from our garden is hard to say, but it is a considerable sum for sure. It involves hard work but an enormous sense of pride and an incredible feeling of accomplishment and living.

I did not want to waste to excess produce from my garden and started canning for that reason, I can tell you now that there is nothing than to open a packet of your own produced retort in the middle of winter and smell your garden, said another contributor. 

Yes it may be harder work then going to the grocery store but knowing what is in my own produced retort, or maybe more importantly, what is not in it, justifies all the effort.

Homemade

He added that he makes tomato sauce, chili sauce and his own sausages that make to best hot dogs imaginable.

The last one: ‘Best thing is that we do it together, we clean, cut, cook, pack and process everything together, spending precious time together and enjoying every minute of it.

This couple’s favorite product were peanuts, wash them very well, boil for 5 minutes with salt and retort for 50 minutes under 11 LBS pressure.           Worth a try I would say.

   

My immediate assessment after reading some retort stories is the joy and feeling of accomplishment you get from making your own, if you do not have a garden, go to the local farmers market for more inspiration.

I found that some people manage to save up to $800.00 per year which is the icing on the cake.

Pouch retort is pretty cheap, clean, saves storage space and rewarding, go for it!!

www.vacupack.com  for USA and www.vacupack.ca for Canada 

By: Marinus Hoogendoorn

CHEF TALK, How to Cook Easy, Great Meals on a Camping Trip.

CHEF TALK 

  

  How to cook easy, great meals on a camping trip 

Camping is a great popular outdoor recreational activity for the whole family. The time of the year is approaching to check your camping gear and look for an exciting destination to explore and conquer. Outdoor activities while camping are fun and can be electrifying, the kids will talk about swimming in creeks and lakes, hiking and watching bears for weeks prior to departure.

One of the most exhilarating experiences must be a meal around an open campfire, away from the regular dinner table and the everyday plate’s forks and spoons. Making a campfire is already an elating thought but what do you cook on it, easy yet tasty and filling. Outdoor life makes you hungry. Preparing food for the outdoors is a skill on itself and really something to think about. You need to bring foods with you and that require some planning. Any perishables need a reasonable shelf life to keep you going for a couple of days. Likely you will not be able to pick something up easily. Preparing food in the outdoors is fun when you are well prepared.

Cooking Tools

Tools and Utensils: 

When you go for a weekend trip with a two nights sleep over, a few items plus forks and spoons are sufficient for an exciting open fire dinner experience. Obviously you need some help to light a fire, a cigarette lighter and a few old newspapers will do that trick. Imagine an open fire in front of you and you need to cook on it. Sounds like a challenge? It is. Here are a few useful items to look for:

Hand Made Fire Pit

1.       A rack on legs. This is a tool you will really need, look for a wire meshed one, if possible with foldable legs for easy transport while traveling. Place the rack over the fire and your barbecue is ready. 

2.       Long handle utensils help to keep your hands away from intense heat. 

3.       A cooler box to store and transport your food. 

4.       A pair of scissors. 

5.       Well prepared food.

Vacuumed BBQ Ribs

 Preparing food: 

Packing your food in aluminum foil and vacuuming is a way to go when preparing food for camping trips. Vacuuming will ensure that your food lasts for a few days. The aluminum foil packaging is a great tool for open fire cooking. Just remove the vacuum pouch and place the whole foil packet on your wire mesh rack. By vacuuming your food packs you can rest assure all the food is still where you put it in the first place just in case you had a bit of a bumpy ride to your camping destination.

Tin Foil Food Packets

Raw foods are a good choice for use in tin foil packets but bear in mind that food items like potatoes and carrots take a long time to cook. Pre-cook these items. Season the vegetables with herbs like rosemary and thyme, toss in oil and then pack in tin foil and vacuum. Sweet potatoes cook well on open fire when raw, so do zucchinis, tomatoes and corn. Tin foil packs are great for vegetables and potatoes. Meats work best barbeque style. Skewer your meats on steel barbeque skewers, vacuum pack separately. Ensure to cover the sharp tip with a piece of meat to avoid puncturing the vacuum pouch. Bananas and marshmallows on skewers will be well received by your kids. Do not vacuum those with full pressure or else they will be squashed.

Barbequed Ribs

                                

Burgers, ribs and sausages are ‘super’ barbeque foods. Freeze your burgers before vacuuming, works superb to keep them in shape. Chicken pieces are also well appreciated barbeque items, use drumsticks, wings and thighs. Season with salt pepper, oil and spices or herbs and bring them vacuum packed in the cooler box. You will have plenty of time for all the fun activities, spend time with the kids and truly enjoy a memorable weekend. So be prepared and have fun!


Written by: Professional Chef Marinus Hoogendoorn

www.vacupack.com   www.vacupack.ca

CHEF TALK, CHINESE NEW YEAR!

CHEF TALK

CHINESE NEW YEAR

 On the 31^st of January, our Chinese friends celebrate the most auspicious festival of their calendar year. The Lunar year, as the Chinese New year is called, follows the cycle of the moon and the New Year date changes therefore every year. Every Chinese New Year is named after an animal from their Zodiac signs. This year they celebrate the year of the horse, bringing extra excitement for those born in the years, 1918, 30, 42, 54, 66, 78, 90, 2002 and 2014, the previous years of the horse.

Besides the Chinese, not many people celebrate Chinese New Year, I remember from my youth days seeing some Chinese lighting fire crackers just out of the blue, making me question why they were doing that, only to find out later that it was Chinese New Year.

I want to highlight this festival because the Chinese have a very interesting food culture. I admire their approach to life when it comes to food. The Chinese, as far as I know them, are very particular about their food, fresh is their key word. Chinese can be spotted in supermarkets or in any other fresh market, selecting vegetables like beans, piece by piece, the same goes for meats and seafood. If prawns are not fully intact and do not have a firm head, they will not buy. Any irregular spot on a squash and the fellow is rejected. It makes me wonder if anybody around the table will complain if one bean is longer than the other or if one prawn is bigger than the other but it is their way of approaching food.

Offering food in a small prayer house in front of their premises is a daily routine. Food signifies wealth, good luck, prosperity and fortune in Chinese belief. I must say that Chinese believe in practically everything, but food tops the lot.

An orange symbolizes the sun and the sun symbolizes gold, pointing to wealth. Cantonese Chinese compare many beliefs to the sound of certain words in their dialect. Wong means money in Cantonese, lai means come, so wong lai means, money comes. A pineapple is called ong lai, sounds like wong lai right?. You will then also see pineapples being offered, especially during Chinese New Year.        

Chinese New Year lasts for 15 days. It ends with Chap Go Mai. Most businesses will close on the first three days of the New Year. It is considered to be bad luck when you open your business back up on an odd numbered day. The first day of Chinese New Year is traditionally a vegetarian day. On the seventh day a meal with seven different vegetables is prepared, each one of the seven signifies a meaning of luck and wealth. A sweet dessert with three colored round glutinous rice balls soaked in syrup represents togetherness in a family.    

There are two ‘must have’ delights the Chinese cannot do without during Chinese New Year. First is ‘Bak Kwa’, finely minced pork meat is marinated, spread thinly on bamboo mats and smoked for 2 hours over charcoal. It is then sliced into squares, Bak Kwa is grilled over charcoal again, mainly on the roadside before consumption, turning whole neighborhoods into one big smoking BBQ. It tasted somewhat sweet like five spice but is loved by all. Bak Kwa is traditionally made from pork but there are also chicken, duck and beef varieties. A small round version is considered golden coins and every time one eats a piece it means money in the pocket.

Secondly is Yee Sang, a raw fish salad with a wide selection of pickled and colored vegetables and sesame seeds to top it off. Yee Sang is served as the starter dish when the Chinese have their, must have, family reunion dinner on their New Year eve. All ingredients are tossed together with chopsticks by everybody in the family, at the table. The higher it is tossed the more luck and longevity for the coming year. Yee Sang is a great symbol of togetherness and harmony.

Have you ever noticed, by the way, that Chinese are generally very slim. I find it hard to find an overweight Chinese. Being overweight and obesity was only introduced in China when fast food was introduced. I have not mastered the Mandarin language but doubt if there is a character to describe obesity.

So if fresh is the key word to the Chinese approach to food or better their eating habits, then fresh must have some effect on our body weight. Chinese are known to work hard, from young age to old and have quite a bit of exercise doing so. They eat four times a day, not always the healthiest stuff also, lots of soya sauce, oyster sauce, flavoring salt and sugar in the dishes but it does not seem to hurt a lot when it comes to their body weight.

They eat a lot of soupy dishes. Noodle soups are popular in their diet but they also eat a fair bit of rice, protein and vegetables. What is the key for them not being overweight by the masses? Portioning, yes, the portions are moderate, eat when you are hungry, maybe. Fresh, yes.   

The Chinese approach to food is very similar to my definition of healthy eating. Steamed fish, stir fried crunchy vegetables, cooked at high heat, no overcooked stuff, quick and simple seasoned meats and poultry, tofu to complement some extra protein. Many of these dishes are very easy to prepare and lovely to eat. Great thing of this style of cooking is that you can apply it to Western cooking as well so you do not have to eat Chinese food every day.

When you use the pre prepared and vacuum sealing method to keep your vegetables and meats in optimum condition you are ready to go.

Try this simple recipe that can be used for both the Chinese and Western style of cooking.

Stir fried beef with mixed vegetables.

Ingredients:

500 Gr Lean beef (thinly sliced)

12 Pcs Spring onion (sliced 1 inch long)

12 Slices Young ginger

1 Tbsp Chinese rice wine

Oil for deep frying, Cilantro for garnish

Marinade:

2 Tbsp Soya sauce

1 Tbsp Chinese rice wine

½ Tsp Baking powder

1 Tsp Sugar

5 Tbsp Water

1 Dessert spoon Corn starch

Seasoning:

2 Tbsp Oyster sauce

½ Tbsp Soya sauce

1 Tsp Sugar

Black pepper

Method:

Marinate the beef slices with the marinade ingredients. Set aside for one hour. Or vacuum seal and keep until needed. 

Heat oil and deep fry the beef slices for 20 seconds. Remove from the oil

Drain off all but 2 tablespoons of the oil and reheat.

Add spring onions and the ginger slices, stir fry 2 minutes.

Add beef slices and the rest of the seasoning ingredients.

If you like it with a bit more sauce, add a bit of water and thicken with cornstarch mixed with water.

Dish up and garnish with Cilantro sprigs.

Vegetables: 

½ Nos Medium onion (sliced)

2 Cloves Garlic (chopped)    

1 Bunch Broccoli (cut into small florets)

½ Nos Carrot (cut into wedges)

5 Nos Shi-Take Mushrooms (quartered)

1 Tbsp Oyster sauce

Black pepper

Method:

Steam the carrot wedges for 3 minutes and the broccoli florets for 2 minutes.  

Heat  2 to 3 tablespoons oil in a frying pan. Add the onion and garlic, fry for a minute.

Add the broccoli, carrots and mushrooms. Fry for another minute, add the oyster sauce and black pepper. Mix well.

Dish out and serve with the stir fried beef and rice. 

If you like this recipe Western style, simply omit the marinade and seasoning ingredients and cut the beef into steak size. Grill the steaks and treat the vegetables the same way but season with salt and pepper.

Great healthy dinner two ways, full use of vacuum sealing opportunities and last but not least, very tasty and you can use other meats as well.

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Written for PMG by:

Professional Chef
Marinus Hoogendoorn
Culinary expert in recipe development   


www.vacupack.com
1-800-227-3769