Learning the Traditional Art of Food Preservation: Technical Tips on Home Preserving

Table of Contents

Introduction
Preservation Equipment
Making a Drawstring Muslin Bag
Making Your Own Jam Jar Covers
How to Sterilize Jars
Ingredients For Starting
Pectin Rich Fruit
Sugar
Traditional Jam Making
Apricot Jam
Strawberry Jam
Spices in your Jams
Marmalade
Chutneys
Traditional Tomato Chutney
Appendix
Conclusion
Author Bio
Publisher

Introduction

I was just browsing on the Internet, when I reached a site, where there was a buildup about organic natural foods being preserved and sold all over the world, by just one particular cottage industry somewhere in a village up there in the mountains in the East. It seems that a lady settled there, from France, and looked at all the natural resources present right at hand – especially all the fresh fruit, and honey, and spices and willing hands, which would be willing to earn just this bit of extra money in order to keep the wolves away from their doors.

And so a brand-new cottage industry was born, especially when the jams, pickles, conserves, and other preserved foods were finger licking good. Nowadays, more and more people are getting really interested in getting back to nature, and instead of buying their jams and pickles off the nearest supermarket shelves, they are going to the kitchens and gardens and relearning one of the oldest traditional preservation skills known to man.

This book is going to give you plenty of information on how you can do your own preserving, especially marmalades, jams, chutneys, and other foods, which you can preserve for a long time, with a little bit of know-how. However, the reason why many of us do not bother to do any sort of preserving is because we are under the impression that this means a whole day sweating in front of the stove in a hot kitchen, especially when the stuff is so sticky, and I think this idea has come down from some traditional medieval kitchen, where the cooks and the slaves kept slaving over hot stoves to make jams for the winter.

This is so not true today. You are going to be surprised to know that it takes really little effort to make jams, jellies, and other preserved foods and you do not even have to have special equipment for these items. You are not making them professionally, are you? They are just for home consumption. So why are you worried about huge mechanical equipment, especially when it is specialist equipment, very particular about the temperature, quantity of ingredients, quantity of fillers, quantity of chemical preservatives and all that stuff, which goes into the making of expensive brand names without which we do not suppose any of our breakfasts are complete?