Crawford Michelle - Not just jam: the Fat Pig Farm book of preserves, pickles, & sauces

PRESERVING BASICS

It seems, when you look at it from afar, such a crazy thing to make your own preserves. To bottle your own jam, or tomato sauce, when such things are in every supermarket, every food store in the country. But then, when you taste the intensity of a homemade Worcestershire, or feel the summer sun trapped in your strawberry conserve, you understand.

Sure, you dont have to make these things, but everybody can. Theyre not technically difficult, and in many ways they are on the easier end of the cooking spectrum. (If anything, jam can be harder to master than brown sauce.) Whats more, a small amount of your own mustard or fruit syrup or marmalade can enhance innumerable meals.

This is the bookand these are the recipesthat show you how.

GENERAL RULES

Okay, so if you want to put things up for a rainy day, if you want to store and preserve and stockpile your harvest (or other peoples harvests!) when the ingredients are in peak season, there are some rules. Yep, boring old rules. But by following a few simple instructions, your jam will set. Your sauce wont ferment. Your fruit wont go mouldy. There are only a handful of rules, but by following them youre far more assured of success. Ignore them you may, but it could be at your peril.

Weve given you instructions on how to sterilise your bottles and jars; how to store them; how to tell if your jelly is right; and how to avoid your jam getting sugar crystals in it. Once youve mastered these, you may well come up with your own techniques, your own routines, but if youre new to the world of putting stuff in jars to eat months later, its worth having a good read through now, and perhaps refreshing your memory before you cook each recipe, just to be sure the effort you put in today will give you a surfeit of great things to eat later.

STERILISATION

This is the big one. In the age of refrigeration weve often forgotten how much mould and yeast thrive when left unchecked. You can preserve things through excluding oxygen (tight-fitting lids), introducing an acid (pickled foods), and by adding enough sugar or salt. But even then its important to start with really clean implements, and to store things in sterilised jars with sterile lids. So wash your storing jars or containers really well before sterilising.

THE HEAT METHOD

(a dishwasher is a good place to start)
Heat kills bugs, and bugs can cause your preserves to lose quality, or even go off. If you want to sterilise just one bottle, or a few jars, you can place them in a saucepan of cold water, on their sides, making sure theyre full of water and submerged. Put their lids in there too. Bring this pot to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes. This will kill just about all the bugs youre worried about. The only downside of this method is that it is a little tricky to take hot bottles from a pot of boiling water, though there are special tongs on the market to help you. A good thing to note is that hot sauces and jams will crack a cold jar, and this method allows you to have your jars prewarmed ready to pour in a hot conserve.

Dishwashers, with a hot rinse cycle, also sterilise the jars, so that could be an easier method.

Be sure, when dealing with hot jars, not to put them onto a cold surface or they will crack. Always put them onto a wooden board. Cold jars will also crack if they have very hot things put in them, so warm the jars a little first, using warm water or similar.

THE MICROWAVE METHOD

Dont do this to the wrong type of lidmetal onesbut jars can be sterilised effectively in the microwave because yeasts and bacteria are killed while the glass stays inert. Simply put the jars and lids in the microwave for 1 minute on High.