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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

A Simple List of Preservation Tools

Preserving your harvest involves many tools. Canning your harvest is the most common way around here. You need to have a large pot to either cook and mix sauces, or to blanch (if the canning recipe calls for it). You will need several large wooden spoons and different sized rubber spatulas (or scrappers). Possibly coffee filters for draining. A funnel, strainer, and a jar lifter, as well as a kitchen towels. Jars and lids are a must! So is a very good knife.

You will also need to have a food mill, a hot water bath boiler,

a pressure canner {remember you can have the pressure tested at your local extension office, usually free.}


You need the proper ingredients for your recipe, and instructions if you don't know it by heart.

For freezing, you need the blanching pot, waxed paper, a freezer, and jars for storage.

Drying can use different methods, so different tools are called for. The first one is your smaller herbs. A paper sack or an envelope can be used to hold your herbs as you clothes pin them to a rope in a dry airy place.

Your onions, need to be laid out in the sun and cured for a while before braided and stored. Braiding tools needed are scissors, string and instructions. I lay mine out on an old bed sheet.

Jerky and larger veggies that you want to dry, need either a dehydrator (good for fruit leathers} a Box fan and Cotton heater filters, and a window, or an oven. Drying out tomatoes need those items and for sun dried you need cheese cloth.

I do not salt cure, or smoke cure yet.

Feel free to add anything that you use.

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