BETTER DEHYDRATING & DEXTERS
(Page 3 of 4)
August/September 2000
Questions from our readers
Joanie
Redding, CA
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We've learned a lot about home canning since the old days - some of it the hard way, through episodes of food poisoning from improperly preserved homegrown produce. If just one yeast cell survived the hot water of the method you recall, and with that much sugar, you could get a rapid fermentation that would generate enough CO 2 gas to explode, sending glass fragments and sticky - sweet purple glop all over the place. Were you to use cool water, leave the lid ajar and put it in the sun for a week, with tuck, you could get a mildly alcoholic grape cordial; without the luck you'll get an evil-bubbling, vile-smelling mess that will boil over with a fetid scum.
We recommend relegating 20-year-old preserving tricks to the nostalgia shelf-even from MOTHER'S back issues as well as grandmother's old handwritten canning recipes you found stuffed into your mother's Betty Crocker Cookbook. Cook most everything to be preserved in a modern pressure canner so it heats for a scientifically determined time period at a temperature that is high enough to kill all bugs. But concord grapes are highly acidic, limiting the organisms that can survive in the juice and broadening preservation methods.
Wash and pick over fully-ripe grapes, removing bug-bitten and diseased grapes, floater or sinker greenies and mummies, twigs, leaves, webs and insects. Crush gently without breaking seeds. (Crushing with your well-washed, bare feet in a big wooden tub is traditional, and so long as you like purple, you won't have to wear socks for a week. A potato masher and a kettle will do as well; get purple mittens if the kettle is deep enough and you don't wear rubber gloves.) To extract all the juice from a big kettle of concord or southern fox grapes, add just enough pure, soft water to cover. Simmer slowly till good and soft - 10 or 15 minutes. Strain through a jelly bag (don't squeeze for clearest juice) and chill overnight.
Pour off clear juice only; the harmless but bothersome tartaric acid that can crystallize in the juice is mostly in the sediment settled to the bottom. (Bonus: To keep the acid and make your own baking powder, cook up the pulp and bottom residue again. Strain hot liquid through cheesecloth and let evaporate in a shallow pan covered with more cheesecloth to keep out fruit flies. You will precipitate out your own all-natural cream of tartar to pulverize with a mortar and pestle and use as is, or mix with equal parts of Arm & Hammer's best sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to make old-fashioned homemade baking powder for biscuits and quick breads.)
