Processing produce when you don't have much time

Hopefully your food-garden will produce a glut or two this season.  Broadbeans, peas, strawberries, raspberries, stone fruits, tomatoes, capsicums, cucumbers, you name it, if the glut is on, they either need to be eaten or preserved for later.  But what do you do if you don’t have time to immediately create the wonderful sauces, jams and other delights you have in mind?

This blog post focuses on quick methods for processing your glut. 

Here are the quick methods I am aware of:

Method 1: do nothing

Are you joking?  Well, no.  The dying down of your potato foliage (telling you that your spuds are ready for harvest), or the fact that your carrots or parsnips have reached a good size, does not necessarily mean that you have to take them out of the ground.   If three conditions are met you can just leave them in the ground until you need them.  These conditions are that your soil is not very clayey, is not and will not be very wet and does not contain a lot of root-eating grubs.  In these circumstances AND if you stop watering the crop, gradually diminishing autumn temperatures create a perfect storage area for your crop.  I have done it and it works in my garden, with the limitation that you need to dig up your crop before mid August when ‘the call of nature’ becomes too strong and roots begin to sprout.

Method 2: store in a cool and dark place

I will never forget a visit to a cool dark cellar below a stone farm-house in the South of France.  The wonderful smells and the wealth of food hanging from rafters, on shelves and in bottles were just fantastic.  If you have a year-round-cool, dry, preferably dark area somewhere (perhaps under your house), it might be suitable as your food cellar.  After harvesting, leave your crop outside in the shade for a few hours until it is dry, then store it in your food cellar area, making sure it is well ventilated.  Potatoes and other root crops will do best in total darkness, and will last well over winter until around mid August when nothing except anti-sprouting chemicals will stop them from sprouting.  Garlic does not need to be kept in the dark, but, unless treated with nasties, will also sprout in early Spring.

An old variation on this theme was used in Europe in centuries gone by.  A hole was dug in ground not subject to flooding or in a shed, a layer of dry sand was put on the bottom of the pit, root crops were stacked in layers on their side and then buried with sand.  Works well, but only until early Spring.

Method 3: wonderful vinegar

Vinegar is a flavour-enhancing quick reliable preservative. 

In essence, ‘pickling’ is filling sterilized jars with produce and adding vinegar until it covers the content.  Put on the lid, store in a year-round-cool spot, preferably a fridge, and your produce will remain fresh for a very long time.

For garlic the process is very quick and easy: see garlic recipe here.

For other produce herbs and spices are added: see capsicum recipe on that same blog page.

Soaking in salty water (‘brining’) is a time-consuming process used with for instance olives before storing them in vinegar: see the same blog page.

Such a wonderful substance, vinegar!  What a pity fruit stored in vinegar is not all that wonderful.

Method 4: freezing

With the availability of electric refrigeration we can now freeze and store food for years.  However, with human-induced climate change and electricity costs now serious issues, freezing is no longer the ‘no brainer’ it once was.  Still, there is no doubt it is fast and easy:

·      Freeze whole
‘Just chuck it in the freezer’ is a real option for some produce.  Don’t let your lemons lose their ‘zing’ on the tree.  Pick them, remove any dirt and blemishes, put them in a bag, and freeze whole.  Do the same with Rhubarb and Leek if you have space for long stalks.  Just make sure you separate them in quantities that are easy to ‘dislodge’ from your freezer.

·      Cut and freeze
Wash, remove blemishes, cut into bits, put in meal-size containers and freeze.  This method can be used for rhubarb, leek, silverbeet and many other leaf vegetables and stone fruits.  I use lunch boxes for leeks that I cut in half.  When I need a stalk I separate it from the rest of the stalks with a knife and because it is hard it is easy to cut.  The taste is identical to that of a fresh leek.

·      Blanch and freeze
Blanching is the process of steaming vegetables for around three minutes.  Many vegetables will lose colour if frozen without blanching.  Blanching also has the advantage that the volume of your produce shrinks, so less space is taken up in your freezer.  This method can be used for peas, beans, carrots, and many other vegetables.  Tomatoes are blanched to make it easy to take of the skins.

·      Cook and freeze
For bulky produce such as tomatoes cooking and then freezing is very tempting.  Clean your produce, cut into bits, cook until soft, put in meal-size containers and store in your freezer.  This will save a lot of space compared to the uncooked produce.

Method 5: Microwave

Microwave bottling is a not well known method of preserving fruit and some vegetables.  It works a treat, is ideal if you just want to preserve a small quantity and produces very healthy results as you don’t need to add sugar.  Food Garden Group member Marg wrote a blog post on the subject.  You can find it at https://foodgardengroup.blogspot.com/2012/03/harvest-time.html 

Through the ages people around the world have tried to preserve fruit and vegetables in many ways.  Some failed and made people ill or worse.  Please read ‘Oil does not preserve food’ at http://foodgardengroup.blogspot.com.au/p/preserving-your-glut.html ).   

Other proven methods for preserving produce are drying, 'Fowlers Vacola'-style bottling and brining, but they are not quick and fall outside the scope of this blog post.

Are you aware of other quick methods for processing produce or would you like to comment on this blog post?  Click on No comments at the bottom of this post or email foodgardengroup@gmail.com and your information will be added to this blog post.