|
Post by nightmist on May 7, 2014 14:36:24 GMT -5
I plan my planting in accordance with my cooking. I was looking over what I have in thus far, and realized I had sort of auto planted with mustard pickles in mind. Thing is I have had a horde of friends and relatives tell me that I have to modify the recipe, because the new word is that you should not can with flour because that is Bad. Mind you they still want me to make the pickle so they can raid my pantry for it.
Sounds like nonsense to me. Nobody amongst my people or my DH's in lo these many generations has died of eating something canned with flour so far as I know. That includes pickles and sauces and stews and all sorts of things. Heck, nobody has had anything remotely like food poisoning going clear back through the days of rubber and bail jars (which appear to be making a comeback).
Seems to me that if you leave the flour out of mustard pickle you would get a stingy giardiniera with too much mustard, most of which would lay on the bottom of the jars like aquarium sand as mustard pickle calls for ground rather than whole. Two 2 oz cans of mustard and a half can of turmeric to a gallon plus a pint or so of pickle by my recipe, that is a lot of ground spice to lay in the bottom of a jar. Normally you use the flour to make a sauce of it all.
Has anybody else run across this business of no flour in canning? I have found a couple of online references to it. However when I put in a call to the extension they said they didn't know anything about it. I figure the big brains at Cornell had ought to know.
Hmmm... It has been a few years since I have done a giardiniera. Maybe I had ought to tuck in another patch of carrots.
|
|
|
Post by gardencrazy on May 15, 2014 16:05:53 GMT -5
Yes, I have seen where you shouldn't use flour as a thickener for sauces when using boiling water bath. I think the reasoning behind it is the flour might clump (not being fully immersed in the acid solution created by the vinegar) creating a microenvironment where bacteria can grow. I was told to use Clear Gel instead (a modified cornstarch). The Clear Gel will dissolve and thicken a sauce. Are you canning the pickles or are they refrigerator pickles? Are you using a boiling water bath or pressure canner? nchfp.uga.edu/index.html The National Center for Home Food Preservation is the end all be all source for canning. Ironically some of there recipes use flour as a thickener. Their recipes are tested and tested again to make sure they're safe. A note about Cornell Cooperative Extension. I went to a tomato festival a couple years ago where CCE had a stand with different tomatoes to try. I started asking questions on whether the tomatoes were heirlooms or hybrids, determinate or indeterminate. The lady just looked at me blankly. I asked her about master canner or master preserver classes as well. Again I got blank looks back. So much for Cornell Cooperative Extension.
|
|
|
Post by nightmist on May 16, 2014 10:36:48 GMT -5
I always can my pickles. Refrigerator methods can yield some nice results, but it is only good for small batches, not an entire winters worth of food. I use your standard hot water bath, I have never even met anyone with enough ready cash to own a pressure canner. Mind you I do as my great grandmother taught me and add a pound of plain salt to the gallon of water in the processing boil. My mum thought that that was mad, but I have always done so. It can get a bit crowded in the kitchen with it when you are doing a couple of big batches, for then I have buckets of salt water cooling, and some cool and waiting to go in for the next batch. Gramma was a pure canning genius though, and made things that were both beautiful and delicious. I never even heard of any of her jars going off, except for the year my aunt and uncle were playing in her pantry and split the rubbers on a half a shelf's worth of jars That incident became a bit of history. LOL I mention this because I recently discovered that that amount of salt to that amount of water will increase the boiling point of the water significantly. 29 gm salt to a litre of water will raise it's boiling point 1C, so a pound to a gallon will up the temp slightly more than 10F. I think that that temperature increase may well make a difference. The idea of using cornstarch has considerable merit. I am not generally well inclined towards speciality goods in my canning, though I will look into this clear gel concept. However as it takes just a tablespoon or thereabouts of cornstarch to do the job of a half cup of flour as a thickener (probably a good deal less than a tablespoon in fact) It would certainly be worth considering just the plain cornstarch. I tend to prefer cornstarch to flour as a thickener in general cooking anyways, for me it is just easier to use. I don't tend to mess around much modifying heirloom recipes unless there is a clear need to do so though, hence the flour in the mustard pickle. I hear you on the extension. I called them to talk to a master gardener to see if they had any tips on getting poison ivy out of an established bed of perennials (of course the wicked stuff is back this year), and found out they are only available on Wednesdays. Well isn't that useful. I really don't expect any joy of it. but you never know what new thing somebody may have discovered so I left a message for them to get back to me. When I called to ask the household science people about processing time for a vegetarian mincemeat, they were utterly clueless. I just went back to doing as I had been and using the time for tomatoes plus 10 minutes because the stuff is thick. Apparently the canning people just check out the Ball blue book. Well I can buy a copy of that my own self and add it to the food preserving shelf in the cookbook cupboard! That is what they referenced when I asked about the pickle, and the Ball book recipe also contains flour!
|
|
|
Post by kay on May 21, 2014 20:01:14 GMT -5
Use clearjel instead of regular cornstarch. It holds up to the high temps in canning a lot better.
|
|