Cooking aboard or outdoors

Jars are for home canning. Mom, and Grandma did it. My sister does it. I only can "green tomato relish" (which doesn't contain tomatos interesting error),
Never heard of anybody home canning in tins.

Green tomato relish canned

In a pair of shallow pans, boil the lids in one and invert the jars mouth down in another and boil.

Finely grate 2 parts cabbage, 1 part bell peppers, 1 part onions. These are the ratios. Quantity is how much you want to make.

Simmer white vinegar, sugar, tumerick, some salt, and a pinch of celery seed in a sauce pan.
Taste should be very sweet and tart and color very yellow.

Pour sauce over mixed ingredients, scoop into hot jar, add more sauce to fill completely, put a lid on top. No ring yet.

As the jars cool most will seal. the buttons on the lids will suck down into jar.
Wipe outside of jars clean and screw on the ring. Ready for pantry.

Always a few jars don't seal. Store in fridge untill used up. Great on sandwiches, or a rice topping, or even by itself like a cole slaw.
enjoy

Oh! This canning style is called "cold pack". Nothing cold about it, but it doesnt pressure cook the filled jars.

 

I do recall from my childhood a woman who lived up the street from our family holiday home at Rosebud, who canned her own produce. Which is why this thread is so fascinating to me, setting aside the wench from Italy.

She had preformed cans and lids which were secured by way of a crimping tool somewhat like a very large set of pliers.

The stench of cooking mutton I can still recall vividly. It's the cans, lids and tooling that I can't find.

I can do no better than preserve fish and other meat in glass jars as my earlier post suggested for the time being.

 

well I had a rather interesting cooking experience just the other day. I'd never really stuffed the outdoor oven full of poultry before and apparently something allowed the grease from the catch trey and the water from the boil pan to interact and poof. the whole thing went up in flames. Wrecked all kindsa stuff including roasting the stove and everything within a foot or two. I heard a big woosh and saw a flash from inside and by the time I got outside the doors of the oven had blown open and flames were shooting up three or four feet. No amount of water was going to put that out so I just watched it. Fire extinguisher might be a good idea for next time.

was quite the event. I think the water ran out in the boil pan and grease that had splashed from above kicked things off. Hard to tell but I sure burned everything to a crisp.

Oh well live and learn, no one hurt, neighbors house intact. Good Job.
cheers
B

 

Not in Oz but available:

http://www.freundcontainer.com/pickling-and-canning/c/136/

http://www.wellscan.ca/Home-Canning

http://www.houseofcans.com/open_top_cans.html

Ain't cheap tho!

 

Ah, I think this is a language barrier.

In the States, when we take glass jars with metal lids and put them inside a "pressure canner", we call this canning.

The pressure canner, while capable of being used like a pressure cooker, is not a pressure cooker.

The pressure canner has a special valve (regulator or gauge) to create safely canned food. It creates a very specific pressure inside that assures you have reached the proper temperature both for your particular canned food *and* for your altitude (pay attention Boston! ). The valve is adjustable to several different pressures:



It is a precision device that ensures the safety of your food by killing off Clostridium botulinum, as well as everything else, since that's the hardest one to kill off.

Only after reaching a very specific temperature for a very specific amount of time is that killed off.

 

You just stood and watched?!? Shame on you, Boston. You should've been getting pictures for us.... that's a once in a lifetime event that should have been recorded for posterity

Sounds to me like some greasy smoke ignited. Could have been deadly; glad you weren't standing near it when things decided to go south. Were you cooking at normal low smoking temp's, or closer to regular oven temperatures?

 

A healthier way to set the yard on fire than the turkey deep fryer

 

I didn't forget you Troy



I suppose I could get a few of the stove itself, I had what was supposed to be a fire retardant tarp draped over it, but that went up to. Wrecked everything. I'm not so sure I can burn out the stove. Its got tarp residue melted to it

It was about ten degrees out and I was slow cooking at about 200°F. Poultry gets left in for about 4 hours at that temp and I was moments from being done. Dinner plate all ready to go. Dog hoping for some scraps. Wrecked maybe a weeks worth of food.

 

Hey Cat
There's easier ways to can than using a pressure cooker. Went out with a girl who canned everything and all she ever did was boil the lids and jars and cook the food long enough. I think its 150°F for 30 min. but as long as everything, specially laddies are clean, its pretty simple. She was nuts about stuff being clean although I do have a cast iron stomach.

I'd think that stuff would be to heavy for a cat anyway wouldn't it. Foodstuffs are heavy if you buy canned instead of frozen ?

 

Strange stuff, Boston. Hard to understand what set it off at such low temp's.

Looks like there's some edible bird under that blackened crust, though. Did you give the pup some?

We once had a gal renting a room from us who managed to set a toaster oven on fire. When the fire was out, it promptly got banished to a storage trailer. A few years later I looked at it and realized, 'WTF? There's nothing here to burn; there's just bare metal and the heating element. It must have been a grease build-up that caught on fire'. So I scrubbed it up and put it back in the kitchen.

My wife was gone when I did it, and had a screaming conniption fit when she got home the next week. No matter how maNy times or how thoroughly I explained that there was nothing in the oven itself to catch fire, she was convinced that I was going to burn the house down if i kept using it.

 

It stank of fire proof tarp, I'm sure he'd have eaten it but I didn't want to make him sick. I think when the boil pan went dry whatever grease might have been in the water flashed and set off the catch pan. After that it was all over. I missed the doors blowing open but there must have been a pretty good fire ball because I could see the flash from the other side of the house.

Gob stopping as my neighbor would say. Just glad nothing else went up. The back fence is about 5' away so I left enough room there but the bushes could have been a problem. I'll snap a picture or two tomorrow just for laughs. There is still a pile of char several feet either side of the stove. Things all discolored and there's remnants of the tarp scattered on the ground. Its a bloody mess. If I can't burn the smell off the thing, I'll have to get another one.

The stove is nothing but a metal box with a few vents in it, but its now covered in melted tarp. I guess it wasn't a natural fiber. Not sure I can get it all cleaned off enough to not stink up whatever I might put in there from here on out.

Toasters, cooking plates, everything but coffee makers are banned from the cabins at the KOA at the bottom of Moran Pass going into Jacksons Hole. I guess they are kinda tricky to operate

 

They should probably ban the electric coffeemakers, too. Mr. Coffee units in particular used to have a nasty habit of occasionally burning houses down, if they were left plugged in between uses.

 

there pretty serious about fire up there but I've got a feeling if they left out the coffee makers they'd never rent a room again.

I still haven't had the heart to go out and get more pictures, Oh well its not going anywhere. Its a mess tho, my roomy had a great laugh when she saw all those crispy critters sitting on the counter. Smelled really funny, might have been the fire retardant might have been whatever artificial fibers were in it. c'est la guerre as my dear ole mum might have said.

 

Somewhere in this thread, there is an off topic comment about what shows best represent life in America.

I would have agreed with the Simpsons, if it were the good old days. Scary thing is, as in your face as the Simpsons are, they harken back to a nostalgic time.

I'd say the USA is a lot more like American Dad now.

You can watch them here:

http://www.hulu.com/american-dad

 

Got a lead on the canning kit used by my childhood neighbour.

My mother recalls that the woman used a rework-kit that her husband had "borrowed" from work.

Turns out, he would bring cans and lids home from work and the "borrowed" hand tool could seal the can just as well as a retort machinery process could. Just by hand.

A dead end there. Back to preserving in glass jars, or as you Americans say... canning (without the can).