Shorten Home Canning Time
It takes how long?
For
the beginning canner, the issue of time becomes the major stumbling block. Who
wants to spend an entire afternoon, or the entire day in a hot kitchen? After
picking, washing and sorting the produce you already need a nap! 
Yes, canning can be
laborious - but you know it's worthwhile. The best tomato juice, the best
relish, the best pickles, and the best salsa - it can all come right from your
very own kitchen. So how do you make it less time consuming?
Here are a few pieces of
equipment to help.
Don't despair when you have lots of
garden cabbage ready to pick at once. Try our
large wooden slicer that
cabbage shreds quickly - perfect for homemade
coleslaw or processing sauerkraut. Simply place the cabbage in the wooden frame
and slide it up and down while applying pressure to the cabbage, and shred into
approximately 1 mm strips. You can fit a small cabbage head in the 7” square
wooden frame. Lots more sauerkraut for you to make!
Are you in the middle of
cherry season and making cherry pie filling or preserving cherries? Tired of
coring the cherries with a hand-held cherry pitter? You can pit up to 30 lbs. of
cherries in an hour with a
cherry plunger. This plunger automatically feeds the
cherry into slot and with one stroke of the plunger the pit ejects into a
container and cherry falls into waiting bowl.
The
cherry stoner
processes even larger batches and is the perfect tool for those with cherry
trees. This cherry stoner is faster at removing pits than the plunger-type
pitters. Just feed the cherries into the hopper and turn crank. Heavy-duty
stoner squeezes cherries to remove stones. The stones are ejected into separate
receptacle and the cherry meat falls into bowl, ready to create preserves or
fillings. Wow! This is a real time saver!
Shelling peas. This was always the task assigned to the
kids while I was growing up. Sitting on the porch and opening the pods and
emptying the little round green peas into a bowl. This is time consuming and I
no longer have children at home to help me out! A
pea sheller can shell a bushel
of peas in 30 minutes! You can either hand crank or use an electric drill for
faster shelling!
A
food strainer is a tomato
lover's dream. Feed the tomatoes into the hopper, turn the crank and let the
seeds and skins go one way and the wonderful juice and pulp the other way. Now
you can create sauce, chili sauce, or red-hot fiery salsa! Great way to save
time and prepare bushels of tomatoes! But there are some added benefits; the
Food Strainer also can be used for berries, pumpkins and grapes by simply
changing a screen and for less effort, you can purchase a motor to run it! Try this time saver this year!
Maybe you are not into
tomatoes but sweet corn? One of my least favorite jobs is cutting the kernels
off the ears of corn! I always make my husband take on this task. This year I'm
going to use the American corn cutter that hooks over my pan. I can just slide
the ear along the tray and the blade will cut off the kernels with no hassle. I
can't wait for this year's corn crop!
An
apple peeler and
corer will reduce prep time for making pies, applesauce and more! Peel, core
and slice apples in one step, or choose to peel only, or core and slice only.
Now you can really handle those bushels in the fall!
For those who don't like to
spend all day surrounded by hot steam and boiling water the answer is a
steam
canner! It really takes the "sweat" out of canning. Use only 3 pints of water
and cut your pre-heating time in half. The steam canner takes the place of a
large water bath canner, so use only with high acid foods. But for fruit and
pickles - you can do small batches in a short amount of time and cut out the
heavy lifting and boiling over! The steam is what cooks the produce! This piece
of equipment ranks high on saving time!
So this year get out of the
kitchen faster! With some unique products you won't work up such a sweat, but
you will still get to enjoy all the great tasting food!
Here’s a couple of quick
recipes for this summer:
Quick Mustard Pickles
Zucchini Relish
