Rain or shine, the show must go on! With a whole garden to harvest and preserve, even inches of rainfall aren’t going to stop us. But, it’s a good day to discuss a bit of preservation philosophy!
You’ll notice here that we’re roasting a boat load of Shishito peppers. We started growing this pepper variety five years ago or so, they’ve been an excellent northern producer for us. As is, they are a suitable replacement for a bell pepper. But, they really shine when grilled up and are served with a little bit of salt.
Similar to the blanch and freeze technique, roasting peppers will help arrest the enzymatic process and allow long term storage in the freezer. But, the real intention here is to get the produce into our desired “final” form, prior to preservation. (In this case, roasted peppers!) And that’s where today’s theme comes in.
One of the overarching things we’ve learned about food preservation is to try and achieve “usable” products. Whether that’s individual produce we can toss into a pan or baking sheet, an entire pre-prepared meal or even various ingredients that we can use alongside our cooking. Our first and foremost goal with preservation is to make our preservations easy to use.
One of the main reasons we’ve moved away from bulk canning “everything” and towards freezer preservation is that it’s much easier for us to portion out “useable” amounts. When you have quarts of this and quarts of that, it’s very difficult to utilize that canned produce effectively without some serious meal planning. With freezer preservation, you can grab what you need and easily toss anything unused back into the freezer.
That’s not to say we don’t create canned goods! We certainly do. But, those canned goods are precisely things that we would typically buy and use, typically in the quantities we would use them. If we wouldn’t buy something like canned green beans from the grocery, we don’t can beans! But, we’d buy pickled green beans and maybe frozen green beans, so we do make those things!
Ultimately, we’re tailoring the preservation techniques we use to achieve that “final and usable form” that we desire. These are certainly subjective things. But, this is why we exercise so many different preservation methods as it gives us a lot of options to craft things in the ways we might want to use them.
This versatility can also get you into an interesting world of uncommon ingredients. For example, say you’re a “smoothie” person. You could certainly dehydrate whatever produce and turn it into powders, which then can act as a major nutritional and flavor infusion. Or, let’s say you’re a “steak person” or “sauce person” you can make gourmet marinades and sauces with your diced roasted peppers and perhaps dried garlic scapes. You can make and preserve unique things that simply cannot be bought.
One of the things we’re trying to demonstrate here is that gardening and preservation doesn’t have to be like the old days of soggy, overcooked jars of peas and carrots. Practically nobody wants that anymore! Modern gardening and preservation efforts should be tailored to the diet and preferences of the gardener. This is critical to achieve to maximize your utilization of the modern garden!
