Preserve Food from the Garden- Top 3 Tools to Preserve the Harvest

good morning
this morning i thought i’d do somethinga little different than my usual in the
garden videoand that is because i’ve actually spent
the majority of this week in the housetrying to preserve as much of the
harvest as possible before the frostcomes
and i suspect that many of you who aregardening
are preserving a lot of your own food aswell so today i thought i’d share with
you my topthree tools for preserving the harvest
i’m going to finish picking these beansfor canning and then let’s head into the
houseso my top three preservation tools in no
particular order arefirst my dehydrator now the dehydrator
and the tool i’m going to show you nextare of perhaps particular importance
right now given that many folks arehaving trouble finding canning supplies
and these two methods can be used topreserve food without having to can
anything so there are many manydehydrators on the market
from relatively quite cheap to quiteexpensive
i splurged years ago and got theexcalibur dehydrator
some girls go for purses i go fordehydrators whatever floats your boat
but this has been well worth the moneyso i’ve got the nine
rack excalibur dehydrator andit’s got these mesh tray covers as well
as i bought these um i think they’resilicone
they do get stained with wear butthese work really really well especially
for like i said fruit leathers for thekids
and you can dehydrate pretty muchanything
i typically use this for herbs i drytomatoes onions zucchini carrots pretty
much any fruit and vegetable you can domeat jerkies
now how i will store my dehydrated foodtypically is just in these glass mason
jars i usually try to findlike the desiccate packets that are in
supplements or someother dried foods and save those and pop
one inthe jar with the food you can see here
i’ve gotdried onions and then here i’ve got a
batch of dried tomatoesi’d love to be able to do sun-dried
tomatoes but in our climate it justwould not work so i have to rely on the
dehydratorand here’s another example i’m in the
process of dehydrating a bunch ofzucchini
when this gets full i’ll pack it intoglass jars
as well preservation tool number twois my vacuum sealer so this was actually
gifted to me and i’m very very thankfulfor that because i kind of hem hawed around about buying one of thesei just wasn’t sure if i was going to end
up using it very muchand this has become definitely one of my
go-totools for preserving foods now i use
this to vacuum seal many fruits andvegetables and then throw them in the
freezerand it’s kind of my if i don’t have time
to get things done this is what i go tobecause it’s very fast
a word of warning however do not try todo really
juicy fruits and vegetables in thisbecause the vacuum sealer will want to
suck up all the juice and it doesn’twork
well so what i do for berries isactually lay them
on a cookie sheet freeze them first andthen vacuum seal them which works really
really welland i use this thing for blanched green
beans cauliflowerpeas broccoli edamame pretty much you
name itright now i’m doing peppers because we
are just gettingan onslaught of peppers ripening in the
garden sothis is one of my very favorite quick
and easy ways to preserve peppersso the way this works is you get these
vacuum seal rolls i think you can getthe pre-made bags too
but this is a little more economical andthey will come in rolls like this you
can get a wider sizeas well and this allows you to just
cut the size that you’ll need for theamount that you’re
vacuum sealing you just cut it asstraight as
you can you lay this edge on the ceilingstrip
shut ithold it down until the green light goes
offand it creates a seal on this end so now
you’ve got a baggie that you can fillso with peppers all i do is chop them
up kind of at a dice or whatever sizeyou typically would use them people i’ve
heard of people doing strips like forfajitas
but it’s whatever is easiest for youyou then just fill up your baggieand you want to leave a little room at
the top because you’re going to needthat space to do the vacuum sealing
thenyou just put that inside the vacuum
sealerthat downand voila it sucked all the air out
it’s giving you a nice seal and thatstuff will keep in the freezer much
longer without freezer burn than if youjust throw it say in like a ziploc
baggie preservation tool number threeis a canner now this is not just any
canner this is a life-changing cannerso i have my traditional big water bath
canner that i use all the timethis has replaced my pressure canner
so for years i had one of those greatbig cast
aluminum heavy-duty pressure canners tobe honest the thing intimidated the heck
out of meso my dear sister happened to mention
thiscontraption to me and i immediately
searched one out the beauty of this isthat it’s almost
foolproof and it doesn’t require theconstant
um diligence that a traditional steamcanner does where you’re constantly
checking the pressureand the temperature and making sure
everything is all right this youbasically put your items in
you start it it will beep at you when ithas reached pressure at which point you
close the pressure gaugeit will do the pressure canning and beep
again when it’s doneand that’s basically it and i have had
really good success with thisi’ve been able to do all those items
that i was freezing in the past which islike
my non-acid foods corn green beans i canpressure can leftover soups it is
smaller than a traditional pressurecanner so you can only do four
quarts at a time that actually worksreally well for me because i’m able to
slip in a batchof canning here and there rather than
devoting like a whole afternoonto doing canning and overall i have used
this thing a ton this season alreadynow if you find yourself in the market
for one of these as i said it is apressure
cooker canner be sure you lookfor that a traditional pressure cooker
or like an instant potis not set up to do pressure canning
so don’t get an instant pot and thinkthat you’ll be able to pressure can with
it look for a pressurecanner cooker and just as an aside if
you’re worried about having 7000different contraptions in your kitchen
which itotally understand this um is also
like i said it’s also a pressure cookeryou can also use it like your slow
cookerand for a little preservation bonus i’ve
got two morepreservation tools and they are perhaps
the cheapest and easiest you’ll everfind
and may already be in your kitchencupboards
so these tools are vinegar and saltthat is all you need to pickle a large
majority of the produce that is comingout of the garden
you can do a quick pickle with vinegarand you can do a long pickle or like a
fermented picklewith salt i think most people are
familiar with like a refrigerator pickleor a quick pickle
but i’ve got long pickled hot pepperscucumber pickles this is a kohlrabi
pickleof course i’ve got sauerkraut downstairs
but pickling is anexcellent and ancient technique of
preserving the harvestnow if you’ve not done pickles before
and find yourself a little overwhelmedi highly recommend this book it is the
pickled pantryby andrea chesman and every recipe that
i’ve tried from this so far has beenexcellent
and she explains how to do both quickvinegar pickles and long or fermented
picklesand be sure to let me know do you have
any additional tools that you use forpreserving the harvest that you’ve found
really usefuldrop a line in the comments below and if
you find content like this helpfulplease consider subscribing to my
channel growfully with jennathanks for watching and i’ll see you
next time