marisa mcclellan: myname is marisa mcclellan, and i write a blogcalled "food in jars." and my first book wascalled "food in jars" and came out abouttwo years ago. and then this new book has beenout for just about three months now and is called"preserving by the pint." and what i really like aboutthis book --i mean, granted, i like it, i wrote it--is that every recipe in it starts with either apint, a quart, or a pound
or two of produce, which makesit really great for people who live in urban areas. i live in philadelphia, incenter city, philadelphia, on the 20th floorof a high-rise. and so this book wasborn out of my need to continue to can while notfilling my apartment from floor to ceiling with jars. although, doing what i do, it'spretty much wall-to-wall jars as it is.
i have a very tolerant husbandwhen it comes to mason jars. he has a lot of legos,so we balance out. [laughter] what's nice about thisbook is that so often, when you read canning recipes, it'llsay you need a flat, or five pounds, or a very large quantityof produce just to get started. whereas, what idid with this book is that i startedpicking up the quantities that you get at farmer'smarkets or in a csa share,
or at the grocery store,or what you're getting out of a small backyard garden,or at a community garden. and try to build recipesaround those units of measure, so that instead of needingthat flat or that five pounds, you could start with just aquart of pickling cucumbers, or a quart ofyellow plums, which i'm going to make theyellow plum and vanilla jam out of the book today. so these aren't reallytrue, true yellow plums,
but they're close enough. so we're going to callthem yellow plums. i wrote the recipeoriginally with shiro plums, which are these really light,almost translucent plums, which are really delicious. but just about any plumwill work in this recipe. so let me ask firstoff, who are my canners? who has canned before? anybody?
ok, a few folks. who has never canned before? who is terrified? ok. i have a terrified hand here. so often, when i do these talks,these classes, a lot of people come who really areinterested in canning, but they are sortof afraid that they are going to makea batch of jam,
or do a couple jars ofpickles, and share them with their friends and family,and two weeks later, they're not going to have anyfriends and family left. right? that's the fear, that you'regoing to kill everyone with your canning, becausethis is the united states. we are very food safety-anxious. and it is true thatbotulism, which is the thing everyone'sscared of, is problematic.
you don't want to get botulism. the good news is that it'sreally hard to grow botulism in canning jars and yourhome-preserved foods. and in fact, it is impossiblefor most of the things that we make at home, because when itcomes to dealing with botulism, trying to avoid itsdevelopment in your jars, botulism cannot grow inhigh acid environments. and just about everything thatwe can at home is a high acid preserve.
and when i talkabout high acid, you use ph to determine whetherit's high acid or low acid. so if something hasa ph of 4.6 or below, that is a high acid preserve. and you know thatit's a high acid preserve also, because if therecipe is telling you to can it in a boiling waterbath, you can only can things in a boiling water bath,canners, that are high in acid already.
so your jams, and yourpickles, and your chutneys, and your jellies, andyour tomato products, although i'm goingto put a mental asterisk next totomatoes, because we're going to come backto those in a second. but all of thesehigh acid preserves that can be canned ina boiling water bath, it is impossible for botulismto grow in those environments. because botulism-- whenwe talk about botulism,
we're talking aboutthe botulism spores. so the botulism toxin iskilled at the boiling point. but those spores are very hardy. and they take temperaturesof around 235 to 240 degrees fahrenheit to be killed. and at sea level on ourplanet in this atmosphere, we are never going to be able toboil water beyond 212 degrees. and then the higher upin elevation you go, the lower yourboiling point goes.
and so when you cansomething, and you need to kill offbotulism spores, or you need toinhibit their growth, you either need to make theenvironment highly acidic, so they can't develop. or you need to elevatethe temperature in order to kill them off. so if you're working withthese high acid preserves, you don't have toelevate the temperature,
because the acidic environmentprevents their germination into the toxin. but if you do lowacid foods, then you can get into the wholepressure canning world. i always tell people it'sbetter to sort of walk before you can run. so you want to startgetting really comfortable with canning, do theboiling water bath, feel happy and at easemoving jars of food
in and out of potsof boiling water. and then once you feelreally comfortable with that, you can go, proceed, getyourself a pressure canner, and start doing cool thingslike homemade flavored beans, or chicken stock, or vegetablestock, and stuff like that. but for now, i liketo start everybody off with the boilingwater bath process. how's everybody feel about that? feeling good?
got the science? you didn't know there was goingto be so much science when you came to a cookingdemonstration, right? but i like to geteverybody on the same page, make sure that everyone feelscomfortable with the safety part, and then go from there. so any safetyquestions after that? everybody's good? everybody's happy to be here?
yeah. audience: so if you're makingsomething with tomatoes, you [inaudible] cannot getbotulism [inaudible] or you can? marisa mcclellan: yes. so tomatoes. so most fruit alreadynaturally has a ph below 4.6. like these plums, theph range for plums is typically like3.0 to 3.7 or 8.
tomatoes, we think of tomatoesas being very high acid. but actually, because we, asamericans, have a sweet tooth, over the last 50years, tomato growers have responded to thatby breeding tomatoes that are lower in acidthan they used to be. so what we've done ismade a very sweet tomato that is no longer safe forcanning in a boiling water canner unless youdo what's called acidifying the environment.
so anytime you cantomatoes, you either add bottled lemonjuice or citric acid to the preserve to ensure thatthe acid levels in the jar are high enough that theph is low enough in order to prevent any possible botulismgermination from occurring. and you either use citricacid or bottled lemon juice, because they both havea consistent acidity. you can't use fresh lemonjuice, because the acidic levels of lemon juice variesgreatly on a fresh lemon.
but bottled products,there's a requirement that they all have a consistentacidity across every bottle. so you know that you'regetting the same thing with every bottle ofbottled lemon juice. there are also a few otherfruits that you acidify like that-- figs, whitepeaches, and white nectarines, asian pears, and thenmelons, and mangoes. so sort of more of thetropical fruits and things where they just don'ttaste as acidic to you.
if it doesn'ttaste as acidic as, you know, like, a white peachdoesn't taste nearly as acidic as a yellow peach. that's your indicationthat, huh, this might not have as much acid. maybe i need to boost ita little to make it safe. everybody good? ok, cool. so i have chopped up about twopounds of plums right here.
and i'm going to measure inapproximately about a cup and a quarter of sugar. i'm using sort of fancyorganic evaporated cane juice. it doesn't really matter. you can use plainold granulated sugar. you can use whatever you have. i've brought this,because i wasn't going to tear the bagwhile i traveled here from philadelphia today.
so it's all about practicality. i didn't bring a measuring cup. that was one thing i forgot. but i'm going toeyeball it, and it's going to be about right, becausethis is a pound and a half. and so i'm going to use abouta little more than a third of the bag. audience: did you peel them? marisa mcclellan:i didn't peel them.
you never need to peelplums, because they are-- if you peel a plum,they are unbalanced, because they're sweet on theinside and tart on the outside. so if you peel them, youlose the tart balance. and so i didn't peel them. in fact, that'swhy these recipes are so handy is that youdon't have to peel them. you can just chop them andmix them with the sugar. so i've got my sugar in here.
and we're actuallygoing to let it sit for just a couple minutesbefore i apply the heat. you never want to applyheat to undissolved sugar unless you're tryingto make caramel. and caramel isdelicious, and i highly encourage you to make it. but i don't want tocaramelize the sugar in here, because once you startcaramelizing sugar, it's very easy tostart burning it.
and i don't wantthis to get burnt. so i'm just goingto let the fruit sit with the sugar fora minute or two. and the sugar willstart to pull out the moisture from the fruit. and then that moisture willstart to dissolve the sugar. so it will be this nice,syrupy fruit cocktail before i apply the heat. one fun tip.
and i'm also going to addthe juice of half a lemon here just to help things startto dissolve a little bit more and to add more balance tothe fruit and the sugar. so one nifty thing you can doat this point is-- for instance, you go to the farmer'smarket, you come home. you've bought a quart of plums,and they're a little bit riper than you thought they were. or in the travel fromfarmer's market to home, they got a little bit beat up.
and you're like,huh, i don't know if these are going to lastme throughout the week. so what you can do isactually chop them up right at that point, mixthem with the sugar, and put them in a container, andput them in the refrigerator, and just let them sit fora day or two until you have time to come backand make the jam. it's a really good way tobreak up the work of canning, particularly if you havebusy lives, which i'm just
going to guessthat all of you do. and so you can chopup the fruit one day, and combine it with the sugar,let it sit for two or three days, up to two or threedays, in the refrigerator, and then come back to it thenext-- when you're ready to can it up, make thejam, and can it up. and so it's a good wayto sort of say, ok, i'm going to touchit this day, and i'm gong to touch itthat day, but i don't
have to dedicate alot of time to this. although, you're going to see,this doesn't take that long. it took me all of 10minutes to cut up the fruit. and then once we applythe heat to this, this jam is going to cookin about 12 to 15 minutes, maybe a little longer. i often demo on inductionburners, which are amazing, because they offer such directheat and they cook really fast. so it's a veryhandy fuel source.
any questions aboutall this so far? audience: is itadvantageous to leave it in the refrigerator for a while? marisa mcclellan:what it simply does is that it helps pullout all the syrup. so you're sort of at thatsyrupy, ready-to-cook time faster. so you might shave two or threeminutes off the cooking time if you let it maceratefor a day or two.
or even an hour, you'llget that syrupy effect. anybody else? all right. cool. oh, yeah. go ahead. audience: is it possibleto use less sugar if you want it less sweet? [inaudible]. marisa mcclellan: i was actuallyjust about to talk about that,
so that's the perfect question. so when it comes tocanning, making a preserve like this-- and this jam is onlygoing to have four ingredients. it's plums, sugar, lemonjuice, and a vanilla bean, which i'll get inthere in just a second. so sugar doesn't just sweeten. it's not just playinga sweetening role. it's also playinga role in creating the consistency of the jam,and it's also a preservative.
so when you reduce the sugarin a preserve-- and this is actually considered afairly low-sugar jam recipe in the context of thetraditional canning canon. often, the recipes thatour grandmothers made would be one part fruitto one part sugar, because they werereally just trying to preserve the fruitas best they knew how. and they knew that to be, youneed to use a lot of sugar. and so over theyears, we've found
that you can get a niceset with less sugar. but at a certain point, whenyou pull out too much sugar, it becomes very hardto get it to thicken unless you use a lowor no sugar pectin. and there are some reallygood ones out there. one that i particularly likeis called pomona's pectin. and what's cool about it is--so what's going to happen is as we cook thisjam, the water is going to evaporateout of the fruit,
and the sugars aregoing to concentrate-- both the sugar i added aswell as the sugars that are natural to the fruit. and so as theyconcentrate, sugar has this really nifty abilityto change physical consistency as you heat it. so as you heat the sugar upand the water evaporates out of the pan, you'regoing to enable the sugars to elevatebeyond the boiling point.
and so what we'regoing to try to do is cook them toaround 220 degrees. and at that point, thosesugars will start to thicken. and it's actuallyknown as the gel phase for sugar, for heating sugar. and so as thatsugars thickens, it's going to bond with the pectinthat's natural to the fruit. and so it reaches that 220 mark. and because i'm making asmall batch-- you'll notice,
i didn't add any pectin to this. and some people think,well, you can't make jam without additional pectin. but pectin is actuallythe fiber that holds up the cell wallsof fruits and vegetables. i'm going to turn this on, sothat we don't-- i don't lose too much time justtalking without cooking. so pectin is thefiber that holds up the cell walls offruits and vegetables.
it exists in allfruits and vegetables, and some things havemore of it than others. so you can always tell whethersomething has a lot of pectin or a little bit of pectinby its physical consistency. because if it's got morepectin, it's sturdier. so like a lemon, you canthrow a lemon across the room, and it still looks likea lemon when it lands. it's very sturdy. whereas, like this is afairly not super-ripe plum.
i could probably chuck this,and it would still land and look like a plum. but if i had a reallyripe peach or something, and i lobbed itacross the room, peach puree all over thegreens over there. so it's just a good wayto tell, does something have a lot of pectin or a littlebit of pectin by its, sort of, ability to withstand force. another good exampleis strawberries
versus blueberries. when you drop a strawberry,it is strawberry splatter. you drop a blueberry,and it bounces. so it's ways that you cantell whether something has a lot of pectin ora little bit of pectin is by how it withstands. i also like to think of itlike the lunch bag test. you drop an applein your lunch bag, you walk around for four hours.
that apple is still going to beedible and look like an apple when you go back to eat it. you do that with a pear,and it's pear pudding. so again, you cansee how something has more pectin orless pectin dependant on its physical consistency. so for this preserve, plumshave a fair amount of pectin. and so what we're doingwith this small batch is that we're goingto elevate-- and you
notice i'm doingit in a frying pan. this is not just that thiswas the only pan available. in fact, they had togo hunt for this pan. i was like, i need astainless steel pan, please. and so they wentand hunted for this. so it's this pan's inauguraluse here at google. i feel very honored to betaking it for its maiden voyage. i like a frying pan or askillet for preserves like this, because you get a lot of surfacearea and very little depth.
and you don't havehigh walls on the pan, preventing thesteam from escaping. so what's going tohappen is that this is going to cook up toa boil really quickly. we're going to get to that220 point relatively fast. and then, we won't havecooked all the sort of starch, all of the structureout of the pectin, by the time the sugarsget to 220 degrees. and so they'll bond.
and so this is how you canget a really nice consistency for your jam withoutany additional pectin, because we're makinga small batch. now, if you wanted to dothis with even less sugar, you would use a low or no sugarpectin like pomona's pectin. and pomona's pectin is cool. it's called alow-methoxyl pectin. that's kind of its category. and so instead of needing thesugar to bond with the pectin
in order to create a set,when you buy a box of pomona's pectin, it comes withtwo packets in it. one is a little packet thathas calcium powder in it. and the other one haspectin powder in it that is made from dehydratedlemon and lime peels that have been dehydrated,ground, and sifted. so it's essentially justa very, very fine powder of lemon and lime essence. and with thatpectin, what you do
is you make a solutionwith the calcium powder. and then you add thatsolution to your cooking fruit without any sugar. and then, once thefruit has softened, you add the pectinpowder that has been stirred intoyour sweetener, whether you're using somehoney, or maple syrup, or sugar, or coconut sugar,whatever you're using. and when the pectin hits thecalcium, sort of spiked fruit,
the pectin and the calciumbond and create a set. so it's not ever goingto be quite as, sort of, luxurious and softand sort of-- you know how when you get sort oflike a good handmade, regularly sugared jam, it has a littlebit of movement and body and is kind of spoon-able. when you use pomona'spectin, it likes to set up a littlebit more firmly. and so you get something that'smore like an all-fruit spread
that you can buy atthe grocery store. but it's a really good wayto create a preserve that is spreadable and stilldelicious with less sugar. the one thing to knowabout pomona's pectin is simply-- oops, i justlost a-- nobody saw that. is that when you takeout a lot of sugar, you have to compensate forthe flavor someplace else. so when i make really lowor no sugar preserves, i like to add a lot oflemon, or a lot of lime,
or a lot of orange,something that's very acidic, so that you are balancingout the lack of sweetness with some other bright flavor. so it's just somethingthat's good to know if you want to explore thoselow and no sugar preserves, that you need to compensate withlots of spice and lots of acid to create something that's stillgoing to be balanced and have a lot of flavor. how's everybody doing?
good? any questions? doesn't just haveto be about this. any food preservationquestions, i'm here for you. yes. audience: what's thedifference between jam, jelly, and preserves? marisa mcclellan: ok. that's a really good question.
a jelly is a preserve madewith just fruit juice, or sometimes noteven fruit juice. it can be-- like i've knownpeople who make beer jellies. but it's essentiallya liquid that has had either addedsugar or added sweetener, and often pectin to make it sortof a solid, clear, spreadable and so preserve is sort ofjust the all-purpose word. and then also,preserve is often used to refer to sort ofbigger pieces of fruit
in syrup that isn'tquite as set as jam. jam is a wholefruit preserve that can either haveadditional pectin or not, but is sort of fruitand syrup all together. and then so the preserve issort of this all-purpose term. and then you'vegot a fruit butter, which is a fruit pureethat has been cooked down slowly and over lowheat over time, so that you concentrate thefiber in the fruit.
you cook out the water, youconcentrate the sweetness. i'm sure everybody's hadapple butter in the past. you can do that with any fruit. so i've done blueberry butters,and strawberry butters. sweet cherry butteris awfully good. and so you can do that witha lot different fruits. jelly, jam, preserve, butter. curd. fruit curds are afruit juice preserve
that's set up with egg yolk andthen has butter added to it. so it's a veryrich, spreadable-- i'm just kind of finding allthe different terms for you now. audience: compote. marisa mcclellan: compote. that's a good one. so compote is a less sweetened,typically in a thin syrup, fruit that's been cooked down. it's not going to have as muchsugar, honey, or whatever.
it's going to be-- andoften, they're made quickly. so often, compotesare just like, oh, i have thispeach and this plum and these few cherriesthat need to be used up. let me just cook themdown, and then we'll put them over oatmeal is kindof compote's driving force. a conserve is a jam that haseither citrus peel, or nuts, or dried fruit added to it. ooh, a chutney.
chutneys are sortof like a jam, only it's a sweet andsavory preserve. so it's like fruit, and sugar,and vinegar, and spices, and onions, or garlic,things like that. and so it's really got both thesweet and the savory element in one jar. just to note, if you ever makechutneys, and you open the jar, and you find that it's reallyoverpoweringly vinegary, i find that chutneyhas a lot in common
with wine in terms ofits needs to breathe after you've opened the jar. because you've made the chutney,you've slapped the lid on it, you processed it. and then it sort of hasbeen just hanging out. and it needs alittle bit of time to release some of that vinegar. i just realized, i need toget my vanilla bean in here as things simmer away.
fresh vanilla beansare a really great way to add a lot of flavor to jams. they can be really expensiveif you just buy them by the one or the twoat the grocery store. i tend to buy them in bulk. i am a little obsessiveabout this sort of thing. but anybody canbuy them in bulk. you don't have to justbe a preserver to do it. and a pound of grade bvanilla beans are about $55.
so when you buy themat the grocery store, you'll pay $10 or$20 for two beans. and if you buy them inbulk, you'll spend $55, you'll get 150 to 180 beans. and so if you're interestedin adding vanilla bean to your pantry, it's alwaysfun to go in with a friend and buy, like, a half poundor a pound, and split them up. and then you can do cool stufflike make your own vanilla extract, or vanilla finishingsalts, or flavored sugars,
and stuff like that. so it's a fun, littlepantry addition if you find yourself lovingthe flavor of fresh vanilla bean in your preserves. and all i did was i split thebean down the center, i exposed the two, i exposed the interior. and then i just usedthe flat of my knife to scrape those seeds out. and then i added theseeds to the pan.
and now i'm also going todrop the pod into the pan in order to extract as muchflavor from it as possible. i always tell people toadd the seeds to the pan, because i had a friendemail me one day and say, i made your preserve, imade your pear vanilla jam, and you didn'ttell me what to do once i scraped the vanilla bean. so i threw away thescrapings, and i just popped the pod into the pan.
and it broke my heart,because the seeds are where all the goodness is. like, you get someflavor from the pod too. but i just like to makesure everybody knows. you're going to scrapethose seeds out, and you're going toadd them to the pan. so let's take a lookat how this is looking. one of my favorite ways totell whether jam is finished is by looking at thedroplets on a spatula to see,
is it thickening up? because what this doesis, as it thickens, it's going to changeconsistency as it cools down. so when you run yourspatula through and then hold up the droplets, it'sgoing to cool down rapidly, this little sample thatyou've taken out of the pan. and so you can look and see,do i have thick droplets? do they look thick? do they have a wide base thatare hanging onto the spatula
as i wiggle it? this one's not there yet. but it's nice to seta baseline and look at the droplets overthe time that it's cooking to see howit's setting up. another way-- and youcan't really see this, but i'm going toexplain it to you-- is that one of the nice thingsabout making this in a skillet is that you can tell that it'sthickening up as you stir,
because when youpull a line through, as it gets closer to beingdone, that space will stay open. and so you can very easily tell. you'll be able to kindof sculpt it in the pan. and so as it continuesto cook, you'll be able to see it kindof thicken up in the pan. audience: how longdoes the vanilla bean stay for in the cabinet? marisa mcclellan: oh,how long in the cabinet?
i am working througha batch that i bought almost two years ago. and what i do is i triplewrap them in plastic, so i have three ziplocbags inside of each other. and i just keep them in a cool--like in the corner of a kitchen cabinet. they don't need to be in therefrigerator or the freezer. and they really last awhile. and if they do hardenup, you can just
put them in some warm waterfor a minute or two before you use them. and it's enough tosort of re-plump it. and then you can getgood flavor out of it. they give a lot. and the nice thing, too, isthat once this jam is finished cooking, we can actually takethat vanilla bean out, rinse it off, dry it off,and then you could let it sit onyour-- let it cool,
or dry on your counterfor a day or so. and then put itin a jar of sugar, and it will still be ableto flavor that sugar. if you're making somehomemade vanilla extract, you can drop that pod thathas been cooked and scraped, and it'll still add flavorto the vanilla extract. so you can get alot out of them. can you guys smell this? are you gettingthe smell of this?
shoot. it smells really good righthere, let me just tell you. oh. does someone have a question? so another way that you cantell the jam is getting near to its done pointis that as you stir, it's going to sizzlea little bit more frantically as you stir it. and so i always try tosay to people that it's
going to tell youboth visually, it's going to tell you asthe smell, the aroma get stronger, thatit's almost done. and it's going to get glossier,and you're going to hear it. you're going tohear that sizzle. so it's talking to you. the pan is talking to you. so just as long asyou know the language, you're going to be able toknow that your jam is done.
so i'm going to bequiet for a second now and stir, and see if youguys can hear the sizzle. did you hear that? so that's an indication thatthe temperature is hotter, that the jam, physically, ishotter than 212 degrees now. and i'm cooking at high. the name of the gameis evaporation, right? so you want to have yourtemperature up as high, cook as hot and fastas you possibly can
without burning yourselfand without burning the jam. i don't want you to hurtyourself when you make this. so if you need to sacrificeand have a couple minutes longer cooking timeto prevent yourself from getting a second degreeburn from splashing jam on your arm, please turnthe temperature down. but do try to keep it up as highas you can manage and control without doing harm to yourself. so let's talk a little bitabout the canning process
now, because that's reallywhat we're here for, right? you don't want tojust hear about jam, you want to hear about canning. so this is my canningpot for today. and this is my teeny, tinysmall-batch canning pot. i use it at home a lot. it's really handy. it's not designed for canning,but it works really well for canning.
this pot's calledthe 4th burner pot. and what i really like about itis that it's tall and narrow, so you can stack acouple jars inside of it. and here, i'll show you whati have in here right now. i just have two of theselittle wide-mouth half pints stacked one ontop of each other. and this batch is goingto make probably enough to fill these jars witha little bit left over, so that we can tastewhen we're all done.
although, i didn't bringanything to taste on. we'll cross that bridgewhen we get there. there's snacks everywhere. i'm sure we can find a cracker. so what i like aboutthis pot, the reason it's such a goodpot for canning is that it comes fittedwith this little rack. any time you can,you want to make sure that you are-- any potcan be a canning pot.
you just need tomake sure that it has a rack in it to ensurethat the jars are elevated off the bottom of the pot, sothat the water can circulate, and so that theydon't rattle and break on the bottom of the pot. because you know howwhen water boils, the little bubbles originatefrom the bottom of the pan, and they move upwardswith increasing force. and so when theybubble and boil up,
they can actually rattle thosejars enough to break them. and so you just wantto have something at the bottom of the pot. when you're dong largerbatches, you a silicone trivet will work. this is my favorite sort ofmodified canning rack, modified in the sense that i dropit in the bottom of the pot and call it a canning rack. it's a silicone trivet.
it's called the blossom trivet. they sell it on amazon. if you go looking for one,click through all the colors before you buy it, becausethey vary in price, $3 or $4, depending on what color you get. so the algorithm. who knows? so depending on whether youwant black or pink or orange, you might pay $3or $4 more or less.
but orange was the cheapestthe last time i bought it, so that's why ihave an orange one. oops, we're getting alittle sticking here. i'm going to stirand pay attention to this for just a moment. let's look at ourdroplets one more time, and then i'll talk aboutthe canning process. so you see how muchthicker they've gotten in just a coupleminutes of cooking?
that sugar is concentrating. the water is cooking out. we're getting a lot ofsteam happening here. and i would say in justanother two or three minutes, this is going to bedone, which is great. see? it doesn't take allday to make jam. it's very nice. we'll talk a littlebit about pickles,
too, because pickles are anotherone where people are selling us, sort off-- youknow, you buy a $12 jar of pickles or a $15 or$20 jar of pickles-- it cost them $2 tomake those pickles. you can do that at home. very easy, very delicious. there's nothing betterthan a homemade pickle. but so let's talk aboutthe canning process. let me turn thisdown a little bit.
so any pot can be acanning pot as long as it's tall enough tohold a rack at the bottom, have the jars fullysubmerged in water, have a little bit of watercovering them at the top, and then have some room atthe top of the pot to boil. so a stainless steel stockpot,it can be a great canning pot. if you have a pastapot with an insert, that's a reallygood canning pot. this 4th burner pot,an asparagus pot,
which is sort of a lessfancy 4th burner pot. whatever you have,you can make it work as long as thepot is tall enough to fully submerge the jar. so i've heated up the jars. i brought this pot to a boilbefore i cooked the jam. and then they've just beenhanging out, sitting here. they don't have to besterilised before we put the jam in thejars, because we're
going to boil the jars oncethey're full for 10 minutes. and if you boil somethingfor 10 minutes or longer, that is your sterilization step. so you don't have toworry that everything has to be perfectly,meticulously immaculate. all we need is for itto be clean and hot when we put the finished jam in it. and we're goingto wipe the rims, put the lids andrings on the jars,
and put them back in the water. one thing is that when weput the jam in the jars, we always want to make sureto leave some head space. and head space is simplythe amount of space to leave from thetop of the product, so how much it's filledup, to the top of the jar. and you typicallywant about-- let me get it turnedto the right place. you want about half an inch.
and the reason for thatis that that half an inch of head space, that oxygenthat you trap in the jar, is going to create the seal. because when youfill up these jars, you're going to fill them up sothat the product is somewhere in between where thecontinuous thread overlaps. so every mason jar hasa continuous thread. and then there's apoint where it overlaps. you just want yourproduct to be somewhere
in between the topand the bottom thread. you've trapped thatoxygen in there. and when you put the ringson, you tighten them enough, so that they meet resistance,they're fully on there. but you don'ttighten them so much that the oxygen can't escape. because when we put thefull jars back in the water and we apply heatto it, that oxygen that we've trappedin that head space
is going to start tovent as we boil the jars, because the heat makesthe oxygen agitate, and move around,and exit the jars. and so throughoutthe boiling process-- you guys are allscience-y people, and i'm probably explaining thisterribly for science-y people. but it's basically,they're venting. the jars are ventingthroughout the boiling process, so that when we takethem out, everything
that had been expandingduring the boiling process starts to contract. and as it contracts,you form a vacuum. and as that vacuumforms-- because there's nothing there to holdthat space anymore, because we vented all theoxygen out that was there before-- that lid pulls down. and it pulls downin a way where you create a natural vacuumthat is then backed up
by the sealingcompound on the lid. and so these lidsare in the water, because i want tosoften this rubber ring, this sealing compound. it'll soften continuallythroughout the boiling process. and then when wetake those jars out and that vacuumstarts to pull, it's going to pull this lid intighter and tighter contact with the rim of that jar.
and then as thejars are cooling, the sealing compound hardens. so it's sort of a double seal. you've got a naturalvacuum backed up by this hardeningsealing compound. i always like to say thatit's like when you were a kid and you put a cup on yourface, over your mouth, and you suckedin, and sucked in, and sucked in until thecup stuck to your face.
that's basically what'shappening in the jar. and then it's as if someoneput, like, super glue on the cup without you knowing it,and you sucked it in, and it stuck to your face,not that anyone would do that. it's sort of a ridiculousanalogy, i know. but that's kind of-- if youwant to think about sort of a real-life scenario ofhow the vacuum is forming and what's backing it up, that'skind of what's happening there. so let's look at our jam.
i'm going to turnthis all the way up. did i kill my-- i thinki killed the-- yeah. killed the heat. so it's almost there. i'm just going to bring itback up to an active boil for just a second more. it's still got this little--once it sits in the pan, it spreads a little bitmore than i like it to, and it's got little bitsof water around the edges.
so i just want to cookthat last bit of water out and make sure that it'sgoing be nice and thick. audience: you never usefrozen fruits, right? marisa mcclellan: youcan use frozen fruits. when you freeze fruit,you take those cells, every little cell in the fruit. and when you freeze it, thewater inside those cells expands, and it burstsall the cell walls. and so then when it defrosts,it releases its liquid,
and it's not going to haveas much pectin content, because you'vesort of bust open-- you've broken down that pectinin the cell walls a little bit. so you're going to have towork a little bit harder to get frozen fruit tocome to a set point, because if i'm makingjam with frozen fruit, i always make sureto use some pectin, because you're going toneed a little pectin boost, because you've sort ofstressed the natural pectin
in the fruit. but you certainly can do it. audience: what did you use topull the lid out of the water? marisa mcclellan: thisis called the lid wand. it's a plastic stickwith a magnet on the end. and it is the besttool ever, because you can move your lids inand out of the water without burning yourself. when it comes tocanning, there are really
three tools that i recommendas sort of must-haves. this is pretty handy,and it costs, like, $3. so you know. audience: for all colors? these days, i see it mostlyin fluorescent green. but if you look hard, youcould still get the blue ones. so you want a lidlifter, a jar lifter, and then a wide-mouth funnel. and those are really yourthree pieces of equipment
that you really want to have. you want a canningrack, but you don't have to even have this guy. if you have a roundcake cooling rack, like a stainless steelcake cooling rack, that can be your canning rack. you can even drop a kitchentowel in the bottom of your pot and call that your canningrack, because it's essentially padding the jars atthe bottom and allowing
some of the heat to circulate. so we hear all that sizzling. that says to me thatthis jam is done. there's not as much watercoming out at the edges. and the bits offruit-- like, there's not as much distinctfruit pieces, which is what you want to see. i like a fairly chunky jam. i don't want it tobe perfectly smooth,
but you want the fruitto have broken down. and look at how thick it isnow that it's on the spatula. that's what you want to see. we're going tocall this guy done. one little tip is to alwaysstir your jam for a minute or two after you've turnedoff the heat-- not a minute. you know, 15seconds, 30 seconds. basically, what this does isit helps let that last steam escape, and it tightensit up just a bit more.
and you're just going to geta slightly better texture. you can also tellthat it's done. here, i'm going totilt this a little bit. can you see how nice and thick? and when i pull thespatula through, that that space stays open? that's what you're looking for. so the reason i used astainless steel pan today and i asked them to find meone, as opposed to aluminum,
is when you're makingjam, you really want to use a nonreactive metal. you either want enamel, castiron, or stainless steel, or anodized aluminum. because if you use a barealuminum pan, or a bare cast iron pan, you canleach a metallic flavor into your finished preserve. so aluminum and castiron are reactive metals. and so they react with acids,and they release a little bit
of themselves intowhatever you're cooking in that pan,which is great sometimes if you're someonewho's iron deficient and wants to get a littleextra iron into your diet. you can use a cast iron pan. but with preserves, you endup leaching a metallic flavor that doesn't ever go away. and about once a summer,i hear from someone who writes that they havemade 15 pints of salsa
in a giant aluminum pot. they cooked it fora couple of hours, and now it tastes likethey're licking aluminum foil. and they ask mewhat they can do. and unfortunately,there's nothing you can do in that scenario. you either have to getused to the taste of tin, or you have to throwthe salsa away. and it's really heartbreakingfor people who spent a day
and a half making a batch ofsalsa to hear that it cannot be eaten. so you really want to look forstainless steel or enamel cast iron, or anodized aluminum. i tend to stayaway from nonstick when i'm making preservessimply because i'm cooking at a fairlyhigh temperature. and nonstick doesn't dowell at high temperatures. it starts to break down.
it's just not good for the pan. so if you want to maintainthe quality of your nonstick, cooking it over highheat for 10 or 15 minutes isn't going to be thebest way to do it. so i recommend something whereyou can cook the heck out of it, and nothing'sgoing to happen. so we're going to pourthe jam into the jars with our wide-mouth funnel. sometimes i do thisblind, looking over
the top of the pan,and i'm not going to do that today, becausewe're recording this, and no one needs to see me pourjam all over the counter top here. so nice color, right? it's kind of alittle bit peachy. you can see howpretty this would be if you had, like, a pureyellow plum, too, because it would be, like, translucentlyyellow and perfect.
but i like it like this, too. so our jars are filled. i just like to givethem a little wiggle. they could bothprobably use, like, one more tablespoonof jam, but i want to leave us enough to eat. so i'm not going totop them off quite as much as i might if iwas doing this at home. and then i'm goingto grab my lids.
actually, that's a lie. i'm going to grab apaper towel, and i'm going to wipe therims just to make sure that there's nothingon there that could prevent a goodseal from forming. so lid one. and you always want to place thelids independent of the rings, just so that youknow that you're getting the sealingcompound in direct contact
with the whole ofthe rim of the jar. if you place themwith the rings, if you have themall attached, you're just not getting thatperfect placement. and i didn't sterilize these. i didn't even heat them up. it's really hard to screw aring on if it's piping hot. and there's really noreason, because they're going to be in the pot withthe jars for the 10 minutes.
so it'll be fine. so again, you just turn ittill it meets resistance. you don't have to, like,go like that with it. you just want to turn it sothat the oxygen can escape and that you canget a good seal. and i promise, theoxygen will leave. the water won't go in. you can trust me. it's just not going to happen.
because the force of theoxygen is going to be, sort of, constantly venting throughout. so it prevents anywater from leaching in. and i am stacking these. you can stack your jars. that sort of blows the mind ofsome people when they can on occasion. they're like, what,you can stack the jars? you can stack the jars.
no big deal. so we're going to justbring this up to a boil, boil it for 10 minutes. and at 10 minutes-- andso i don't set the timer until it hits afull rolling boil. once it's at afull, rolling boil, that's the point atwhich we set the timer. i'm also just going to makea little public service announcement right now.
and no shame ifyou've done this. but this is the endof the jar lifter that you put on the jars,and this is the handle. i've often seen peopleuse them upside down. and you don't getnearly as secure a grip if you're trying to grip on thejar with the handle portion. do you guys knowthe website food52? a few. i'm seeing a few nods.
they have a pictureon their website-- or at least theydid last summer. they were sellingcanning tools, and they were using, in the picture,the jar lifter the wrong way. and so what can you do? but for you at home,when you go home and can, make sure you doit so that you're going to get the best,most secure grip. because otherwise you'regoing to feel really insecure
as you lift piping hot jarsin and out of boiling water. and no one needs that extrastress in their lives. so yeah. yes? audience: i noticed you didn'ttry to get out the air bubbles. is that not reallyan issue for jam? marisa mcclellan: it'sreally not an issue for jam. anytime you makejam, it's just kind of going to flow into the jars.
and if it's areally thick jam, i might run a chopstick aroundthe inside of the jar. but most of the time ionly try to really-- i'm active about gettingthe air bubbles out if i'm making, like, pickles orsomething that's really thick. so let's talk about picklesa little bit, shall we? so basic pickles. the basic ratio forpickles-- anytime you want to pickle anything, itis one part vinegar, one part
water, and one tablespoonof a finely milled salt per cup of vinegar you're using. and that can be your picklebrine for everything. and then with thatratio, you can pickle green beans, cucumbers,okra, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts. what else do you want to pickle? audience: turnips. marisa mcclellan: turnips.
you could do athinly sliced turnip. some thinly sliced radish. audience: watermelon rind. marisa mcclellan:watermelon rind's going to be a little different,because you add sugar to it, but it's basically the same. you're going to use a littleless water and a little bit more sugar, because you wantto create more of a syrup and you want it tobe really flavorful.
but yeah, watermelon rindis a delicious pickle. i'm writing a newbook right now, too. this just came out, buti'm writing a new book about naturallysweetened preserves, too. so i'm doing a honey-sweetenedwatermelon rind pickle in that book, whichso far, it is amazingly good. so that's a fun pickle. so basically, you takethat same standard ratio, you put your spices atthe bottom of the jar.
so for, like, agarlic dill pickle, a couple of garlic cloves, ateaspoon or two of dill seed. you want to you use dillseed and not dill weed, because the dill seed is goingto hold up better over time. dill weed sort ofbreaks down, and it makes your picklingbrine kind of murky. and one of the ways wherewe tell whether something's gone wrong with apreserve is how it looks. and so if your brine changes--if it goes opaque, and changes
a little bit of color,that's an indication that something might begoing wrong with the jar. often, if you'veused dill seed, it's just that the dill seed is sortof dissolving into the vinegar. but it gives you sortof that peace of mind knowing that you're not havingsomething that's going wrong. so put your spices atthe bottom of the jars, pack those vegetablesin pretty tightly, and then pour the brine on top.
i don't have a jar anymore, butwhen i have a full pickle jar, i just tap it onthe counter first to help release anytrapped air bubbles. and then you go aroundwith either a wooden or a plasticchopstick, or a really kind of long, narrowsilicon or rubber spatula, and help releasethe air bubbles. the reason you want torelease those air bubbles is that if you trap air bubblesinside of a canning jar,
the same thing is goingto happen to those air bubbles that are trappedthroughout the product that happened to the air thatyou leave in the head space of the jar, right? so as you heat the jars, theoxygen's going to agitate, it's going to tryto leave the jar. but if you've gotthese air bubbles down inside the jar, whatends up happening is that they push brineout, or liquid out,
as they try to escape the jar. and so if you'veever canned pickles or, like, a thick--like, a fruit preserve, like peach halves, you'lloften have liquid loss. it's calledsiphoning in canning. i don't know why, butthat's what they mean? why can't we just callit liquid loss, really? every niche has itsvocabulary, right? that's one of thecanning vocabulary words.
so then you endup with jars where you've lost an inchor two of liquid. and it's not bad interms of it's not going to make you sick,but the stuff that's not submerged in thebrine, or the syrup, or whatever canningmedium you've put it in, it's going to discolorand lose quality faster. and so by bubbling those jarsyou prevent the liquid loss, and so you make aproduct that's going
to last longer on the shelf. let's talk a little bitabout what can go bad, or what can go wrong. so with these high-acidpreserves-- and we're boiling, so i'm going to seta timer real quick. with these high-acidpreserves, you're never going to have botulism. but things can gowrong on occasion. but you're always goingto be able to see them
or smell them immediately uponopening the jar.so you're never going to accidentally eatsomething that is bad, because you'regoing to look at it and go, huh, i don'twant to eat that. you're going toopen a jar, and it will have changedcolor dramatically. or it will be bubbling, which isan indication of fermentation. it'll smell boozy andnot in a good way. it will smell bad.
something will be wrong. and you'll look at it andthink, huh, this is not right. let me get rid of this. it's not going to be unsafe. it's something you canput in a compost bin or down the garbagedisposal or in the trash. it's not a hazard. but it's just somethingyou don't want to eat. and so you make sure that younotice, you pay attention.
you don't ever open ajar and sort of start to eat it without lookingat it for just a minute. you know, you mighthave a jam emergency and be like, ineed jam right now. well, just givethat jam a once over before you start pouring itinto your yogurt or whatever. so another indicationthe jar has gone bad is that the seal will go bad. because what happensis if things ferment
or they start to develop somesort of bacterial or yeast infection, or whatever,that off-gasses. that process ofthat microorganism growing off gases,and that off-gassing will pressure up againstthe lid and break the seal. and so that's why,you know, it's like if you ever hear thewarning to not eat bulging tin cans from the grocerystore, the same thing goes. because in thegrocery store, there's
no way for thatcan to break open unless something trulydisastrous is happening inside. but for a mason jar,that off-gassing is going to produce enoughforce to break the seal. and so you're going to know,when you open that jar, if the lid comes off tooeasily, that it's not something you want to eat. that's really it for thatkind of safety thing. as far storage goes,cool, dark place.
keep it out of sunlight. i live, again, high-rise. i don't have abasement, i don't have any sort of natural, goodplace to store preserves. so i have some under mycouch and some under my bed. and i have a coat closetthat's sort of double depth. and so you spread the coats, andits a wall of pickles and jams. and it works out quite well. but because sunlightis the enemy,
it's going to start todiscolor your preserves. and as they discolor,they're going to sort of loseflavor and texture. and so you just wantto keep them out of sunlight if possible. audience: is itbetter in the fridge? marisa mcclellan: well, onceyou've done the processing, it's shelf-stable, soit doesn't have to be. like, if that's your onlygood place to store it
and you don't have anythingelse in your refrigerator, sure, go for it. but the nice thing aboutmaking jams and stuff like this, for me, isthat-- and that's why i can these small batches is thati have a small refrigerator. and if i put everything i makeover the course of the summer and fall in therefrigerator, there's not room for anything else. and my husbanddoesn't like fruit,
and he doesn'treally like pickles. and so, um-- i know. he has many otherfine qualities. marisa mcclellan: he finds ourrefrigerator a little bit scary on a regular basis. and i'm a food writer. there's a lot of stuffhappening in my kitchen. and so if i had a refrigeratorthat was entirely full of jars, he would never open it,and he wouldn't starve,
but he would not eat at home. and so we like tomake sure that he can use the refrigeratorwhenever possible. so that's why. but yeah, i mean, if that'syour best space for it, then that's fine, too. audience: once you open ajar, how long is it good? marisa mcclellan: like ajam with this much sugar-- i mean, this isn'ttons and tons of sugar,
but this is a ratioof about two to one. this jam is goingto last for months open in the refrigerator. if you make somethingthat's really low in sugar-- because sugar is a preservative,the less sugar that's in a product, the lesstime it's going to last. and when it goes bad,it'll either, again, will start to ferment in thefridge a little bit, like, get a little fizzy,or it'll start to grow mold.
a month or more. almost always. and pickles, pickleslast forever. you know, the thingto do is to make sure you're using sortof good jar hygiene. so anytime you gointo a jar of jam, or chutney, or pickles, orwhatever, use a clean utensil, so that you're not introducingany sort of potential bacteria or foreign funk to the jar,so that it stays good longer.
audience: how longdoes something last once it's jarred? marisa mcclellan: sothe usda always says to use your home preservedfood for best quality within a calendar year. but there's no, like,alarm bell that's going off on day 366 or 367. it's just that as thingsage, they decline in quality. but i have found that witha jam like this, three years
is, like-- by yearthree, it's going to start to lose itstexture a little bit and be a little bit funny. but i always think of it--i don't give something away that is older than two years. but within the firsttwo years, it's still going to be delicious, it'sstill going to be safe, it's going to givesomeone a good, long time. and that's about whatthey use in terms
of commercial production, too. like if you buy somethingat a grocery store or at a farmer'smarket, about two years is how far out they'reputting their best-by date. any other questions? do you guys wantto taste some jam? awesome. so i think chris went insearch of things to put jam on. audience: pretzels and chips.
marisa mcclellan: perfect. audience: they're kindof unflavored, so. marisa mcclellan: that works. so thank you guysfor coming today. this was really fun. i hope you had a good time. this lovely lady inthe back has books. and if you want to buy one, i'dbe happy to sign it for you. i'll personalize itany way you want,
and i will correct the typos,because there are a few. and yeah. so thank you. my name's marisa. my website isfoodinjars.com and i hope that you allmake something. so thanks. [applause]