Perfectly Preserved Produce

Since I’m a big fan of fruit leather and the like, I thought drying my peaches would be the best way to keep them past their prime. The first step in the process was peeling the peaches since the peel apparently keeps the fruit from drying properly, but I did leave it on a couple of pieces just to see if it added any extra flavor. (SPOILER ALERT: It didn’t. And the pieces with peel were nowhere near dry when I was finished.)

There are a few things that can be used to pre-treat produce to keep it from browning and losing nutrients during the drying process, but since I can easily get citric acid from Good Foods’ bulk aisle, I decided to go with that. After soaking in my acid water solution for ten minutes, I put the sliced peaches on a cookie sheet (and learned the hard way that you should not put foil on it first – citric acid can cause discolorations or even holes to form in the foil).

The instructions said to put them in the oven at 170°F for 6 to 8 hours, but, I’m guessing because I cut my peach pieces too thick, I had to leave them in for 10 and they still weren’t quite dry. Which is just as well because, instead of storing them in an airtight container like I was supposed to, I ate the majority of them before they were even fully cooled. But now I know exactly what to do when I actually do make some perfectly preserved dried produce.

I was a little nervous about canning my tomatoes since I remember my grandparents setting aside a week and multiple rooms of their house every year for preserving their garden goodness that way, but evidently it doesn’t have to be a huge or complicated operation.

I gathered my Casey County Organics heirloom tomatoes and, after scoring them, put them in boiling water for 30 seconds then ice water for a few minutes to loosen the peel. After peeling, I took about a sixth of the pieces I had cut, put them in a saucepan and liquefied them, though I’m not entirely sure why I did this other than the directions told me to. After bringing that to a boil, I put the rest of the tomato pieces into the pan and heated them until they were boiling and left them for five minutes.

I put some citric acid in my jar, then added the tomato mixture. I wiped the edge of the jar which is apparently very important for sealing, then put the lid on and put it in a stockpot full of water making sure there were a couple of inches of water covering the jar. After 35 minutes of boiling, I took the jar out with grill tongs (since I didn’t have a jar lifter) and set it out to cool. The next morning I checked the lid button to make sure the jar had sealed correctly and got excited because I had a feeling that those tomatoes would become a mid-winter Pomodoro sauce.

I learned a lot of things from my foray into food preservation. Aside from learning that when it comes to nuanced activities like this, following the directions exactly is a good idea, I learned just how easy it is to get perfectly preserved produce. I can freeze or dry pretty much anything and even canning isn’t difficult. Being able to get everything I needed at Good Foods, from the produce to the citric acid to the jars, made things even easier!