Today, we started up a second – smaller – batch of mead.
I hope.
I documented our first attempt, throughout the process, which you can revisit at the following links (they will open new tabs, so you won’t lose your place. 🙂 )
Part 1 getting started
Part 2 early stage maintenance
Part 3 early stage maintenance, completion
Part 4 transferring for second fermentation
Part 5 bottling and initial results
The Failure. 😦
Traditionally, bigos – otherwise known as Hunter’s Stew – is made with game meat and a whole lot of ingredients I don’t typically have on hand. I just used what I had! Maybe I should call it Non-Hunter’s Stew? 😀
This is my version of Poland’s national dish!
I made this yesterday evening, for today’s eating, and I must say, it turned out very well!
It was breakfast – and a fine breakfast it made!
Ingredients:
Instructions:
For this, I used no added seasonings at all. The ingredients themselves add a lot of flavour on their own. However, feel free to add whatever seasonings you like, if you feel the need.
Of course, after this was done cooking last night, I had to have a small bowl to taste it. It was definitely a success! Letting it rest overnight did allow the flavours to mellow and combine very nicely. It was a subtle difference, but enough for me to recommend giving it that extra time.
The more traditional ingredients for this dish includes a greater variety of meats, with game meat being the prime ingredient, and even prunes – though the bigos I’ve tasted in the past did not include prunes. Some versions include things like grated carrot, but my fermented vegetable sauerkraut includes carrots, so there was no need to add more.
The amount of sauerkraut I used is a bit on the low side – a typical jar of commercial sauerkraut is about 900-1000ml (approximately equal to a quart jar) and my jars are 500ml. Even adding the last of my plain sauerkraut gave me just over that amount. However, that is also the equivalent of more than half a head of cabbage. The fresh cabbage I used was more on the large than medium size, so between the two, the total quantities didn’t change much.
This makes quite a large quantity of stew, and it really helps to have a very large, deep frying pan with a lid. Even then, I had to be careful adding the cabbage mixture to the pan! Using the lid to let it braise for a bit made it much easier to stir, as the cabbage released its liquid and reduced in size.
This dish can be made on the stove top instead of the oven, but that would require continuous attention and stirring to make sure it cooks evenly and doesn’t burn on the bottom. Using the oven is just simpler and more efficient.
If you try this recipe, do feel free to let me know how you liked it!
The Re-Farmer
Today, we got out one of my jars of probiotic fermented vegetable sauerkraut for a taste test!
Before I get into that, though, if you haven’t seen my earlier posts, you may want to visit the links below, first (they will open in new tabs, so you won’t lose this post!).
Take One (includes recipe)
The Failure
Take Two
The recipe I got from my friend said to leave it to ferment for 2-4 weeks. It’s 2 weeks today, so we’re trying the one jar, and will leave the other to ferment for another 2 weeks.
Continue readingWell, it’s done for now!
My second attempt at making a probiotic fermented vegetable type of sauerkraut.
Click here to read about the first attempt, and step-by-step.
And here, so see how it failed, and my thoughts on why. 😦
With that as a learning experience, I made a few changes this time.
Continue readingThe cider vinegar I made using our crabapples was due to be ready somewhere between Oct. 31 and Nov. 7, or to taste.
I checked the flavour somewhere in between then, before moving it to the fridge. Here is what it looks like.
Continue readingI’m a bit behind on this, as the last surviving jar of sauerkraut was ready almost 2 weeks ago.
This sauerkraut is from a very basic, small batch recipe. You can check out the making of it in this step-by-step post. (link will open in a new tab)
Continue readingOne last catch-up post!
In the middle of when our internet went wonky and I couldn’t upload photos, I was able to move on to the next step in making cider vinegar with our crab apples.
You can read the first part here. (link will open in a new tab)
Continue readingThe following is based on the recipe for sauerkraut that I got from my friend who, in turn, modified it from a recipe she found through Dr. Mercola.
As with the sauerkraut I wrote about yesterday, this is something I’ve never made before, so it’s a total experiment.
Here are the ingredients.
Continue readingIt’s been cold, wet and raining for the past while (with snow, in some areas!!), which meant it was the perfect time to stay indoors and finally make sauerkraut.
While I remember my mother making sauerkraut when I was a child, and I know I helped at least a little, I have never made it myself before. In fact, it was my mother’s sauerkraut that had me believing I didn’t like the stuff at all. She made incredibly strong kraut, and it was many, many years before I tasted any other and found it… okay. LOL Then one evening, while we were hosting a home schooling historical pot luck set in a pioneer theme, one of the families brought a fresh jar of sauerkraut. Fresh as in, just made that day and no fermentation. I was surprised by how good it tasted.
Cabbage, however, was one of those things I just didn’t tend to buy. In fact, it wasn’t until we moved here that we started to pick it up regularly.
I have an old friend from high school that has shared on social media about the sauerkraut she has been making, and with all the food preservation stuff I’ve been getting more and more into, I found myself wanting to try my hand at it. I did some research and found that it is incredibly basic – but it didn’t sound like what she was making. So I messaged her and got her recipe. It’s more like fermented vegetables, with added probiotics, than sauerkraut.
I decided to do both.
This post will be on the basic sauerkraut I made first.
Here are the ingredients.
Continue readingOnce we got our crab apple cider vinegar made up and set aside to ferment, it was time to turn to the rest of the crab apples!
The apples had been cleaned and left to soak in cold water with vinegar overnight. The extra time allows for any damage and bruising to the apples to be easier to see.
The next steps were to remove the stems, then cut the apples. These crab apples are small enough that I just cut them in half.
This was the time to cut out any damaged bits – or remove some apples completely.
There were quite a few that looked fine on the outside, only to be bad in the middles. The above photo is what I removed from the apples, including the small batch I used for the apple cider vinegar.
Just a little something for the compost pile. 🙂
As I have some of our choke cherries and sour cherries in the freezer, I decided to make several small batches, including spiced jelly. Some of the recipes I saw said to cook and strain the apples first, cook the juices with the other additions, strain them again, then make the jelly.
I had no interest in cooking and straining these twice, and saw no reason to. Instead, I divided the cut up apples into three pots. I had two medium sized pots plus my smaller stock pot, so after I filled the two smaller ones, any left over apples went into the bigger pot. My smaller pots each held about 6 cups of chopped apples, and the bigger pot had about 7 cups of apples.
I then made my additions.
The spiced batch got a couple of cinnamon sticks, 2 pieces of star anise and about a tablespoon of whole cloves. The others got about 1 cup of frozen fruit added.
Next, water was added until the fruit was just covered. They were then brought to a boil, covered and left to simmer until soft.
The pot the choke cherries were in turned out to be just a touch too small, and I had to transfer it to my other stock pot to prevent it from over flowing.
After about 20 minutes or so, I stirred them down to break up the fruit a bit; I had to use a potato masher on the spiced apples, as the pot was too full to stir properly!
I continued to cook them until the fruit was quite soft.
This is the sour cherry batch on the left, choke cherry batch on the right. I forgot to get a picture of the spiced batch before I put it up to strain.
While the apples were cooking, I prepped for straining.
I currently have only one jelly bag, so I lined colanders set over large bowls with cheese cloth.
I used the jelly bag for the spiced mixture and hung it up in my usual spot. By then, I already had over a litre of juice strained out!
I had to get creative to hang the other two. I used one of those wire frames made to hold bags open, like for leaf bags. Thoroughly cleaned, of course. I set it up on the dining table and hung the tied off cheese cloth bags of apple pulp on the frame, with their bowls of juice set up under them and the colanders removed. I wasn’t able to get a good photo of the set up, though.
I then left the bags to drain overnight, though we did cover the various bowls with whatever we had on hand. One got a piece of cheese cloth stretched over it, another bowl was the perfect size for our mesh frying pan splash screen, and the big measuring cup got covered by a large mesh sieve. These all allowed the juices to keep dripping in, while keeping out any dust, cat hair, insects or whatever else might be floating about.
Note: they don’t need to be left overnight, but the pulp should be given at least a couple of hours to drain. Some recipes suggest to squeeze the pulp to extract more juice. This will result in a cloudy jelly, so that’s up to you! 😉
That was all done yesterday. Today, it was time to cook things down!
I did each batch one at a time, rather than all at once, starting with the juice that was already in the measuring cup.
This is the spiced apple pulp from the jelly bag. The pulp all went to the compost pile.
I ended up with almost exactly 5 cups of juice from the spiced apple and the choke cherry batches, and almost exactly 8 cups of the sour cherry batch. For each cup of juice, I added a 3/4 cup of sugar.
Which felt like an insane amount of sugar, but that’s how it works!
Each batch was boiled to the gel stage.
Before I started cooking any of them, though, I started sanitizing my canning jars. With how much juice I ended up with, I knew my dozen 250ml (1 cup) sized jars would not be enough. I decided to use one 500ml (2 cup) for each batch, then use however many of the smaller jars I needed to empty the pot. The larger jars will be for our own use, and the smaller jars can be given out as gifts, if we want.
I also made a discovery.
We have not been able to replace our damaged hot water tank yet, which means it’s still heating the water to extremely high temperatures. I figured I would take advantage of that and use it to sanitize my jars and implements.
I was able to set up all the jars in a large container on the counter near the stove. I was also going to use my candy thermometer, so I dug that out, washed it, then put it into one of the jars to scald. Shortly after, I pulled the candy thermometer out. The whole set up with the water had been sitting for about 5-7 minutes since I added the hot tap water, so I had to do a double take when I saw the thermometer.
It was at almost 100C.
That’s 212F.
The instructions I was following said to cook the juice and sugar mixture to 210F to reach gel state. My tap water was already hotter than that!!
The juices reached beyond 210F very quickly, so there was no way temperature alone was enough to reach gel stage, so I kept boiling it. After the first testing, I went to wash the thermometer and discovered there was water in it.
???
Looking closer, I discovered that the glass covering the bulb of the thermometer was gone! For all I know, this is damage from our move. I very rarely use the candy thermometer.
So I threw that out.
Which meant I was checking for the gel state using the *spoon test.
Each batch took me at least half an hour of boiling before it reached the gel stage.
Once each batch was ready, I filled some jars – I added cinnamon sticks to the jars with the spiced jelly – covered them, then set them aside to cool while I washed everything before starting the next batch.
My 8 cups of sour cherry juice mix, and 5 cups of spiced juice mix, each gave me the same number of cups of jelly, but for some reason the 5 cups of chokecherry juice mix resulted in only 4 cups of jelly!
I still don’t have the tools to do a hot water bath, so these are not shelf stable, and will need to be stored in the fridge.
I absolutely love the colours in these!
After they had a chance to cool, my daughters used some when making supper this evening. They made grilled cheese sandwiches with some of the sour cherry jelly spread in with the cheese. It was really good!
The Re-Farmer
Homemade Crab apple jelly, with flavour variations
Items needed:
Ingredients:
Optional flavour additions
* Sheet test for gel
Dip a cold metal spoon into the boiling soft spread. Lift the spoon and hold it horizontally, edge down, and watch how the mixture drops. When the mixture reaches the gel stage, it will begin to “sheet”, with the jelly breaking off the spoon in a sheet or flake, rather than pouring or dripping.
