Friday 20 September 2013

Dehydrated Watermelon (or, how I found out that watermelon can be candy)

As mentioned, I've been experimenting with my Dehydrator a lot this summer. In fact it's running weekly, sometimes more often depending on what I have laying around. I've especially been fond of doing celery, leeks, onions, apples, and pears. 

Although I am not the biggest fan of watermelon in the world, I'd heard that it becomes particularly sweet when dehydrated. Since it's mostly water, it makes a lot of sense that it would become a much stronger flavour when all that water was taken out. 

So, much to the chagrin of my husband (also not a watermelon fan), I bought a huge watermelon and promptly carved it apart.

I sliced the watermelon into 1/4 inch slices and filled all 6 trays of my dehydrator, and set it at 135F

Being that it's all water, I knew it would take a long time to dry. It took me 19 hours to dry this batch, and it probably needed another hour or two. I've noticed pieces sticking together in the jar, so they definitely have a bit of moisture left, but I wanted to avoid them becoming too brittle.

They are pretty tasty! They really do taste like a condensed version of a watermelon, incredibly sweet. I tend to refer to it as "watemelon candy" due to it's sweet taste and candy-like texture. And the watermelon lovers I've given some to really love it! 
Mmmm, watermelon candy

Monday 16 September 2013

I Love Canning: the Pickle Chronicles

What a great summer it's been! I hope you've been keeping busy with the harvests in your own areas. We've been sampling all sorts of local goodies this summer. Some of them I've dehydrated - more on that, soon - others I've canned.
What weird and wonderful things are brewing?

Water bath canning is a stand-by for a lot of things I preserve over the summer. I also do several items in a pressure canner. But there is one thing I had yet to do well....

Make crispy pickles.

It seems like a funny thing, but it had always eluded me. Between not being able to bear adding the full salt content for a pickle recipe, I just couldn't bring myself to adding chemical pickle crispeners. Last time I made pickles, they were a soggy mess.

It started with a trip to the market where I not only bought a 1/2 bushel of pickling cucumbers, but the biggest "tree" of dill I could find. Dill is one of my favourite flavours, so I like my pickles to be full of it.

I've literally hacked off half of the Dill "tree" at this point
Next step.... Clean all of the cucumbers, slowly dismantle the dill, and trim the ends off of them. At this point it will serve you well to bribe a friend with future pickles to help you out. And recruit your husband. We opted to brine our cucumbers over night so the three of us were up well into the night, slicing the ends off and tossing them into the brine.

This is one of many bowls we trimmed that night
We used a well cleaned camping cooler to hold all of the finished cucumbers in brine. We also added a few bags of ice, and held the cucumbers under water with a couple of dinner plates. This was left to sit for around 16 hours before we finally got around to canning them.

Finally we got around to canning the pickles.

Each jar was given:
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic
  • 2 heads of dill
  • mustard seeds
  • 2 grape leaves
  • cucumbers
  • pickle brine
I'd heard somewhere that grape leaves help to keep pickles more crisp, and with them available so nearby at a local grocer I thought I'd give them a try. Besides, they look awfully nice in the jar.


Food should look pretty and be functional

Et Voila!! Pickles.

It's actually been a few weeks since we made them, and I finally cracked open a jar. I had to know if the grape leaves made a difference, AND IT DID. Like a boss. The pickles are delicious and crisp and I'm looking forward to eating them all winter.