NOT JUST CONDIMENTS
Use preserves in cooking
Preserving food can be as effortless as air-drying mushrooms or drowning chili peppers in vodka for a wicked-hot infusion. Or popping fruits or vegetables into a vinegar-based brine and storing in the fridge for a quick pickle.
It doesn’t have to be time-consuming, nor does it necessitate buying expensive equipment. And learning how to make the most of your preserves can give a flavour boost to your everyday cooking throughout the year.
Sure, there’s toast to be slathered and cheese plates to be decorated with pickled tidbits, fruit pastes and chutneys. But why stop there? There’s so much more to be gained by incorporating preserves as an ingredient, as Joel MacCharles and Dana Harrison demonstrate in their first cookbook, Batch (Appetite by Random House, 2016).
The first year the founders of food site WellPreserved.ca started preserving, they ended up with 300 jars of jam. That’s a lot of toast. The couple quickly discovered that they needed to find other day-to-day applications for their preserves.
In Batch, fermented carrot sauerkraut with red cabbage fills crispy, pan-fried perogies. Quick pickled grapes make a delicious partner for roasted chicken thighs and legs. And peach bourbon barbecue sauce is brushed on a rack of ribs for what might be the perfect summertime weeknight meal.
“We really strive to get people thinking about preserving more in terms of an ingredient versus a condiment. A good friend of ours celebrated our cookbook with a bourbon sour with a glop of blueberry jam in it. I was like, ‘Hell yeah. Why am I not at your house right now?’” Harrison says with a laugh. “You start thinking differently even about a jam when you use it in your cooking.”
MacCharles and Harrison share more than 200 recipes in the book, utilizing seven methods of food preservation: water bath canning, pressure canning, dehydrating, fermenting, cellaring, salting and smoking, and infusing. It’s an extensive resource, which details each method, the common equipment and costs involved, its advantages and disadvantages, and do’s and don’ts.
Recipes are organized by star ingredient — 25 to be exact — from apples, citrus and tomatoes, to fish and meat. There are quickhit recipes that can be made in 10 minutes or less, and tips for putting your preserves in the “centre of the plate” highlighted along the way.
Water bath canning is the gateway method of preserving for many. But expanding your repertoire and utilizing different techniques can help you make more efficient use of your kitchen time. In Batch, MacCharles and Harrison illustrate this by sharing the way they preserve: by both taking a nose-to-tail approach to fruit and vegetables, and making several different preserves at any given time.
“I didn’t know until we started doing this that fermented pickles — the kosher dills or the deli — are different than a vinegar pickle. Joel gave me one and I said, ‘That’s the one I want!’ and he said, ‘You like fermented food.’ So it’s really good to find something you like to eat and try to figure out how to make it.”
You start thinking differently even about a jam when you use it in your cooking.