Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

In a message dated 10/23/2008 6:06:26 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
lisakvperry AT gmail.com writes:


> >While we're at it, what foods would you prefer to can (if any) v.
> dehydrating?

I rather view it as this:  Foods that are canned are not the same as the same 
food dehydrated, although it doesn't always translate into one being better 
than the other.

Take the case of green beans.  And let me throw freezing into the mix of 
preservation methods.  If you pressure can the green beans you get beans that 
have 
been modified, 'cooked' perhaps more than you would cooking them fresh.  They 
are still very good and last for decades.  If you blanche and freeze them, 
they are a bit more like fresh cooked but they don't last but a few months in 
that state.  You can also cook the green beans ready to eat and freeze those. 
 
The quality is even higher and they last even a shorter time in the freezer.

Add to that pickled green beans. Also green beans can be preserved by salting 
and these are more like fresh green beans than any other method of 
preservation.  You rinse out mos of the salt before cooking.

Then green beans can be dried giving 'shucky beans' or 'leather britches'.  
When they are cooked they neigher look nor taste like canned green beans.  
They 
are a different vegetable in their own right.

So which is best?  It doesn't help, thinks I, to have a "preferred" method 
but rather to realize that different methods give different results.  Pick 
the 
result you want and thereby pick the method.

Dried (that is, dehydrated) shelled beans are a good staple and keep forever. 
 You can also can them.  But you can also can them at the green shell stage 
when the bean is its largest and most mature but hasn't yet begun to dry.  
Beans canned at this stage have totally different flavor and consistency than 
dried or canned dried beans.  Someone went home to visit family in Maine 
where 
they have Jacob's Cattle beans in all the grocery stores and broght me a few 
pounds which I planted.  We green-shell canned most of them and when I took 
her a 
few quarts, she demanded the recipe.  She'd eaten Jacob's Cattle beans all 
her 
life but never like that.  I could scarcely convince her that the recipe was 
beans, water, and salt.  The trick was to shell them just as the hulls turned 
yellow.  That's what made a difference in the taste.




> 
> >Can you store in canning jars or how do you store or keep dehydrated foods?
> I don't have a vacuum sealer gadget.
> 

We put almost all dehydrated food in canning jars and then if we suspect bugs 
might be a problem, we freeze them, thaw them, and freeze them again.  Then 
they are stored right along beside the rest of the canned goods.  And the 
quality lasts for years.


"We eat what we can,
 And what we can't, we can."


James