Waiting for the first strawberry of the year can be an exercise in patience (the first real strawberry, not grocery store strawberry).
If you live in a place that has an actual winter, those brilliant red jewels are usually one of the earliest fruits to ripen after the cold weather breaks, and those first berries almost make up for the preceding six months… Almost.
It’s peach season, and since it’s fleeting, we like to can some, at least as a reminder of days gone by when it’s cold and dark and January. Also, since fresh fruit doesn’t exist in Ohio for much of the year, if we’re sticking to our “as much local as possible” meme, then whatever we’ve got from the summer is what we’ve got for the winter (with a few exceptions, like citrus). Kinda the ant vs. grasshopper deal.
I’ve only really been canning for a few years, so my impression was that sugar is necessary for proper preservation. So, all of my early efforts had a bunch. I always made the lightest syrup listed in the Blue Book, but even that is still 20% sugar. (My first peach butter consisted of 4 pounds of peaches and 4 cups of sugar. Yikes. I just made some more using about 10 pounds of peaches, and a cup of sugar.)
This time around, I decided to do a little research, and found that adding a lot of sugar is not at all required. So why do almost all recipes call for buckets of sugar (up to a 1:1 sugar-water ratio in very heavy syrup)? It does help preserve a firm texture, and prevents the natural browning that occurs in many fruits, but I also think that, at least partially, it’s because we sure do love our sweets.
So, sugar prevents browning?
Yep.
Now hold on, don’t you add lemon juice to cut apples to prevent browning?
Why yes, yes you do. Acid will also stop the oxidation that leads to browning.
So why do we need to use sugar?
You don’t!
Glad that’s settled. My new recipe uses a bit of aforementioned acid (lemon juice), and a touch of added sweetness (honey), and lots of peaches. The honey is a nice complement to peaches, but really, you want the peaches to do the talking here, don’t you?
Blanch and peel the peaches like usual – place peaches in boiling water for a minute, move to cold water, and the skins should fall right off. They don’t for me, so apparently I’m doing something wrong, but they do come off easier than they would raw.
Cut into quarters (leave the pit) and put into quart jars (or pints, if that’s what you’re working with). I found it took 3-4 peaches per quart, so use that as a rough estimate of what you’re going to need.
Add a splash of lemon juice (or vinegar – don’t be afraid, you’re using so little, you won’t be able to taste it) to each jar; I used a teaspoon.
In the meantime, bring about 3-4 quarts of water to a simmer, and add 1/2 cup raw honey. Stir to dissolve. This is your new “syrup.”
Pour the syrup over the peaches, leaving 1/2 inch headspace in each jar. Process in boiling water for 20 minutes.
The best part of this (for me) is that I won’t feel bad about drinking the peach-flavored juice that’s left in the jars. You know, it always tastes so good, but I know it’s loaded with sugar, so most of it gets dumped. Now I can add it to smoothies (or just let C chug it) with no hesitation.
Not the song. Good golly, not the song. And crap, it’s already stuck in my head.
Our winemaking exploits continue… Obviously, the dandelions had a good year (when don’t they?), but the strawberries did as well, and after freezing and jamming wore us out, I had a few pounds left. What to do other than use my new-found skills and turn them into wine?
Strawberry Wine
3-4 pounds of strawberries
1 gallon of water
Juice from a lemon or two
4-5 cups sugar
Little bit of yeast
Mash the strawberries in a large non-reactive bowl. Boil the water and pour over the berries. Add sugar and lemon juice and mix. Add the yeast (after the water’s cooled, of course, or you’ll kill it). Cover and set aside for a week or so, stirring daily, if you can remember.
Strain the mixture through cheesecloth to filter out the solids. Pour the liquid into a gallon jug or carboy. Let it sit for another month or so. When clear, bottle it up. Put it in the basement and forget about it for the rest of the year. It does have a nice strawberry fragrance, and is a beautiful bright red color.
Again, our alcohol consumption consists of maybe a glass of wine every month (maybe two, if the kids are misbehaving…), so I don’t really have any great reason for doing this, other than saying I can. Maybe not a super valuable life skill, but a fun one nonetheless.
What a jam jamboree. We took the kids to pick some more strawberries this weekend, and ended up with about 16 pounds. When we got home Saturday, we picked from our patch and got another 9 pounds – more than I expected from our little plot, but no complaints! S and I spent most of Saturday night jamming, freezing, and drying, and there’s still many pounds to go. Since we’ve actually had some rain this year, the fruits are quite happy – we have loads of raspberries and blackberries just waiting to ripen too.
Late spring and early summer, when we’re starting to get into lots of fresh produce, almost make the six months of winter worth it…
Our strawberries are in full-fledged ripening mode – we got about a quart last week from the first picking of the year, but last night S and I ended up with almost four pounds. Not bad. We have a little 16′ x 4′ raised patch, with three different varieties – Sparkle, Earliglow, and Cavendish. Some ripen earlier, some have bigger berries, but regardless of the variety, nothing beats those first strawberries of the spring.
Eating seasonally isn’t always easy, but it’s well worth it to wait until things are truly in season, rather than a picked prematurely, psuedo-ripened, sprayed, tasteless thing from California.
