I don’t know about you, but my garden is huge. Every year, I get a surprise: either my 20 tomato seeds have grown into 20 beautiful plants that I’ve never dared to throw away, JUST IN CASE…; or my spaghetti squash have decided to take over the world; or I’ve dropped the bag of basil seeds… Anyway, you get the idea! Every year, I end up with one or two mystery deluges and surplus harvests.
As much as I love to cook, it’s not always the right time to start canning, especially when all the vegetables don’t ripen at the same time. In this beautiful month of September, I’ve decided to share with you some quick and easy vegetable storage ideas. Let’s face it, tomato sauce and pickles are all well and good, but they’re trouble, and end up being redundant!
1. Freezing
Personally, I don’t make tomato sauce. For several reasons, the first being that it takes all day to blanch them, peel them, puree them and so on.
The second is that tomato sauce isn’t always what I need! For example, if I want to make a curry or minestrone soup, I need a few tomatoes, but not tomato SAUCE.
In the end, make 50 small pots and have more trouble, or a few gigantic pots that could feed an army when thawed?
Anyway, I freeze my tomatoes. Whole, for the small ones, quartered for the bigger ones. When I need tomatoes, I don’t have to thaw them, I can simply add a handful of frozen tomatoes to my recipe and that’s it.
I like to freeze my squash too. The year I ended up with the equivalent of my own body weight in spaghetti squash (hardly an exaggeration!), I kept some in the basement to cook as winter squash, but I also froze some.
Bonus Point!
Here’s my personal money-saving trick: cheat with squash. Once peeled, seeded and grated, I freeze it (without cooking it first). I call it a “ground meat doubler”. When I cook ground meat to make anything (meatballs, shepherd’s pie, macaroni with meat), towards the end of cooking my meat (or when making my mixture of meat, spices and breadcrumbs for meatballs), I add the equivalent volume of frozen grated squash. BOUM!
But how did you make such tasty dumplings? They’re not dry at all, they melt in your mouth!
Oh, meat, breadcrumbs, an egg and… well, squash!
The fat and flavor of the meat are absorbed by the squash, which cooks very quickly. As it’s mixed, the softer texture of the squash makes the meat juicier. In short, I turn squash into meat. Amen to that.
2. Drying
At the end of the season, harvest what’s left of your herbs and put them in a cloth or paper bag for a few days. That’s all there is to it.
I used to put everything in the dehydrator, meticulously, it was a lot of handling. One day, I forgot a bag of nettles hanging on a doorknob. The next day, I was surprised to find my crop practically dry! A quick stir and I put the bag back where it belonged. Within a few days, my nettle was as perfect as if I’d gone to the trouble of putting it on the machine’s trays!
Beans are great, but at some point you just can’t eat them! If you let them ripen fully on the plant, you’ll get beans. You know, beans! Leave them on the plant until the bean pod is dry. It doesn’t matter if they freeze. All you have to do is shell them while watching your favorite TV series, maybe let them dry on a plate for a few more days, just to be sure, and voilà!
You can store them like any other dried legume, at room temperature. Just rehydrate them before cooking. For more information on preparing legumes, check out this comprehensive article. Even if your varieties aren’t exactly the same, the principle doesn’t change: the size of your bean determines the overall soaking and/or cooking times.
For fruit, it’s a case of trial and error. Watermelon doesn’t dehydrate very well, and plums give a very acidic result. Apples, on the other hand, are great! I don’t like thin chip-style slices, but cut into small wedges, it gives a bit of a dry marshmallow texture. This is my “go to” when I have one or two apples that are starting to look a little worse for wear: it’s less work than pie or compote, I don’t even peel them!
Scour the internet to find out how to make fruit in the oven, how long and what temperature depending on the fruit you’re drying.
Bonus Point!
If you fall in love with dried fruit, a dehydrator can be a great option: there are cheap models, it doesn’t heat up the whole house like the oven, and there’s no risk of burning anything, even if you forget about it for a week!
3. Confiting
It’s a scary word, but I promise you it’s not that much trouble! In fact, it all depends on how you do it. One year, I candied cherry tomatoes: cut in half and cooked on a griddle with spices and oil, then put in sterile jars… It’s delicious, but, let’s face it, it was trouble! There must be a simpler way of preserving tomatoes: I’m working on it! I’m waiting for my next big harvest to do some tests. (Not this year, my seedlings have had a hard time!)
Confire à l’huile simply means cooking food in oil at a low temperature for a long time. My BIG favorite confit is garlic. Frankly, candied garlic is dangerous: I eat cloves with a fork because they’re so good!
So what’s the problem? Garlic is great for your health!
The problem is, after that… I don’t have anymore!
It’s very easy to do, and I increase my garlic harvest every year. My goal is to get through the year with my garlic, without running out. My cooking mantra: never let a recipe tell me how much garlic to use…
Anyway, back to my confit: Place the peeled garlic in an ovenproof dish, cover with oil and bake at a low temperature (between 200 and 300°C) for about 1 hr. Depending on the type of garlic, your oven and your oil, cooking will be more or less slow. It’s ready when the cloves have turned a very light golden hue: at this stage, the house smells fragrant and the cloves spread over the toast with a knife. Your garlic bread will never be the same again, and you’ll want to put it everywhere! Candied cloves keep for several months in their cooking oil in the fridge.
Bonus Point!
Once you’ve used up all your cloves, garlic oil can be used for anything and everything. You can flavor the oil and cloves with your favorite herbs and spices.
4. Soups
It’s -40. Snowstorm for three days. There’s not much left in the fridge and going out is out of the question. It’s going to take 2 hours to get something delivered, and the kids are getting impatient: they’re hungry, they’re cold… Mooooom, what’s for suppeeeer?
Don’t panic, remember last summer’s deluge of carrots, squash and broccoli? It’s their time to shine!
Take your Ziploc out of the freezer and put it in a pot. Ready in 15 minutes.
Once, when I was sick, I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I was craving soup. My partner gave me a frozen tupperware. I hugged it (the frozen dish, not my partner!) and was already feeling better. Having soup in winter is a necessity!
In short, all your potatoes, beets and turnips need is a little caramelization, then a coat of water or stock. Add a few herbs, and forget about them until they’re cooked. Then puree and freeze. If you don’t have a 6-foot tomb like me, soups can be canned and stored on a shelf.
Bonus Point!
For a fancy touch to the service, add toppings. No inspiration? Here you go:
Beet and/or carrot soup: goat’s cheese, walnuts, baby spinach and a drizzle of balsamic reduction.
Squash soup: parmesan, toasted pumpkin seeds, tomato confit and a few drops of cream.
Parsnip soup: blue cheese, sliced almonds, caramelized onions, cranberry jelly.
Bam! You can sell your bowl of soup for $15 more in a café with this trick! Play with colors and textures. My rule of thumb: a cheese, something crunchy, a fruit or vegetable and a coulis/sauce. Your harvest surplus will never look so good!
5. Share!
Yes, if you really don’t want to cook your surplus, you should know that many organizations and community refrigerators can benefit from it. Some charities and schools are even interested in seeds!
You can also swap vegetables with other gardeners who have different surpluses. Take a look at social networks: there are several exchange groups in different regions.
Even pets can enjoy your harvests! A frozen cherry tomato makes a great reward for dogs (mine like it more than commercial treats!), seeds from many plants will please birds, squash can be eaten by chickens, etc.
I hope I’ve given you some ideas for your harvest surpluses. Don’t hesitate to tell me in the comments what YOUR best tips are for surviving your veggie deluge! Have a great canning season!
This post was very helpful. Appreciate the practical tips!
and canning. Most of what I can are high acid vegetables, so pressure canning is not necessary. When we got too much cabbage, we made sauerkraut because it can be canned like a high acid vegetable instead of like cabbage. Now that I think of it, only meat products get canned with pressure canning, and that does not happen often. I lacked electricity for a freezer.
Great ideas for additions to soup!
Thank you so much for the hints! I had already accidentally discovered the frozen tomato trick years ago. Seriously , people, don’t can tomatoes. Freeze them. So much faster and easier. If your intention is sauce, when they are partially thawed, the skins will just zip off! Can’t wait to try some of these other ideas!