Preserving science Archives – A Gardener's Table

Bring on The Briner

“I should have invented that!” my husband said to himself when he first saw The Briner. People who are handy apparently say this to themselves often, but in this case it’s true: He should have invented that!

He gave me The Briner and The Briner Jr. for Christmas. They are food-grade buckets, 22-quart and 8-quart, respectively, made in the USA. Each comes with a lid and a flat plate that fits inside and locks into place between indentations that run in vertical rows down opposite sides of the bucket. I don’t know how much Robert paid for the set, but on the manufacturer’s website it costs $60. You can get these two buckets with a third, the 3.5-quart Briner Mini, for just $15 more.

The strange thing is that the manufacturer hasn’t figured out that these buckets are good for fermenting vegetables. One photo on the website shows corn on the cob, presumably getting a brief soak in the bucket before grilling. But there are no other photos of vegetables and no mention of vegetables or fermentation. The website is all about brining meat.

weights over brining watermelons — A sorry way to weight watermelons

As I mentioned in my last post, I began brining some watermelons in a food-grade plastic trash can in October. Unfortunately, I have no plate big enough to fit inside the trash can. If I had an old-growth tree to cut up, I could create something appropriate. Instead I filled an assortment of food-grade containers with water and used them in place of both a plate and weights. This setup is not working very well.

The other day I started brining a single, 2 ½-pound whole cabbage in The Briner Jr. The process was shockingly easy: Insert cabbage, pour over brine, add a few aromatics, insert plate, turn it to lock it in place, snap on lid. The lid may need burping from time to time, though I could avoid that little task by leaving the lid loose. But otherwise I have nothing to do but wait. Once fermentation is underway I may carry the bucket from the kitchen downstairs to the cellar, but that will be easy: The bucket weights little more than its ingredients.

I can’t find the inventor’s name on the website, but I thank him for his ingenuity. I hope he profits well from his invention.

ChouAmi: A New Jar-Top Fermentation Device

I am so mechanically inept that I have never been able to figure out the Kraut Source fermentation device—an expensive thing ($30!) made up of several stainless-steel parts that somehow fit together on top of a standard American mason jar. I was just as bemused when I received in the mail a ChouAmi fermentation device, which is nearly exactly like the Kraut Source device except that the ChouAmi version fits on a straight-sided, 1-liter Le Parfait jar. Such a jar was included in the package, but instructions were not.

The jar and all the stainless-steel pieces sat on the kitchen counter for months. Occasionally I would examine them and try fitting them together. Enlightenment alluded me. Then I decided use a big daikon and an Egyptian walking onion, before it went to seed, to make some kakdooki.* I looked at the Le Parfait jar. It appeared to be just about the right size to hold my big daikon. It was time to try out the ChouAmi.

Kakdooki is Korean-style fermented radish cubes, flavored with ground red pepper, green onions, garlic, sometimes ginger, and often fish sauce or tiny brined shrimp or both. This is one fermented pickle that I never bother to weight, because the seasonings seem to prevent any yeast or mold growth. Regardless, I would use my fancy new device. I mixed the radish cubes and seasonings, dropped them into the jar, and pressed down the mixture with my fingers. It fit perfectly, with just an inch or so of headspace.

I picked up the ChouAmi pieces, and suddenly I knew exactly how they fit together. I placed the main piece on top of the jar and screwed the ring over it. Then I turned the loop in the center of the main piece. This released a spring attached to a perforated plate sized to fit perfectly in the jar (this main piece is actually three; they come apart for cleaning). The plate pressed against the vegetables, while liquid rose over it. I set the dome on top.

Only hours later did it occur to me that the dome wasn’t meant to keep out dust. It was sitting in a trough. So I filled the trough with water. Now I had an airlock! Carbon dioxide could escape under the dome, through the water, but oxygen couldn’t get in.

What an elaborately clever device! No wonder the price was so high.

Actually, though, I don’t know the price of a ChouAmi. The company is still getting started, through a Kickstarter campaign. The company website needs work; I couldn’t get the instructional video to play.

So I’m afraid that if you head to your local kitchenware store today you won’t find the ChouAmi. But the store is probably closed, anyway. So, wait until the danger of the corona virus eases, and then keep your eyes open for the ChouAmi. If you’re happy to make most of your vegetable ferments in a 1-liter jar, this device may prove to be a bon ami indeed.

*Green Egyptian walking onions are sweeter and milder than scallions.

Ask Santa for Empty Jars

When someone asks what you want for Christmas and you can’t think of anything, you at least know you don’t want commercial preserves, right? Those store-bought jams and relishes are never as good as the ones you make yourself, even if they came from the cutest little shop in someone’s favorite vacation spot. To avoid collecting jars that will sit unopened in your pantry for months or years, try asking for empty jars instead. I mean fancy preserving jars, ones you might never buy for yourself because they cost more than Ball or Kerr jars.

Among the possibilities are jars produced by the French company Le Parfait. You probably know Le Parfait’s old-fashioned glass-lidded jars—now called, on Le Parfait’s website, Super Jars—with their rubber rings and metal clamps. I have used big jars of this type for decades for storing dry foods, and the French still use them for home canning. After the jars are pasteurized, the jars are stored with their clamps unfastened. So long as the lids stay sealed, you know your preserves are good.

I tested another Le Parfait product, the jam jars, faceted on the lower half and bearing a screw-on metal top. These jars come in various sizes—324, 385, and 645 milliliters. I used the 324-milliliter jars, which hold about 1 1/3 cups and so, I figured, might be small enough for jelly (for a good set, jelly must cool rapidly). A standard American wide-mouth funnel just fits into the top of one of these jars. The metal top screws on with short threads, as on most commercial food jars, rather than with long threads, as on a Ball jar. I like the lids displayed on the Le Parfait website—they are decorated with little green leaves and red berries—more than the ones that came with my set, which are printed with “HOME MADE” in almost psychedelic blue lettering.

Instead of boiling-water or steam processing for these jars, Le Parfait recommends “self-pasteurization,” which means turning the jam jars upside-down immediately after screwing on the lids. This practice is the norm in Europe, but the USDA frowns on it. So I processed my filled jars for ten minutes in a steam canner.

After the processed or “self-pasteurized” jam jars have cooled, it’s hard to tell whether they have sealed. But I have found that if I hold both a sealed and an unsealed jar with the edges of the lids at eye level, I am able to see the difference. The sealed lids are just slightly concave. When you remove one you hear a little popping sound.

I also tested some of Le Parfait’s Familia Wiss terrines. Also called bocals, these jars have straight sides and wide mouths, to make it easy for you to turn out your terrine (pâté without pastry) from the terrine. Available in sizes to hold 200, 350, 500, 750, 1,000, and 1,500 millimeters, these jars are different from any I’ve seen before in that each comes with both a flat lid (capsole) and a full cap (couvercle). The flat lid is much like that of a Ball or Kerr jar, but heavier and bearing a big pimple in the center. The cap, which like a Ball or Kerr band serves to keep the flat lid in place during processing, sports an inverted pimple in its center. The cap could be used on its own for refrigerator storage, but because it lacks a protective coating, as well as a sealing ring, it shouldn’t be used on its own with acid foods.

The Familia Wiss terrines identified as 500 millimeters in size on Le Parfait’s website actually come embossed as “500-539 ml,”and a fill line is marked at 1 1/8 inches from the top, as if the jars were intended for pressure canning. To my delight, I found that each of these jars hold a pint with ½ inch headspace. They are shorter and wider than Ball or Kerr pint jars; in fact, they are perfect for accommodating quartered large pears in horizontal layers.

I processed three Familia Wiss jars in a steam canner. On one lid the pimple flattened completely; on the others the pimples flattened only a bit. But all three jars sealed firmly.

Le Parfait makes a tool called a tire-rondelle for opening both Super Jars and Familia Wiss terrines. You can use the tool sideways to tug on the tongue of a Super Jar’s rubber ring, or you can poke the pointed end into the pimple on the flat lid of a Familia Wiss jar to release the vacuum. An ice pick should work as well on a Familia Wiss lid, or you can pry up the lid with an ordinary bottle opener or a table knife.

For the French, apparently, Familia Wiss jars are used primarily for terrines, and Le Parfait’s website includes terrine recipes that make my mouth water. Unfortunately, the recipes omit instructions for pressure canning; instead, you are told to process the jars in a boiling-water bath for three hours. The USDA lacks any comparable recipes from which you might derive pressure-canning times, so if you decide to try one of these recipes you’ll probably want to store your terrines in the fridge.

Here is how I canned my pears in 500-milliliter Familia Wiss jars. You might substitute any pint mason jars in this recipe.

Pears in Light Syrup with Vanilla

I used Bosc bears, but any variety should do.

If heating the pear slices in syrup seems like too much bother, you might put them cold into the jars. Heating them should soften them just enough to help them pack well in the jars, but if you’re not careful with this method you can end up with burnt fingers, mushy pears, or both.

3 inches of a vanilla bean
2 2/3 cups water
1 cup sugar
1 large or 2 small lemons
About 4 pounds (7 to 8) just-ripe pears

Wash three 500-milliliter Familia Wiss terrines (or wide-mouth pint mason jars) and the flat lids in hot, soapy water, and rinse.

Score the vanilla bean segment lengthwise, so that the seeds will escape into the syrup, and cut the segment crosswise into thirds. Put these pieces into a saucepan with the water and the sugar. Slowly heat the mixture, stirring to dissolve the sugar, while you prepare the pears.

Squeeze the lemon juice into a bowl. Peel, core, and quarter one-third of the pears. As you do so, drop the slices into the bowl and turn them gently in the lemon juice; this will keep them from browning.

When the syrup has begun to simmer, use a slotted spoon to transfer the pear slices to the syrup. Bring the syrup back to a simmer, turning the pear slices gently.

Immediately remove the pan from the heat. Pack the pear slices neatly into one of the jars along with a piece of vanilla bean, and pour syrup through a strainer to cover the pears.

Reheat the syrup as you prepare another third of the pears. Heat and pack them and cover them with syrup as before. Do the same with the last of the pears.

Cover the jars with flat lids and full caps (or mason jar bands). Process the jars in a boiling-water bath or steam canner for 20 minutes.

Makes 3 pints

Le Parfait jars are available at stores served by distributors listed here, on the Amazon website, and, as I happen to know, at Down to Earth in Eugene, Oregon.

Fermenting and Storing Kraut in Small Jars, without Pasteurization or Refrigeration

I’ve more than once seen Extension home-ec agents roll their eyes when asked if it’s possible to store sauerkraut in the same jar in which it has fermented, with no heating or chilling. Where do such ideas come from? the agents ask.

From Extension’s mother agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, of course! Randal Oulton recently sent me a 1936 USDA press release, intended for radio broadcast, about how USDA researchers had made and stored sauerrüben—fermented shredded turnip—in just this way:

Shredded [and salted] turnips were packed in 2-quart glass jars, which held approximately 4 pounds of turnips each when packed firmly. Because of the pressure produced by the gas released during the initial fermentation, the lids of the jars had to be left loose. By this means the gas was allowed to escape, yet at the same time a sufficient concentration of carbon dioxide to prevent aerobic spoilage was maintained over the fermenting material. As the evolution of the gas lifted considerable quantities of the juice to the top of the jar, causing it to overflow, the jars were placed in enameled pans until the period of gas formation was over. Once each 24 hours the lids were removed, the shreds were pushed down into the jars by means of a wooden spoon or blunt wooden stick, the lost juice was returned to the jars, and the lids were replaced.

I wonder if the researchers strained out the fruit flies before returning the juice to the jars. Anyway, the report continues:

As soon as the gas ceased to be given off, which required about 4 days, the jars were sealed tight and stored at room temperature. The fermentation was generally completed in 12 to 14 days, and the product was then ready for use. The product put up in this manner has been kept for 3 years and is still in excellent condition, although heat has not been applied.

Presumably the jars were stored in a cool place such as a cellar and not in a really cold place like a refrigerator. We aren’t told what kind of lids the researchers used and whether the lids formed a vacuum seal. In any case, the method worked, and the writer suggests trying it with 1-quart as well as 2-quart jars. The article makes no mention of exploding jars, which the home-ec agents always warn about.

I would certainly prefer to try this method over another recommended in the same piece: After fermenting the shredded turnip in open stone jars, you cover the surface with mineral oil.

Have you tried making and storing sauerkraut or sauerrüben in small jars without heating or chilling? How well did your method work? I’d love to hear your stories.

Finally, Stainless-Steel Mason Jar Bands

“See this rust?” asked a county-fair judge of a young 4-Her, pointing at a little spot inside the band the judge had just removed from the child’s jam jar. “This can keep your lid from sealing.”

I’d never known even the rustiest band to keep a mason jar lid from sealing, and I was startled to learn that a fair judge might withhold a blue ribbon because of a tiny spot of rust on the inside of a band. But I do think that rusty bands are ugly. If you want to make a good impression when you display or sell or give away your preserves, you’ve got to use brand-new bands.

But why must the bands go rusty by the second or third use? After one of my readers and I recently shared our annoyance at this, he started googling. To our mutual delight, he discovered a source for stainless-steel mason jar bands.

Maggie and Ryan Helseth, owners of Mason Jar Lifestyle, say that their rings are stain-resistant, not stain-proof; they may start to rust if they’re left soaking in water for days. But they won’t rust with normal use, including passes through at dishwasher. I’ve tested some of the stainless bands by using them in a boiling-water bath and by immersing them in water for a full day. So far they show no sign of rust.

As you might expect, the stainless-steel bands cost more than regular ones: You get five narrow-mouth stainless bands for $11.99 or five wide-mouth bands for $13.99. Because of their higher cost, and because the stainless-steel bands are identical in appearance and weight to regular bands, you’ll want to take care to keep the two types separate, so you don’t give away the good bands accidentally. If you do mix up your bands, though, you can tell the stainless from the soon-to-be-stained with the help of a magnet. The stainless bands, unlike the others, are not magnetic.

Maggie and Ryan sent me some of their other products to try. I am much taken with their silicone lid liners and sealing rings. Made of material that is stable and nonreactive—that won’t leach chemicals and won’t be damaged in a dishwasher—the liners can be used under plastic mason-jar caps or two-piece lids to keep food from touching metal or plastic and to keep plastic caps from leaking, a problem especially during transport to potlucks and picnics. Though flexible, the liners are sturdy enough, at 2.2 millimeters thick, that you can use them with rings alone. The sealing rings, like the lid liners, can be used with plastic Ball caps to prevent leakage and to provide an airtight seal—not for canning, of course, but for storage of unpasteurized foods in the refrigerator, freezer, or pantry. Ten silicone lid liners cost $13.99 in narrow-mouth size and $14.99 in wide-mouth. Ten silicone sealing rings cost $6.99 in narrow-mouth size and $8.99 in wide-mouth.

Maggie and Ryan also sell stainless-steel mason-jar caps, which come with their own removable silicone sealing rings (since the rings are removable they are also replaceable, although I don’t imagine they wear out fast). Without logos or other decoration, these lids are plainly attractive, especially if you dislike plastic. Like plastic mason-jar caps, the metal ones are not intended for canning. Five stainless caps with silicone sealing rings cost $16.99 for in narrow-mouth size, $18.99 in wide-mouth.

Self-described “mason jar geeks,” Maggie and Ryan have other products, too, such as a stainless lid with a hole for inserting a drinking straw. See all their stuff at masonjarlifestyle.com.

Update: August 24, 2016
A few of Maggie and Ryan’s customers have complained that the stainless-steel bands have come off in during processing, usually in a pressure canner, Ryan tells me. Because stainless steel is harder than tin, the threads on the Mason Jar Lifestyle bands are less well defined than those on ordinary mason-jar bands. Ryan is working with the factory to fix this problem. If you plan to use the stainless-steel bands for canning, I suggest waiting at least a few weeks before ordering them.

Update: December 28, 2021
Maggie and Ryan’s stainless-steel bands have dropped in price, to $9.99 for five narrow-mouth bands and $10.99 for five wide-mouth bands. They still fit a bit loose, so Maggie and Ryan don’t recommend them for canning. If you prefer, the bands can come stamped with the words STAINLESS STEEL, so you won’t mix them up with your cheaper lids. The silicone sealing rings are now priced at ten for $7.99 (narrow-mouth) and $8.99 (wide-mouth), the lid-liners at $13.99 and $15.99.

Another company, Kraut Source, is offering stainless-steel mason-jar bands that are recommended for canning, at https://www.krautsource.com/collections/all/products/kraut-source-stainless-steel-ring. They cost $5.00 for a single ring.

USDA Approves Steam Canners

Many home preservers love steam canners (such as the Victorio), because they use less water and less energy and take less time to preheat than boiling-water canners. For at least two decades, however, the USDA and its Extension employees have warned that steam canners may be dangerous. This has kept a lot of people from buying steam canners and has made the people who swear by the devices at least a tad nervous.

A 2003 position paper published by Oregon State University detailed the concerns: Cold spots might occur between the jars or under the dome; steam might lift the lid of the canner, which would allow cold air to enter; jars might break or heat unevenly; the user might mistake cool vapor for steam and so might underprocess the jars; the user might be burned by steam.

The fears of breaking jars and uneven heating always seemed bogus to me. The supposed problem was that the jars weren’t separated by a rack. Racks that come in boiling-water canners are usually divided into sections, one per jar, but many people do their boiling-water processing with unsectioned cake racks or pressure-canner racks or even with towels instead of racks. Most home preservers know better than to jam their jars tightly together in a canner.

I’ve never used a steam canner myself, but I’m pretty sure that the vent holes in the side must keep the lid from lifting off like an umbrella in the wind.

Steam burns seem like a true risk with steam canners, but you get a faceful of steam if you’re careless in opening a boiling-water canner, too.

Now Dr. Barbara Ingham, of the University Wisconsin-Madison, has actually done some research on steam canners, and she has found they work pretty well. She has convinced the National Center for Home Food Preservation, the USDA division that oversees home canning, to approve the use of steam canners.

Dr. Ingham, however, identified one important limitation of steam canners: They hold too little water to allow for processing times of more than 45 minutes. This presents no problem for pickles and jams, but the USDA recommends processing tomatoes for long periods, from 35 to 85 minutes (or even longer at high altitudes), depending on how the tomatoes are prepared. You could use a steam canner for tomato sauce or juice, but a boiling-water canner or even a pressure canner might be a better choice. If the boiling is too vigorous in a steam canner, Dr. Ingham found, the pan can boil dry in twenty minutes.

According to Jeanne Brandt, Family and Community Health director for Oregon State University Extension, OSU still doesn’t like steam canners. But I think I might give one a try.

UPDATE 2021:

I bought a steam canner in the spring of 2016, soon after writing this article. Since then, because I rarely can low-acid foods, I’ve used the steam canner for nearly all my canning jobs. It saves water, fuel, and time. It’s easy to lift when full of water, and I can remove hot jars from it with a potholder instead of searching for my jar lifter.

Dr. Ingham has suggested new guidelines to follow with steam canners:

Use a steam canner only with high-acid foods, those for which you would otherwise use a boiling-water canner.
Heat the water in the canner before adding the jars. (I bring the water to a boil and then turn off the heat before I fill the jars. Even in a steam canner, jars can break from thermal shock.)
Make sure that a 6- to 8-inch jet of steam streams from the vent holes throughout the processing period. (I use no more heat than necessary to produce this jet of steam. Turning the heat up higher would waste fuel and risk boiling the pan dry.)
If possible, check the temperature of the steam—it should measure 210 to 212 degrees F—by inserting a thermometer through a vent hole.
If you’re canning at an altitude of 1,000 feet or higher, you should process your jars longer, just as you would in a boiling-water bath.
Let the jars cool at room temperature, as usual.

Finally: A Good Thermometer for Home Preserving

When home preservers have asked me what sort of thermometer they should use, I’ve never had good advice for them. I teach people to assess the readiness of their jams, jellies, and preserves by various tests: Does the liquid “sheet” off the spoon? Does the jam mound in a chilled dish or show wrinkles when you disturb its cooling surface? Does the syrup “spin a thread” in a glass of cold water?

Yet I often specify temperature goals for verifying these visual tests. Knowing the temperature really helps, for example, in the case of fruits whose juices gel slowly and so fail to “sheet” when they have reached gelling temperature. But how can you know that your boiling liquid has reached gelling temperature when your thermometer simply does not work?

Thermometers fail us in many ways. The glass capillary tube of an old-fashioned candy thermometer slips up or down in relation to the scale. The paint wears off the scale. Thermometers that must be left in the pot get in the way of the spoon and fall in the jam. Dial thermometers must be calibrated when you buy them and frequently thereafter. For an “instant-read” thermometer, the “instant” may last ten seconds or more—long enough to burn your fingers. Digital thermometers often flip out a few degrees beyond boiling. My husband bought an expensive, long-probed thermometer that measured some 30 degrees off and could not be calibrated. He bought another that showed wildly fluctuating temperatures over about 215 degrees F. Even my little digital CDN, the most reliable thermometer I ever had until now, goes blank when the temperature nears 220 degrees; when I remove the thermometer from the heat, the display reappears in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. And thermometers of all kinds fog up and become unreadable.

So I am extremely happy with my Christmas present: a little digital thermometer called the Javelin Pro. It’s made in the style of the expensive Thermapen: With the probe folded against the handle, these thermometers are small enough to fit in a breast pocket, but when the probe is fully extended the thermometer is long enough—10.5 inches, in the case of the Javelin Pro—to keep your hand well away from the heat. I like to extend the probe just 90 to 120 degrees, so my hand is outside the rim of the pot while I take the temperature of my jam.

Many manufacturers are now making Thermapen-type thermometers, which start at about twenty dollars. All have large, easy-to-read screens, and some of the screens, including mine, have backlighting, which enhances readability even when you’re not working in the dark. And these thermometers tend to be fast and accurate. My Javelin Pro responds in only 3 to 4 seconds, and it’s accurate to 0.9 degrees F. You can’t calibrate these thermometers, but you shouldn’t need to; the Javelin Pro is supposed to retain its accuracy through the three-year warranty period. High temperatures don’t upset my thermometer; I’ve used it successfully for jams and jellies already, and the manufacturer claims that it is accurate all the way to 482 degrees F. The big display does not fog up.

I see only two general disadvantages to Thermapen-type thermometers. First, you can’t switch the readout between Fahrenheit and Celsius. Instead you must buy either a Fahrenheit or a Celsius thermometer, although you may be able to change the setting by fiddling with the thermometer’s insides. Second, you must replace the battery when it wears out—but fortunately that battery is likely to be long-lived. My Javelin Pro takes a CR2032 battery that is expected to last 3,500 hours.

The Javelin Pro has a couple of special features that made me choose it over similar models for my Christmas list. A hidden magnet lets it magically stick to the refrigerator. If you have a non-magnetic refrigerator, no problem: The Javelin Pro also has a hole at the handle end through which you can loop a cord, to hang on a hook or around your neck. No more fishing through a drawer every time you need a thermometer.

If you’re feeling wealthy, however, you might want to bypass the Javelin Pro for a genuine Thermapen. All the competition from imitators has pushed its maker, Thermoworks, to continually improve its thermometer. The latest model, the Super-Fast Thermapen, responds in only 2 to 3 seconds and is accurate to 0.7 degrees F. You can set the thermometer to show you tenths of a degree, if you prefer, instead of whole degrees, and the display will turn among four directions depending on how you hold the instrument. The battery is an AAA, so it’s easy to find a replacement. Best of all, this newest Thermapen is not just water-resistant; it is waterproof.

The Thermapen is on sale now for $89.25 from Thermoworks. The Javelin Pro costs $55.99 from Amazon.

Olive-Oil Pickles: Q&A

Before the routine use of mason jars or even paraffin in the home kitchen, olive oil was often used, in America as well as Europe, to seal air out of jars of vinegar-pickled vegetables. When you’re canning pickles in the modern way today, oil might seem a superfluous addition—if it didn’t make the vegetables look and taste so good after they’re drawn, unctuously gleaming, from the jar.

Once you’ve pried off the lid and stored the jar in the fridge, though, the oil can partially or totally solidify. That doesn’t make for such a pretty pickle. Here’s how Matt, one reader of The Joy of Pickling, encountered this problem:

I’m a beginner to this experience, and have made a few pickle recipes from your Joy book. I have a question relating to a recipe I did of the olive oil pickles (page 98). I did as instructed, and opened around 4 weeks after pantry storage. They tasted amazing! After about a week in the fridge, however, the opened jar formed small, white beads at the top. They vary in diameter, but all quite smaller than the mustard seeds.

The unopened ones do not exhibit this, and I am concerned that there is something wrong. Perhaps this is some congealing of ingredients, but I wanted to see if you’ve encountered similar results. I haven’t eaten them since they’ve been in the fridge (e.g., formed the beads), so am only hoping that the refrigeration is the factor here, and that they are safe to eat.

And here are two photos that Matt sent me:

Sometimes chilled olive oil forms a solid whitish mass; other times it solidifies only partially. The “beads” Matt saw are solidified oil droplets.

The solution to this problem is simple: Take the jar out of the refrigerator a little before serving time, and let the oil melt in the warmer air outside the fridge. In Matt’s case the oil had only slightly solidified, so the melting probably took only ten minutes or so.

There’s something else to remember about oiled pickles: Oil on the rim of the jar or on the lid’s sealing compound can prevent a good seal. So be sure to leave adequate headspace in the jar, wipe any oil off the rim with a paper towel or clean cloth dampened with vinegar before placing the lid on top, and avoid tipping the jars or boiling the water hard during processing.

Berry Sorbet, Jar Lids, and Home-grown Chickpeas

I’m sorry I’ve been silent so long; the past couple of months have been especially busy for me I’ll try catch up here by taking on several small topics at once.

SORBET MIX FOR THE PANTRY

After dance class last Friday night Greg had a hankering for ice cream, so he and his wife, Wendy, and I sat on plastic chairs outside Baskin-Robbins licking our cones, gazing at Albany’s ugliest intersection—treeless parking lots on all corners, backed by buildings that look like giant shoe boxes—and pondering why we don’t make our own ice cream more often. Ice cream is for birthdays, I said, and it’s always after I’ve made the cake and cooked the dinner that I realize I’ve failed to search out cream, and I must have the real thing, which is darn hard to find in our area if you don’t keep your own cow. But sorbet is better than ice cream, anyway, Wendy reminded me, and where was that raspberry sorbet recipe I’d promised her three years ago? It’s simple, I said—raspberry purée and sugar, that’s all you need. Like me, Wendy and Greg always have raspberries in the freezers. Yes, that’s plural, freezers. I have so much fruit in my freezers that there is little room for anything else. Then I had an idea: What if we made up a sorbet mix in advance, and stored it on a pantry shelf? Probably we would all eat sorbet more often, and stay away from this ugly intersection.

So Wendy vowed to make some raspberry sorbet, and I made plans for my next picking of Triple Crown blackberries, for which I use the same basic recipe. Here it is in the pantry version, which I developed just yesterday:

Canned Berry Sorbet

Press the fresh berries through the fine screen of a food mill.

7 cups blackberry or raspberry purée, from about 4½ pounds fresh berries
2 tablespoons lemon juice (optional, and only for lower-acid fruit such as my Triple Crowns)
3 cups sugar

Combine the berry purée, the lemon juice (if you’re using it), and the sugar in a large pot, and stir. Over medium heat, bring the mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally. Boil the mixture gently for 1 minute—no longer, or you may turn it into jam.

Pour the purée into two quart jars, leaving ¼ inch headspace. If you come up a bit short, top off the jars with boiling water. Then add lids and rings. Process the jars fin a boiling-water bath for 15 minutes.

A day before freezing your sorbet, put one of the jars into the fridge to chill. Freeze the sorbet according to the directions that came with your device.

Makes 2 quarts

NEW RULE FOR HANDLING JAR LIDS

Jarden, the company that owns Ball and Kerr, has informed Oregon State University Extension that it’s no longer necessary to soak Ball and Kerr mason-jar lids in hot water before using them. Instead, just wash each lid before placing it on a jar and screwing on the ring.

HOME-GROWN GARBANZOS

After discovering green garbanzo beans at a supermarket in Salem, I had to try growing my own. A friend had given me some seeds of Hannan Popbean, a brown- to black-seeded chickpea selected by Carol Deppe, a Corvallis plant breeder. Carol calls this bean a popbean not because the pods make a popping noise as you press them open—all chickpeas do this, apparently—but because she pops the dried seeds like corn, by parching them in a hot, dry pan until they swell and break open.

Although Carol grows her popbeans in spring, without irrigation, I planted mine in late May, along with soybeans, runner beans, long beans, and regular bush beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). A couple of weeks after the initial planting I had to fill big gaps in the other bean rows, but to my surprise every one of the garbanzos germinated. I was surprised again by the foliage, which looks much like vetch and nothing like other bean leaves. The third surprise from my chickpea row was the best one: Deer don’t eat these plants. I learned why they don’t when I ate my first green garbanzo, just two months after planting, and tasted something sharply sour on my fingers. I touched my tongue to a bean pod and understood: The plant defends itself from grazing by seasoning its pods and foliage with malic and oxalic acids. Brilliant!

So, forget my fears about all the special requirements for growing chickpeas. I don’t have a long growing season. I don’t have sandy soil. I didn’t add nitrogen-fixing bacteria to the soil. But I didn’t need any of these things. Garbanzos seem to be an excellent crop for my garden. They are certainly easier to grow than edamame.

Taking the Wind Out of Jerusalem Artichokes

Does your spouse refuse to eat Jerusalem artichokes because they’re too—err—windy? Have you yourself abandoned your Jerusalem artichoke patch to the weeds or the pigs, because no human of your acquaintance would eat the damn things again? If so, you have plenty of company.

If you can’t quite place this native North American vegetable, you may know it instead by a name invented by a California produce wholesaler in the 1960s: the sunchoke. The sun part of this moniker comes from sunflower, because the plant is closely related to the sunflower that provides us seeds for birds and snacks and oil. Jerusalem artichoke blooms look like small sunflowers, and they can grow just as tall.

The Jerusalem part of Jerusalem artichoke came about soon after the plants were first grown in Europe, in the early seventeenth century at the Farnese Garden in Rome. From there they were distributed to the rest of Europe as Girasole articiocco, “sunflower artichoke.” In the diet book that he published in 1620, an English doctor, Tobias Venner, translated Girasole as “Jerusalem”—a good first guess, perhaps, but unfortunately the name stuck. Soon inventive English cooks were making their Jerusalem artichokes into “Palestine soup.”

Sunroot would be a better name for the vegetable than sunchoke, because Jerusalem artichokes certainly are not artichokes, and they have nothing like the hairy, inedible part of an artichoke that is called the choke. Yet the two vegetables known as artichoke are discreetly similar in their chemical makeup and flavor. Samuel de Champlain noted this in 1605, when he found Indians on Cape Cod growing roots with “le goust d’artichaut,” the taste of artichokes. Both artichokes and Jerusalem artichokes, he may have observed, share a peculiar sweetness. This sweetness comes from inulin, a kind of soluble fiber that passes through the human digestive system intact until bacteria go to work on it in colon, releasing a lot of gas in the process. Artichokes are rich in inulin. Jerusalem artichokes have about half again as much, by percentage of fresh weight.

I thank Rose Marie Nichols McGee, of Nichols Garden Nursery, for asking the question I should have long ago asked myself: Can fermentation rid Jerusalem artichokes of their windiness?

Rose Marie posed that question about a year ago, and the two of us promptly decided to conduct an experiment. After digging up the little patch of Jerusalem artichokes that I’d ignored for ten years, I brined a pint of the tubers according to the kakdooki (Korean fermented daikon) recipe on page 64 of The Joy of Pickling, with garlic and powdered chile. Rose Marie developed another recipe based on one of mine, she said, although nothing about it sounded the least familiar. With a stroke of brilliance, she added turmeric, so that her pickled Jerusalem artichokes turned out a brilliant yellow. We shared both pickles, hers and mine, at a Slow Food board meeting, and people seemed to find them both tasty. I requested follow-up digestive reports.

But I got none. Was this good news? I couldn’t be sure. Apparently nobody’s bellyache was bad enough to prompt a complaint. But, then, the meeting attendees hadn’t actually agreed to tell me about their gas problems. Some of them may have felt they really didn’t know me well enough. And none of them had eaten more than a small handful of the pickled tubers. So the results of our study were inconclusive.

In digging up my Jerusalem artichoke patch, however, I must have missed a little tuber. Last summer, sans weeding and sans water, a single nine-foot sunflower stalk shot up. I could experiment some more!

I waited through most of the winter to dig up the tubers, because time alone has been said to convert much of the inulin in Jerusalem artichokes to fructose. In January, I harvested a crop just as big as the previous year’s, at least ten pounds. Several nights of temperatures around 0 degrees Fahrenheit had done the tubers no harm.

I first assessed their windiness by simply roasting some with salt, pepper, and olive oil. The roasted tubers were delicious, but still gassy.

Inspired by Rose Marie’s example, I then pickled some of the Jerusalem artichokes in this way:

Mellow Yellow Jerusalem Artichoke Pickle

1½ pounds Jerusalem artichokes, broken into nodes, thoroughly scrubbed, and cut into ½-inch dice
1 teaspoon ground dried turmeric
1 ounces garlic (about 8 cloves), chopped
½ ounce fresh ginger, minced (about 1 ½ tablespoons)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 teaspoons pickling salt
2 teaspoons sugar
1½ cups water

Toss together the diced Jerusalem artichokes, the turmeric, the garlic, the ginger, and the cumin. Pack the mixture into a jar with a capacity of at least 6 cups. Dissolve the salt and sugar in the water. Pour the brine over the Jerusalem artichokes; it will not cover them at first. Add a brine bag (a gallon freezer-weight plastic bag containing 1 tablespoon salt dissolved in 3 cups water) or another suitable weight.

The next day the brine should cover the Jerusalem artichokes. If it doesn’t, add more brine mixed in the same proportions.

Wait several days before tasting the pickle. I found it perfect after a week: The brine was sour, and the Jerusalem artichokes pleasantly, mildly spicy and still crunchy.

When the pickle has fermented enough to suit your taste, store the jar in the refrigerator. Keep the Jerusalem artichokes weighted so they won’t take on a grayish cast.

Several people have now eaten this pickle in potentially distressing quantities. The test subjects remained on site this time, so that if reports didn’t come verbally they would emerge in another form. And nobody has suffered.

I hope that these results will be duplicated by other investigators. Let me know, OK? Don’t be shy.