canning – Don's House of Fine Patisseries

August 13, 2023August 13, 2023

Making Stewed Rhubarb — Photos

I picked up making stewed rhubarb because my mom always liked using the rhubarb grown in her garden to make stewed rhubarb and rhubarb chutney. (Ironically, for this post, and often enough, I use rhubarb purchased from the grocery store!)

Note that this recipe effectively needs to be done over two days, or at least with a pause of several hours (roughly equivalent to a minimum of “overnight” ) between preparing the rhubarb, and beginning to stew the rhurbarb.

Note that I also am using the “packing in mason jars and heat-processing” method to preserve the stewed rhubarb, and to allow for the making of larger amounts of stewed rhubarb at once; once the heat-processed jars have cooled, the stewed rhubarb is ready to eat.

Making the Stewed Rhubarb:

Day one:

After buying some rhubarb at the grocery store, some mise-en-place was done by taking out a cutting board, a mixing bowl, a measuring cup, a kitchen knife, and a kitchen scale:

Cutting board, mixing bowl, measuring cup, kitchen knife, and kitchen scale taken out

To avoid confusion a bit later on, the tare weight of the mixing bowl was measured and noted (instead of using the tare function on the kitchen scale):

The rhubarb purchased earlier was taken out (yes, it is a bit shabby!)

The elastics and labels were removed from the rhubarb bunches:

I began to wash and rinse the rhubarb:

The rinsed rhubarb stalks were brought to the cutting board:

The rhubarb stalks were trimmed:

The trimmings were placed in a kitchen waste bucket for later disposal in a municipal composting programme:

Trimmings placed in bucket for composting

If the rhubarb isn’t completely fresh, or especially typical (in my experience) for commercial rhubarb purchased at the grocery store, sometimes there is some minor damage to the stalks to be removed:

The stalk damage was removed (and while my name can be found on my — this — website in several places, I have blacked it out from my knife, on which I had inscribed my name years ago):

The trimmed rhubarb stalks were piled up …

… and the rhubarb stalks were rinsed again to remove the last of the bits:

Some stalks were laid on the cutting board for chopping:

The rhubarb stalks were chopped using a slicing motion against the grain:

As chopped rhubarb started piling up on the chopping board, it was transferred to the mixing bowl:

Chopped rhubarb transferred to mixing bowl

The rest of the rhubarb was chopped, and transferred to the mixing bowl as it was produced:

The bowl of chopped rhubarb was placed on the kitchen scale and weighed:

The weight was noted, to be used in a moment:

A large pot and wooden mixing spoon were taken out:

The chopped rhubarb was transferred to the pot:

A calculator app was started, and the net weight of chopped rhubarb was calculated by subtracting the bowl tare weight from the weight of the bowl filled with the chopped rhubarb:

Net weight of chopped rhubarb calculated

Since my recipe is based on the Imperial system, the weight of 0.895kg (above) was converted to pounds, giving a result just barely shy of two pounds of chopped rhubarb:

Next, a multiplication factor for how many “recipe units” was calculated by dividing the weight of the chopped rhubarb by the base amount of three quarters of a pound:

The multiplication factor was multiplied by the required amount of sugar and lemon juice for per “recipe unit” of 3/4 lb of chopped rhubarb: Half a cup of sugar, and half an ounce of lemon juice, resulting in 1-1/3 cups of sugar, and 1-1/3 ounces of lemon juice:

Multiplication factor applied to sugar and lemon juice required

Sugar and a measuring cup were taken out:

Sugar was measured out:

The sugar was poured onto the chopped rhubarb:

Sugar poured into pot of chopped rhubarb

The chopped rhubarb and sugar were mixed with the wooden spoon:

Lemon juice was measured out:

Extra sugar was added to the lemon juice:

The lemon juice and extra sugar were mixed:

The lemon juice and sugar mix were added to the chopped rhubarb and sugar:

Lemon juice and sugar added to chopped rhubarb and sugar

The chopped rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice were mixed some more:

Chopped rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice mixed

A lid was placed on the pot of rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice:

Lid placed on pot of chopped rhubarb mix

The pot of chopped rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice was placed in a fridge overnight:

Pot of chopped rhubarb mix placed in fridge

Day two:

Early the next morning, I checked on the pot of chopped rhubarb:

As can be sort of be seen above and better in the following photo, a good amount of liquid had been drawn by the sugar from the pieces of chopped rhubarb:

The chopped rhubarb was mixed again with a spoon:

The pot of chopped rhubarb was returned to the fridge until later that evening (after coming home from work.)

That evening, a jar wrench, a jar funnel, tongs, a ladle, and a stainless steel flipper were taken out:

Jar wrench, jar funnel, tongs, ladle, and stainless steel flipper taken out

Mason jars, a few more than I expected to need, and new lids and lid rings, were taken out, but kept aside for the moment:

A pot and trivet were taken out, to act as a boiling water bath soon:

The trivet was placed in the bottom of the pot:

The pot was filled with water:

The pot of water was placed on a burner on the stove:

The stove was turned on:

… and the lid was placed back on the pot:

Since I had placed the pot of water on a smaller burner, which proved to be a mistake, I still waited a bit before taking out the pot of chopped rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice, and placing it on the stove:

Pot of Rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice placed on stove

After waiting a bit more, having gauged the heating up of the pot of water, the burner under the chopped rhubarb mix was turned on:

Burner under chopped rhubarb mix turned on

The lid on the pot of chopped rhubarb mix was removed:

As the rhubarb mix was heating up, I of course mixed it to avoid burning:

The rhubarb mix began to boil:

At this point, the rhubarb mix was taken off the burner, and since the water bath had not yet reached the boiling point, I brought it forward to the larger burner to bring it to a boil more quickly:

Water bath brought forward to larger burner on stove

Fortunately, it was obvious that the water bath was “hot enough” to dip the (clean) bottle funnel to sanitize it:

The bottle funnel was placed in the neck of a jar:

The ladle was dipped in the hot water to sanitize it:

I started ladling the boiled rhubarb mix into the jar until it was filled:

A lid and ring were brought to the jar, and screwed onto the jar (oops, I forgot to take a picture of this second part):

Lid brought to filled jar and screwed on

The rest of the boiled rhubarb mix was transferred into jars, and lids were screwed onto the jars:

At this point, the water in the water bath was finally starting to boil:

Using the jar wrench, the filled jars were transferred to the water bath:

Once the water had come to a rolling boil …

… a timer was set to 15 minutes …

… and the lid was placed back on the pot with the water bath and filled jars:

At this point, the water was boiling so vigorously, that water was splashing out of the pot!

Water splashing out of boiling water bath onto stovetop

After 15 minutes had elapsed, the filled jars were removed from the water bath using the jar wrench:

The now heat-processed jars were placed on the the cutting board:

Heat-processed jar placed on cutting board

Heat-processed jars placed on cutting board

Hot water collecting on the jars was soaked up with a towel:

The jars were moved apart from each other to allow for some ambient cooling for a few moments:

Jars separated to facilitate ambient cooling

Then, the still-warm jars were moved to a fridge to complete cooling.

At this point, I changed tack a bit and printed out some labels for the jars, modifying another label template I have for my pickled eggs:

Printed labels for jars of stewed rhubarb

Scissors, a hole punch, and some elastics were taken out:

Scissors, hole punch, and elastics taken out

Four labels were cut from the sheet:

A date code (in this case for 09 August, 2023, the day I filled and processed the jars) was written on the back / inside of each label:

The labels were folded over onto themselves:

I should note at this point at which the print is more legible, that I live in Montreal, where French predominates, hence the labels are in both English and French. As it happened in the picture above, the folded labels with the English showing were upside down because that’s how I inadvertently happened to flip them over. 🙂

I then picked up the labels, piled them one on another, and crimped the folds:

Labels brought together and folds crimped

A hole was punched through the labels on the end opposite to the fold:

On each individual label, the end near the hole was folded over:

Ah here, the English labels are right side up. 🙂

An elastic was threaded through the hole of a label:

The elastic was looped into itself, and loosely tightened to allow for it to at once hold the label, as well as have a loop to use to go around a jar’s neck:

… which was repeated for the other three labels:

The following morning, the cooled (and fully sealed) jars were removed from the fridge, and brought to the workspace where the labels were:

Labels were looped around the jars:

These jars will be kept to be donated to my church’s fall fair, along with a few jars of my pickled eggs! (And, Mom will receive any which don’t sell. 🙂 )

September 15, 2022

Making My Mom’s Rhubarb Chutney — Photos

My mom has been making a rhubarb chutney (of the British variety, not the Indian variety) since I was young, and she has loved it as long as I remember. Every year, she would harvest the rhubarb growing in her garden and make at least one batch per season, or two, or even three, depending on the yield.

I have been saying for years that I should learn how to make the chutney for her, although it has taken until this year before I finally consulted her recipe card and notes. The recipe I present here is adapted from (and very closely tracks) the recipe on my mom’s recipe card with several years’ worth of notes. The recipe on the card, if my recollection of her stories is accurate, is apparently derived from a recipe developed by her church ladies’ group in the early 1980’s, and which was possibly assigned to her after one of their canning sessions with a request to make some at home for an upcoming fall bazaar’s preserves’ table. It also incidentally is identical in ingredients and comparable in amounts to a recipe found on the internet for a barbecue sauce … so go figure.

Mom eats it as a condiment to various dishes, such as roast pork, chicken pot pies, shepherd’s pies, and many other dishes … basically, despite its sweet nature, it is also savoury, and pairs well with a number of savoury dishes.

Making the rhubarb chutney:

First, I took out two groupings of commercially grown rhubarb, in this case, about nine stalks each:

Two groupings of nine stalks each of rhubarb

The individual stalks of rhubarb were washed:

The rhubarb stalks were trimmed of their ends, leaves, and as the case may be, torn or damaged parts:

A non-reactive stainless steel pot (yes, there are some cheap stainless steel pots which will react with acid contents!) was taken out, and put to the ready beside the cutting board:

The rhubarb was sliced into 1/4″ to 1/2″ slices:

The chopped rhubarb was transferred to the stainless steel pot as sufficient amounts accumulated on the chopping board:

Once all the rhubarb was chopped and transferred to the pot, to be sure of the amount of rhubarb I had chopped was enough for the recipe, I measured it out …

… and placed it in a bowl:

Once measured out, the rhubarb was placed back in the stainless steel pot.

Next, packed brown sugar was measured out:

The brown sugar was added to the chopped rhubarb:

All brown sugar added to chopped rhubarb

The chopped rhubarb and brown sugar were mixed with a wooden spoon:

Wooden spoon used to mix chopped rhubarb and brown sugar

Brown sugar and chopped rhubarb mixed with wooden spoon

The chopped rhubarb and brown sugar mix was covered with the stainless steel pot lid:

The stainless steel pot with the rhubarb and brown sugar mix was placed in the refrigerator overnight:

Pot of rhubarb and brown sugar in fridge

Onions were taken out:

The onions were trimmed:

The onions were sliced into half-coins:

The onions were coarsely chopped:

The onions were transferred to a measuring cup to keep track of how much onions I had:

The chopped onions were transferred to a sealable container:

Chopped onions transferred to sealable container

The container of onions was covered and placed in the fridge until the next day.

The next day, the first thing done was to fill a pot with water, for use later as a boiling water bath for the mason jars used to bottle the chutney:

A burner on the stove was turned on:

The pot of water was placed on the stove to bring it to a boil:

The pot of rhubarb and brown sugar was taken out of the fridge:

Pot of rhubarb and brown sugar taken out of fridge

Another burner on the stove was turned on:

The pot of rhubarb and brown sugar was placed on the stove:

Pot of rhubarb and brown sugar placed on stove

As the mix began heating up, it was mixed to loosen some brown sugar at the bottom of the pot:

Throughout the following process, the mix was constantly stirred in order to avoid burning at the bottom of the pot.

The chopped onions were added to the pot:

The ingredients were mixed together:

Vinegar was measured out:

The vinegar was added to the pot:

The ingredients were yet again mixed together:

Raisins were measured out:

The raisins were placed in a small blender, to coarsely chop them:

Raisins placed in small blender for chopping

The raisins were chopped:

The chopped raisins were added to the pot:

The raisins were mixed in with the rest of the ingredients.

Ground cloves were measured out:

The ground cloves were added to the pot:

Ground cinnamon was measured out:

The ground cinnamon was added to the pot; as evidenced by the rising steam, the ingredients were heating up nicely:

Ground allspice was measured out:

The ground allspice was added to the pot:

At this point, the chutney was starting to boil, and, for reference, two hours was set on the stove timer (because the original recipe called for two hours of simmering):

The stove burner was turned down to a low setting:

The ingredients were constantly stirred in order to avoid burning and sticking on the bottom of the pot:

After about half an hour of simmering …

… this is what the chutney looked like:

At this point, the pot of water for sanitizing the jars came to a boil and its burner turned off:

After about an hour of simmering …

… this is what the chutney looked like, and was at the point of being syrupy:

As such, I knew I wasn’t going to need to continue simmering the chutney for another hour.

Canning tools were taken out: a ladle, a jar funnel, tongs, a large spoon, and a jar wrench:

Mason jars, rings, and lids were taken out — and yes, I used good condition used lids for this batch, since I had no intention of giving away any of the jars:

The water for the water bath was brought back to a boil, and mason jars were placed in the boiling water:

Water brought back to a boil and mason jars placed in boiling water

The canning funnel was quickly dipped in the boiling water to sanitize it:

Unfortunately, at this point, I could not take as many photos, in order to quickly fill the jars while the chutney and jars were still hot, and create a proper seal with the lids.

The chutney was taken off the stove; a mason jar was taken out of the boiling water, and the jar was filled with chutney:

A mason jar lid and ring were dipped in the boiling water:

The lid and ring were placed on the mason jar and the ring tightened.

The process was repeated until all the chutney was bottled, in this case, filling seven jars:

The jars were placed in the fridge to cool down a little more quickly:

Jars of chutney placed in fridge to cool them down

Afterwards, labels were placed on the jars, and the jars were placed in the cupboard.

And … Mom loves it, and has even whispered “it’s better than when I make it!” … no doubt (at least) a mild exaggeration. 🙂

September 3, 2020September 3, 2020

Making Bread and Butter Pickles

Before beginning to make pickled eggs, I had never cared much for pickles of just about any sort all my life, although over time I have come to realize that I wasn’t as averse to pickled items as much as I thought, demonstrated by having begun making pickled eggs and continuing to love them for many years now.

My mom, on the other hand, has enjoyed several kinds of pickles as long as I remember. While I was growing up, every summer into the fall, she would be part of a group of ladies at our church who would be making various jams, jellies, and pickled vegetables to sell later each autumn at the church’s fund-raising bazaar. This in fact was an indirect inspiration for me, a couple of decades later, to make my pickled eggs to contribute to the same church bazaar table. To this day, every year my mom makes an English-style chutney containing rhubarb (which she grows in her garden), raisins, and onions, using the recipe the church group assigned to her to make in the early 1980’s.

Over the years, one of the things that I have been keeping my eyes out for at roadside farmers’ stands on my way up to the cottage are artisanal jars of pickles from the local farmers to keep my mom supplied with pickles, usually of the bread and butter pickles, and pickled beets, varieties. For several years, one stand in particular sold bread and butter pickles that my mom really liked; however, the stand has since closed. I won’t be trying to find out whether the lady who made them distributes them elsewhere; conversations over the years indicated that she found that making at least her bread and butter pickles was becoming too much trouble for the price she was able to charge.

A growing nagging feeling that I should at least experiment making bread and butter pickles for my mom has been developing over the past couple of years.

This year, after having found a different road side stand distributing various pickled vegetables from a local cabane à sucre (maple sugar shack) (here’s my archive), I bought some jars of the bread and butter pickles for my mom. She tried them, and found them to be representative of the style but not as good as those from the closed farmer’s stand, and further, that the jars appeared not as fully packed as the other jars.

This proved to be one of two imps pushing me over the edge to experiment, the other imp being having found a three litre basket of pickling cucumbers at my local grocery store shortly thereafter, which I decided to purchase.

I almost looked for a recipe for bread and butter pickles on the internet, but just in time, I discovered on the back of a packet of the pickling spices I use for my pickled eggs a recipe for bread and butter pickles (here’s the recipe I developed, based on the recipe on the back of the bag.) I was mildly amused to see it there, having never noticed it before in all the years that I had been using this brand of pickling spices for my pickled eggs.

Already having a supply of onions, sugar, and vinegar, I proceeded to wash then slice the cucumbers in my food processor using the slicing tool. The recipe was based on cups of sliced cucumbers, so given the number of cups of sliced cucumbers I actually produced from what I’d purchased in the three litre basket (14 cups, as compared to the base recipe’s 20 cups), I adjusted the amounts of each of the rest of the ingredients accordingly.

I deviated from the original recipe in the following ways:

– The original recipe called for thinly slicing the onions, while I coarsely chopped the onions;

– In addition to the pickling spice blend in the bag, the original recipe called for mustard seeds, turmeric, and celery seeds, which I did not have, and which I simply omitted;

– The original recipe called for packing sterilized jars with the cucumber slices, onions, and pickling solution immediately once bringing the mix to a rolling boil, and then boiling the sealed mason jars in a water bath for 10 minutes, while I instead boiled the cucumbers and pickling solution for ten minutes, then packed them in sterilized mason jars, and finally proceeded directly to cooling the jars, over concerns that, not having used the water bath method before, I would suffer jar breakage.

Tasting a leftover pickle that didn’t get bottled, I could tell that it tasted roughly like what I knew bread and butter pickles should taste like.

The whole process, including cleaning up, took about two and a half hours, and produced five jars of about 450mL each. I was pleasantly surprised at how relatively easy it was.

My mom was thrilled to learn that I’d conducted my experiment, and anxiously awaited my next visit so that she could try the results.

In the meantime, I had a nagging guilt about not following the instructions and not treating the filled jars in a water bath. The following week, when I happened to be back at the grocery store, I happened upon another display with more pickling cucumbers, and yet another imp convinced me to buy a three-litre basket of cucumbers.

This time, I decided to follow the recipe a bit more closely, given that I already had what I considered to be an otherwise successful batch of pickles in sealed jars already in storage: While I decided to continue omitting the turmeric, mustard seeds, and celery seeds, I sliced the onions thinly and into coins; I brought the cucumber slices, sliced onions, and pickling solution to a boil; then I immediately packed the sterilized mason jars with the mix; and then boiled the sealed jars in a water bath for ten minutes. I did not have any jar breakage. The second basket I’d purchased seemed to have more cucumbers than the first basket (16 cups of sliced cucumbers), and I produced seven 500mL mason jars, as well as one 250mL mason jar.

In the meantime, my mom had made some pickles using some instructions she’d received from a friend, involving the use of pickling solution saved from a number of previously consumed jars of pickles, and some English cucumbers she’d purchased.

The following week, I visited my mom, bearing a jar from each batch, and we set up a taste-test. Fortunately, I am not outright averse to bread and butter pickles; they just aren’t something for which I’ve acquired a taste – yet. 🙂

We had four jars of pickles to compare, which we rated as follows by preference (1 – liked the most, 4 – liked the least):

1: My batch #2 – perfect, and crunchy (refrigerated)

2: My batch #1 – almost as good as “my batch #2”, but not crunchy, at least not enough, and otherwise very good (not refrigerated)

3: Current roadside stand pickles – okay, but not as good (refrigerated)

4: My mom’s recycled pickling solution experiment with English cucumber (refrigerated) – fourth place, and okay but decidedly unremarkable.

We came up with a suspicion afterwards: Since “my batch #1” wasn’t refrigerated while the others were, we wondered if that could have made a difference in the crunchiness.

I received a phone call a couple of days later about “my batch #1”: After refrigeration, they were declared a complete success, since they developed a certain crunch in the fridge.

So my experiments seem to have been successful, at least until and unless I find some spoilage in the jars of “my batch #1” after a few months, if they last that long, and of course which I am not expecting to occur anyway.

And, who knows? Maybe I’ll develop a taste for my bread and butter pickles!