It’s harvest time and that’s part of the reason that I’ve been silent here. There are other reasons, but that is the reason I may share.
Those who have been following my garden progress know about the great greenhouse catastrophe of 2013. Wherein many of my starts were lost to a big storm that blew through and knocked down the greenhouse. It blew seeds everywhere, as well as upending baby starts. The upshot? I have a ton of brassicas vegetables, but also a huge supply of cabbage.
So far I’ve made Chinese chicken salad, fresh coleslaw, stuffed cabbage, stir-fry….but, I was looking for a way to preserve this bounty into the winter time.
I found this recipe for canning coleslaw. So, I decided to try it. It was easy, it was fast. And I ate some yesterday, straight from the jar, although you can open the can, rinse and add a regular coleslaw dressing if you like. I’ll likely do a third batch, too, and share with friends.
Here’s the recipe with my take on the recipe. The plain text is the original recipe; the italics are my comments.
COLESLAW FOR CANNING…
Basic Ingredients:
1 medium head cabbage (I was already doubling this recipe, but found that even with doubling it, I needed 3 heads of cabbage.)
1 large carrot (I had three large carrots. Basically one carrot to one head of cabbage.)
1 green pepper (I used two small green peppers.)
1 small onion (I used red onion and one very large one.)
1 teaspoon salt (3 tsp of salt since I ended up tripling the recipe, which is more like doubling it.)
Syrup:
1 cup of vinegar (My experiment batch taught me that even if you’re making a single batch, you need to double the syrup recipes. So you’ll need 2 cups of vinegar. With my recipe, I needed 6 cups.)
1/4 cup of water (Same mathematics applied. I needed to double for a single recipe, so for a single batch you’ll need 1/2 cup of water. I needed 1 1/2 cups for mine.)
2 cups of sugar (As a rule I always skimp on sugar in my canning. You just don’t need as much as all these freaking recipes pushed by the sugar industry would have you believe. I would cut down to 3/4 a cup for a single batch. Therefore for my batch, I only used 2 1/4 cups. However, I think I can get away with maybe even 1 1/2 cups next time.)
1 teaspoon of celery seed (that seemed perfect for my huge batch, if you decide to do a single batch, cut it down)
1 teaspoon mustard seed (Same as the celery seed, if you do a single batch, cut it down to like 1/4 tsp. for my huge batch this was perfect.)
Shred together vegetables. Add the salt.
Let stand 1 hour.
Drain water from vegetables. (This step is uber important. That way you know how much you can squeeze into containers. By the way, my batch made 7 pints.)
Boil syrup ingredients together for 1 minute, cool.
Add syrup to vegetables.
Pack into quart jars and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes, (if using pints, process for 10 minutes) or put into freezer containers and freeze.
Leftovers may be frozen. This slaw may be drained before use and mayonnaise added, or used as is. (I liked it as is, but it was a lunch for me. I haven’t tried freezing this; my freezer space is at a premium, so I’m so thrilled to have found this recipe.)
So here’s the recipe, with my measurements:
Casz’s Canned Coleslaw:
3 heads of cabbage
3 large carrots
2 medium green peppers
1 large red onion
3 tsp of salt
Shred together vegetables. Add the salt. Let stand 1 hour. Drain water from vegetables.
Syrup: 6 cups of vinegar, 1 1/2 cup of water, 2 1/4 cups of sugar (feel free to use less), 1 tsp celery seed, 1 tsp of mustard seed
Boil syrup ingredients together for 1 minute, cool. Add syrup to vegetables.
Process in 7 pint jars and water bath process for 10 minutes.
Can’t wait to be eating a taste of summer this autumn and winter!
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