Fall Freezer Canning

One of the things I like about having a chest freezer, is being able to pop into it all the things I’m not ready to deal with, preservation-wise. It’s especially good for quantities too small to make up a recipe. Jelly for example. Over the summer I’ve frozen small quantities of fruits with the idea that I’d make a batch of mixed fruit jelly.

Frozen elderberries, grapes, and sand cherries

Elderberries (what the birds left me), sand cherries (several handfuls from their first year of fruiting), tree cherries (pie ones, also from a first year of fruiting), grapes (from a vine planted years ago, not fruiting well because it now gets too much shade), and red raspberries, (oops, forgot I ate all those. Sorry.)

Also, these…

Bags of tomatoes in the freezer for canning

These are tomatoes I’ve been saving to make okra gumbo.

I lived in Louisiana for a number of years, and fell in love with Cajun cooking. I always preferred filé gumbo, and have in fact canned that. Last year I had tons of okra and tomatoes, so I canned a batch of chicken okra gumbo. We loved it! This year I have plenty of chevon (goat meat) in the freezer, so I made and canned chevon okra gumbo.

Frozen tomatoes peel easliy

I love the freezer method of peeling tomatoes, how-to details in this post. The okra I used was from the freezer too, leftovers from last year. I had plenty of tomatoes and chevon, and enough okra to can 14 quarts of gumbo.

Chevon okra gumbo. Ready to heat and serve with rice.

The rest of the frozen tomatoes will be peeled and canned in chunks for soups.

Another thing I put in the freezer is all of our leftover homegrown chicken bones. From these I make bone broth.

Chicken bone broth (aka chicken stock) How-to, Here. I can quarts for soup, pints for cooking grains & making gravies.

Basically, bone broth is made by adding an acid (vinegar or wine, for example) to the pot and simmering for a long time over low heat. I added leftover liquid from lacto-fermented pickles this time. The acid helps dissolve and release minerals from the bones for a nutritious soup or gravy stock.

Besides the odds & ends jelly I showed you above, I pull out all the previous year’s leftover frozen blueberries. These become blueberry jam.

Steaming hot blueberry jam

I had enough blueberries to make six pints.

Fall freezer canning usually clears out the freezer pretty well. Then I defrost the freezer and I’m ready for a new fill.

What I love is that this is a time saver during the busiest part of summer harvest and canning. Plus it’s nice to do at least some of my canning in the fall, when the temperatures are a little cooler and I appreciate the heat from the stove. It’s nice to see my pantry shelves filled up again too.

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