

4 Unexpected Ways To Preserve Summer's Fruits And Veggies

fruit and vegetable preservation
Getty Images/Dana Hursey

You wait all year for the bountiful late-summer harvest, but when it arrives, you're totally overwhelmed. Tomatoes, corn, and peppers abound, and even if you make a valiant effort to eat everything before it goes bad, chances are you'll be throwing out unused produce that's past its prime. 

The solution, of course, is preservation. Don't groan yet. Preserving food doesn't have to be the complicated canning affair you remember from your grandmother's kitchen. You don't even need to buy a single Mason jar! In fact, it can actually be fun and easy, says Sherri Brooks Vinton, author of Put 'Em Up! A Comprehensive Home Preserving Guide for the Creative Cook.

We asked Vinton to share her favorite low-effort techniques to make summer produce last. Here are her four favorite methods:

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1. Pickle your favorite produce.
Believe it or not, you don't need any fancy equipment to make tasty pickles. Refrigerator pickles, also called quick pickles, rely on boiling brine to quickly pickle your produce—and we're not talking just cucumbers here. You can pickle just about every fruit or veggie in sight.

"This is great for when you're going on vacation or your CSA box is overflowing or you just overbuy at the farmers' market," Vinton says. "That umpteenth pound of beets that you don't know what to do with—you can pickle them."

How to do it: Just make a simple brine of vinegar, water, salt, sugar, and any spices that you like, bring it to a boil, and pour over chopped produce of choice. Let cool, then toss in the fridge—they're ready to eat right away and they'll keep for 3 weeks.  (Snack AND lose weight with this box of Prevention-approved treats from Bestowed.)

Try It:
Ginger-Carrot Slaw

Put 'Em Up/Kevin Kennefick

Makes: About 2 pints

1 lb carrots, trimmed and peeled
½ lb daikon radish, trimmed and peeled, or other radish, trimmed
1 red bell pepper, seeds and stem removed
¼ c salt
2 c distilled white vinegar
1 c water
1 c sugar
½ c shredded ginger

1. CUT the carrots, radish, and bell pepper into julienne strips on a mandoline or shred in a food processor or with a box grater. Toss the shredded vegetables with the salt and put in a colander set over a bowl to drain for 2 hours.
2. RINSE the vegetables thoroughly, and then squeeze by the handful to remove as much water as possible.
3. COMBINE the vinegar, water, sugar, and ginger in a large nonreactive pot and bring to a boil. Stir in the vegetables and return to a boil, stirring to make sure that all ingredients are heated evenly. Remove from the heat.
4. LADLE into bowls or jars. Cool, cover, and refrigerate for up to 3 weeks.


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2. Make your own dried fruit and veggies.

You buy dried foods all the time—herbs, cranberries, raisins—so why not try it at home? "You can dry chilies, mushrooms, corn, any kind of berry, or even stone fruits," Vinton says. "Slice them thinly, put them in a low oven, and just dry them out." (This usually takes around 5 hours.)

You can also go the old-fashioned route and dry produce by hanging it on a string in a cool, dry place. "This works for green beans, chili peppers, herbs—as long as they're in a nice dry environment," she says. Fall's lower temps and low humidity make it an ideal season for drying produce. You couldn't ask for better timing. 

Try It:
Dried Cherries

Getty Images

Makes: 4 cups fresh cherries makes about 1 cup dried cherries

4 to 8 c sweet cherries

1. PREHEAT oven to 170°F. Line several baking sheets with dish towels and set aside. Prepare an ice-water bath in large bowl or clean sink.
2. BRING large pot of water to a boil. Drop cherries into water, no more than 3 cups at a time, and return to a boil. Blanch for 1 minute.
3. SCOOP out cherries with spider or slotted spoon and plunge them into the ice-water bath. Continue blanching cherries in batches. Remove cherries from ice bath with slotted spoon and spread on towel-covered baking sheets. Blot dry.
4. PIT cherries. Spread pitted cherries on metal screens or cooling racks set over baking sheets. Dry in oven until cherries are shriveled and no longer moist in the center, 5 to 7 hours. Cherries are fully dry when you can squeeze a handful and they don't stick together.
5. SET aside cherries to cool, then transfer them to covered container to condition for 1 week or so. This allows dried fruit to redistribute any trapped moisture. If you notice moisture on sides of container, repeat drying process for another hour. Dried cherries will keep for up to 1 year in an airtight container.

3. Freeze everything. 
Preservation doesn't get easier than this. While you'll want to blanch most tough veggies like green beans, carrots, and corn before you freeze them, you can freeze fruits like tomatoes, blueberries, and figs without any prep whatsoever. "But you don't want to just throw them in a bag," Vinton says. "You want to arrange them in a single layer on a cookie sheet so they are individually frozen. Otherwise you get that clump—I call it the berry 'berg. You want to avoid that." Frozen fruits and veggies will last up to 6 months in the freezer—perfect when you need a burst of summer flavor in the depths of winter.

Try It:
Frozen Berries

Put Em Up/Kevin Kennefick

Any quantity berries, stemmed and cleaned

1. SPREAD out berries on rimmed baking sheet. (Make sure they're not touching one another.) Pop sheet pan into freezer and freeze until berries are solid.
2. TRANSFER frozen berries to airtight containers or bags. Press out as much air as possible, then return to freezer. Will keep frozen for up to 6 months.

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4. Ferment traditional pickles. 
Don't fear the F-word: Fermentation—the traditional way of making pickles—is easier than you think it is. Essentially, it works like this: You submerge a pound of produce in a salty brine (about 6 tablespoons salt to 2 quarts water), cover it, and leave it alone for a week or two at room temperature. All the while—almost like magic—lactobacillus bacteria in the brine impart an irresistible tangy-sour flavor to your fruit or veggie. And (bonus!) this is a great way to get more of those probiotics you know are so good for you. 

"You can ferment any vegetable or fruit—people think of just cucumbers and sauerkraut, but I love to ferment chili peppers to make sauce, too," Vinton says. 

Try It: 
Classic Crock Pickles

Put Em Up/Kevin Kennefick

Makes: About 1 gallon

4 lb pickling cucumbers
2 qt water
6 Tbsp kosher salt
1 head garlic, cloves separated and peeled
2 Tbsp dill seed
1 Tbsp mustard seed
2 tsp celery seed
1 handful oak leaves (to preserve crispness), from your backyard or a park, washed well

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1. HAVE ready a thoroughly washed gallon container, a plate or cover just smaller than the opening of the container, and a quart jar full of water. Make sure the gallon container is glass, food-grade ceramic, or food-grade plastic. 
2. REMOVE the blossom end (the end that doesn't have a stem) from the cukes. Combine the water with the salt, garlic, dill seed, mustard seed, and celery seed in the container and stir to dissolve. Add the oak leaves and then the cucumbers.
3. PRESS the plate into the brine to submerge the cucumbers so that they're completely covered with at least 1 inch of liquid. If you need more liquid, mix up a solution of 1 tablespoon of kosher salt to 1 cup of water and add it to the pickling liquid to reach the desired volume. Place the quart jar on top of the plate to keep it submerged. Cover the top of the container with a tea towel and set aside.
4. CHECK the pickles every day. You will see bubbles rising. This is a good sign. A scum, or bloom, will form on top of the liquid. This is good, too. Remove the jar, and the plate if necessary, and skim off the bloom every day or so. Rinse the jar and plate and return them to their tasks.
5. WHEN the bubbles stop rising, after a week or two, remove the plate and spear out a pickle. Slice it in half. It should be uniformly pickled to its center. Take a taste. It should be pleasantly sour and salty. If it isn't uniform in texture or sour enough, let it sit for another day or two to complete the ferment.
6. WHEN pickles reach the desired flavor, put the whole container in the refrigerator to slow fermentation. Remove any developing scum regularly. They'll keep in the fridge for 4 to 6 months.

Recipes excerpted from Put 'Em Up (c) Sherri Brooks Vinton. Photography by (c) Kevin Kennefick. Used with permission of Storey Publishing.

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