Interview with a New Home Food Preserver
Author: Laurie Messing, Ghaida Batarseh Havern
Laurie Messing, seasoned Food Safety Educator and home food preserver talks with Ghaida Havern, fellow Food Safety Educator, but new to preserving food. Ghaida shares her insight on what important tips and tricks she has learned since she began preserving food including where to find resources, what to start with, and how to be prepared so you are successful as you preserve your harvest.
August 2, 2022
Are you new to preserving food at home? Wondering if something should be pressure canned or water bath canned? Unsure about where to find resources? Listen to hear from Ghaida Havern as she shares the lessons she has learned as she has jumped in to food preservation so that you also gain the confidence to do this on your own.
Transcript
Speaker 1:
Welcome to Think Food Safety, a podcast on topics related to food safety. Michigan State University extension educators talk with professionals to provide information and share resources on hot topics and best practices to keep people safe from foodborne illness. Thank you for tuning in. Let's get started and answer those questions that you didn't even know you had.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to MSU Extensions Think Food Safety Podcast. I'm Laurie Messing, Food Safety Extension Educator. And on today's episode I will be talking with Ghaida Havern, a food safety extension educator. And today we'll be discussing home food preservation tips from a beginner. Ghaida is a new home food preserver herself and she is joining us today to share lots of information about her experiences. Hi Ghaida.
Speaker 3:
Hi Laurie. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. All right, Ghaida, how about if we start with you sharing what drew you into preserving food at home? What got you interested or what sparked your interest in preserving food at home?
Speaker 3:
All right. So first and foremost, I've never preserved food at home until I moved out of my parents' house and I got married at the same time. And then I started my job as a food safety educator. So my background is a nutrition and food science. I have a bachelor's and master's in nutrition and in school we're taught all about the science behind food and about nutrition and the effects it has in our body. But one thing that's not taught is food preservation and how important food preservation is to make sure we're following research tested recipes and that's just something that's not taught in school.
So I started my job as a food safety educator and one of our primary programs is home food preservation where we teach the public on safe preservation methods where to find research tested recipes. And that's how I started to get into home food preservation. And like I said, I moved out of my parents' home and got married and graduated school at all at the same time and started working as a food safety educator. So I really wanted to build my skill set in home food preservation. So that's how I got started and actually that's how my interests started to grow. And I think it's such a great way to consume fruits and vegetables year round by preserving them in their peak quality while they're in season. So that's how I got started.
Speaker 2:
Great. And you're right here in Michigan, we're kind of just dabbling on the edges here of having that great produce starting to show up in season, maybe some asparagus and maybe we'll start seeing or some rhubarb probably already came and went. But we're kind of just on the outer edge there of a great time to kind of do some more exploration with preserving food at home because we're going to have all this wonderful Michigan fresh produce at our fingertips hopefully, or down the road or at a local farm market or inner gardens that will make it a lot easier. Ghaida, did your parents do any home food preservation?
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
'Cause I know a lot of times when we hear about people who start preserving or kind of come back to preserving, their thoughts, go back to watching their parents or grandparents or aunts and uncles. And so just curious if that was part of your experience as well.
Speaker 3:
Yes. My parents are from Jordan and a huge part of the Arabian culture is food preservation, specifically pickling. And they pickle all kinds of vegetables, like my mom growing up, pickled things like cauliflower, carrots, onion. She would make different types of marmalades and jams and jellies, but she didn't know how to can them. So what she would do is actually just put them in the refrigerator. So she would make a small amount at a time, put them in the refrigerator and would just eat it as we go. So it is very nostalgic to me, to have things like that. My mom would make marmalades around November, December, the holiday season and I just remember the smell in the home while my mom, she'd be stirring and she wouldn't use any pectin. She'd made it the old fashioned way she'd put into a jar and in the refrigerator and would just enjoy it during the holidays.
So very nostalgic to me and my husband's family, they're from the countryside and growing up they had a huge garden with like 85 tomato plants and his mother can all of the tomatoes because there was just so much of it in abundance, they wouldn't know what to do with it. So she would can it, the people around me all preserve food. So I wasn't even sure if they were following the research tested methods. And that's another reason why it made me interested in learning the science based way of doing it to make sure we're doing it safely and we don't make our family and friends sick. So yes, I did grow up with it and that's another reason why it's so interesting to me to preserve food. Now I want to make sure we do it the right way and I teach the science based way just so we're making sure that we're feeding our friends and families safe food.
Speaker 2:
Right. So you really have some interesting experiences growing up with that a little bit and then moving into with a family or becoming part of a family that does it and yeah, 85 tomato plants. I cannot even imagine the number of tomatoes that came from 85 tomato plants. We, one summer my husband put in 12 and we had tomatoes coming out of our ears it seemed like. So 85. Wow. That's a lot of preserving. Great. So yeah, that's wonderful and lots of good information already shared and like I just said, she's a brand new preserver. So for those of you listening who are brand new, hopefully this will give you some great tips and information but also help you to hear, I don't want to say the war stories, but hear the experiences...
Speaker 3:
Mistakes that I've made.
Speaker 2:
...the challenges and realize that we all started somewhere and so I'll just need to give it a go. So what have you preserved so far Ghaida?
Speaker 3:
Like I said, I have a master's in nutrition and food science and this is not something taught in schools. I'm a very brand new home preserver started from scratch and the first time I made cranberry conserve, I made it in November, 2021. Shortly after I started my new position as a food safety educator and I've learned a lot along the way. So I've preserved cranberry conserve, orange marmalade and I've frozen a ton of food and now I've learned the process of blanching before freezing. And right now we have berries in season and strawberries are coming in blueberries and I learned you just have to spread them out on a tray before putting, because then they'll clump together if you put them all in a bag and just stick it in the freezer. So that's what I've made so far. Cranberry preserve, orange marmalade, a frozen ton of food.
But I do have plans to use the pressure canner. I've never used the pressure canner before. I know how it works and I know the types of food that need to be preserved using the pressure can, but I've only tried the water bath canning methods so far for canning, the pressure canner is a little bit intimidating. I think it takes time to build a relationship with your canner to, you kind of have to play with the heat. I learned to get your dial if you're using a dial gauge can, which is the one that I have to work just right. So I haven't actually used it to preserve anything yet. I'm just kind of learning how to operate it. Water bath canning... water bath canning to me just feels a little easier because you just put the jars in boiling water and keep two inches of water above the jars and just let it boil and then you process it according to the recipe. But pressure canning is I think takes a little bit of time to build that skill set.
Speaker 2:
So you're right and Ghaida has already shared two really good tips that if you are a new preserver, some great ways to start are with freezing, blanching and freezing your vegetables, freezing your fruits. Again, a pretty inexpensive, you don't need a lot of equipment except a freezer which granted, depending on the volume you're freezing, you might need to get a larger freezer but a nice way to start doing some preserving. And then water bath canning again is often a way we recommend people get started for those high acid foods. Remember you can't preserve everything in your water bath can, no vegetables and no meat, no low acid foods. But for fruits and tomatoes that have been acidified, the water bath canner is perfect. Jams and jellies like Ghaida mentioned mermelades and conserves, those could all be safely done with that water bath can. And those are great ways to start.
And I think many people, I hear this over and over again, the pressure canner is very intimidating. It doesn't have to be though. And so hopefully as we talk today or as you do some further reading or attend one of our free weekly Preserving My Harvest food preservation classes, we do have one coming up on pressure canning in July around green bean time because that is a very popular product for the pressure canner. And we hear a lot of people like to can their green beans. So we do have sessions on that you can join to learn more because it is a little more in depth, it is a little more time specific you really like I tell people when you're preserving you really need to be just focused on that. We like to be multitaskers and we all like to get lots of things done at once, but when we're preserving and especially using that pressure caner, we really just have to be focused on following it step by step and then you'll be fine.
But it's not something we can rush through and just give it a go without having any kind of basic information. And so often people will do kind of a test run and maybe Ghaida, I'm not sure if you've done this yet, but kind of just pressure can a jar of water and just put it into the pressure canner and just do everything as you would do step by step and just get the feel like you said and develop that relationship with your canner and your stove because Ghaida is right. You've got to kind of manipulate your stove a bit to keep the heat where you want it to keep the pounds of pressure where it needs to be. So it does take a bit of practice.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, that's exact exactly right Laurie and I do have plans to pressure canned green beans. Like I said, I think it's great to pick the freshest highest quality produce and preserve it at their peak quality. So you're going to get that highest nutrition value if you do it that way. There's research out there, there's literature that says that preserving food at it's peak quality or food that's frozen and in peak quality can have more nutrition than buying it out of season. It has to be picked before it's ripened and then travel thousands of miles to get to your grocery store. So that's another reason actually that makes me really excited to preserve food and green beans is one of those things that I really want to try to preserve this summer, so...
Speaker 2:
I'm excited to hear about that because Yeah, green beans are very popular. I mean people freeze them too, but I know that's one thing a lot of people like to can. Great. So you mentioned a water bath canner and you have a pressure canner, freezing, there's not a whole lot of equipment, but have you needed to purchase or borrow any other types of equipment to help you with the preserving you've done so far?
Speaker 3:
There are so many different types of equipment that you would need for preserving food besides just your canner or your jars. So you would need things like proper cutting boards for different types of foods. You would need sharp knives, different kitchen utensils like tongs like towels. And we have to make sure to put a rack at the bottom of your... or pots that you're preserving in. I've actually bought everything that I would need in my kitchen. Like I said, I'm a newly weed and a lot of new kitchen equipment, sharp knives, cutting boards. So it's really helpful because it takes preparation before you preserve your food. And it's one of those things you have to read the recipe and make sure you're preparing everything prior to preserving the food according to the recipe. So other things I've had to buy are like a 5% vinegar, canning salt.
We've actually, I have, with my husband, pickled fish, we've pickled pike, he's a fisherman, he's an avid outdoorsman and it was something that we've tried and there's a research based recipe for that and it just takes the proper preparation before considering canning or preserving to make sure you read the recipe and purchase the supplies needed for that specific recipe. So for that specific recipe, for example, we needed, I believe it was a gallon size jar so we had to go out of our way to find that jar and then process it according to the recipe. Like I said, I have friends and family who do preserve at home and they have water bath canners and all the equipment. So my mother-in-law is so great and she lets me borrow her water bath canning equipment. She has tons of jars and it's something that I actually enjoy talking about with her 'cause she likes to, like I said, can her tomatoes.
Speaker 2:
Well, and I bet over the next few years I bet you'll probably teach some of your family members and your in-laws some information too. Probably they haven't maybe heard or heard recently or seen new recipes because again, I think that's something that no matter how long we've been preserving could be five years, it could be 35 years. I think there's always changes that occur and people aren't always up to date on what the newest recommendations are. That's a great...
Speaker 3:
Exactly.
Speaker 2:
...resource for your family now as well.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, exactly. I know people that have been preserving for years and years, but they don't know that they should follow a research tested recipe. So for example, my mother-in-law would just look up a recipe online and follow that and then I actually bought her a research based recipe book for preservation. So she was really happy with that and she uses that now to preserve food. It's really nice now that I'm learning so much, I can kind of share that knowledge around me.
Speaker 2:
Definitely. And Ghaida has mentioned a couple times, so we're using research based recipes and if you follow any of our food preservation sessions or podcasts or social media links or graphics that we do, using a research based recipe is really probably the key message that we are trying to educate when it comes to safe home food preservation. And so there are a couple options for you. There is Michigan State University extension, our Michigan Fresh website, which has research based recipes for pretty much everything that grows in Michigan fruits and veggies. There is the United States Department of Agriculture's complete Guide to Home Canning, which can be found online as well. And the National Center for Home Food Preservation is a very comprehensive website and they also publish a book called So Easy to Preserve. And you can again find those by Googling or searching for that on the internet.
And the Ball Blue books are also research based if as long as you're using a current Ball Blue book, so not one that's been out for many, many years, but those current Ball Blue books you can find in grocery stores or hardware stores or wherever you might find your canning supplies. And so that is a huge message for us when we teach food preservation because we want you to do it safely and not to waste your time and waste produce and potentially cause illness. So we want to have those safe products. So please check those out and you can again search for those or reach out to your local food safety extension educator. All right, so Ghaida, let's see here, what else? So you talked about what have you enjoyed most so far about preserving? Has it been canning, the freezing, the pickling, or which products have you enjoyed? Have they turned out okay or do you have any little oopsies along the way?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so far I really enjoy water bath canning because I've done it several times and I'm getting better at it and I did learn so much. For example, the first time that I used the water bath canner to make a jam, I didn't use any pectin. And then if you don't use any pectin, you have to cook for a long time until you get the right consistency and then you have to do the spoon test where you stick a spoon inside the mixture and then lift it up and make sure it's jelly like and not liquid so then it's done and it's ready to be processed. I learned that using pectin is so much easier and it makes the color so much better and more vibrant and I just like using pectin now. Recipes that call for using pectin because it reduces the cooking time and it just makes the jam or jelly making process so much easier.
But I found that the most convenient way to preserve food is freezing because it's so simple. Usually all you would really need is a couple of things. Like for example, I like to store onions in the freezer and that's because I cook using onions, so I dice the onions and then I store them in little bags that I can use one bag per meal that I make so it saves time and I could just pull it out of the freezer and throw it in the pot, it's ready to go. So I find freezing the most convenient but the most fun way, most fun way to preserve that I like is water bath and I just love jams and jellies and sharing them and making lots of jars to share with my friends and family. So I just find that the most fun way. But freezing is the most convenient way.
Speaker 2:
We here, don't we Ghaida, depending on who you talk to, everybody has a favorite as far as if they like water, bath, canning, atmospheric steam canning, pressure canning, freezing, dehydrating. Some people will tell you it depends on the product. Some people really like their peas frozen but they like their green beans canned or they have differences depending on the product. And so again, a lot of it really is personal preference now what you enjoy, what your family and friends, whoever you may share these goodies with enjoy. And so there is some trial and error sometimes in trying to figure out. You have a great abundance in your garden of, well we mentioned tomatoes earlier, what should you do with them? And if you're just starting out, maybe try a couple of different things and make sure you just clearly label those products so that you can know for sure after you did it.
Well we didn't really enjoy the crushed tomatoes as much. I wish we would've done more tomato juice and whatever the case might be. But it really is kind of a trial and error sometimes to see what you like or what you like better, what you use more frequently. And that onion tip is a great tip Ghaida, especially at the end of the season as we're cleaning out, it's hard to think about that now when gardens are barely starting. But we always recommend at the end of the season trying to freeze some of those things that are kind of left in the garden. So onions and peppers and freezing is a great way to use them so they don't go to waste. And then like I just said, throw them in your casserole and your soups and your stews and things all year long. So that's a really good tip as well.
Speaker 3:
Yeah. Especially if you're on the go. If you're in school or you have a full-time job, you have kids, it's just so much more convenient to prep your produce and then store it in the freezer in packages that you can actually use and then it makes things easier and it helps to label those packages with maybe the quantity and for sure the date and the name of the product. But also the quantity helps too, so that if you take out as much as you need from that package and how much you're putting into your food. So that's very helpful I found.
Speaker 2:
And that's a really good tip too. I know especially I know people who freeze a lot of strawberries to make jam through the winter and so it is a great idea that if your jam recipe calls for two cups of strawberries, freeze them in two cup portions so that way, like you said, they're ready to go buy them and they're ready to be used. So that can be really helpful with a lot of different products. Well you mentioned you want to pressure canned green beans this summer. Is there anything else new that, because I know you've heard a lot of our food preservation, preserving my harvest classes and seeing all kinds of ideas. What else do you have in mind for this summer?
Speaker 3:
Like I said, my husband's a hunter and there's recipes out there for venison, for fish and he likes to fish also. So sometimes we get those products in the abundance and like I said, I want to build a relationship with my pressure canner and use, there's lots of recipes out there actually for things like squirrel, like venison, different types of fish or seafood. And I would love to build up to that in one day, learn how to can all those food items that we get in abundance in my household because we're a hunter family, so I would love to start with green beans, build a relationship with my pressure canner, get some experience with that. And maybe I could just start with water, like you said, Laurie, just to learn how to adjust the temperature on my stove top and get my dial to go right where I want it and then build up to canning things that my husband hunts for and we could preserve those.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, kind of give it a run through almost like a practice run, we always mention too, and Ghaida alluded to this, that if you are trying a new recipe, we really encourage you to read through the whole recipe with your research based recipe, make sure you have all the ingredients. Usually it's pretty basic, but sometimes it could be something that you may not have on hand and almost kind of do a run through in your head as you read through to make sure you understand the recipe, you've got everything you need and also that you've allotted enough time to do it because some of these recipes aren't going to happen in 20 minutes.
Some of them, especially when we're pressure canning can be quite lengthy processes or even water bath canning, if you're doing quarts, they're not going to be done snapping your fingers. So we have to have the time allocated where you don't have to be somewhere else and then you're trying to rush it and that's when things likely will not go the way you want them to go. We can't rush preserving, especially with canning for sure. Well you've shared a lot of tips already Ghaida. Do you have any other tips though that come to...
Speaker 3:
I do, yes. I have lots of tips for beginners. So because I learned so much during this process, the number one tip I have is to make sure, like Laurie said, to read the recipe several times and familiarize yourself with the recipe, all the ingredients and prepare for that before you even begin the process. It's really hard when you're mid following a recipe and then you realize you needed something or you did something wrong because you didn't read the recipe in full. So I highly recommend going through the recipe and making sure you know what you're going to do next. That's number one. And then two, this helped me, we have an extension YouTube page and I've watched demonstrations from several of our colleagues with their videos on our extension YouTube page and I watched how they did water bath canning, that was really helpful to get me started with water bath canning before I even touched the canner.
I got to see how it's done from someone who is following that research tested recipe and knows how to operate the canner and the ins and outs of preserving. To me that was really helpful to watch a video from our extension YouTube page. And then this is very specific to canning, but I also learned not to tilt the jars to remove the water from the top of the jars so that water will evaporate. But if you tilt the jars and try to get that water out, you might not, your cans might not seal properly.
I think it's important for those out there who are just starting to preserve, to remember not to disturb or tilt the jars and also have a towel or something on your countertop so you don't shock the jars because you're going from an extreme temperature to one another so you don't want to shock your jars. So it's important to have a towel and then not disturb them and let them seal. I also learned that using pectin is easier than the no pectin option, although both are possible. It's just easier to use pectin recipes that require it. So it shortens the cooking time because my marmalade did take over an hour of stirring to get it to just the right consistency.
Speaker 2:
Oh wow.
Speaker 3:
And I did notice a difference between the pectin options versus no pectin options. So that's just my take on that. And then...
Speaker 2:
I was going to say, like we said, personal preference. So if you have the time, but again, if there's not much of a difference, you can really save some time with the pectin.
Speaker 3:
Right. It's just personal preference, but I just learned the time is shorter with the pectin. And then you want to plan for storage. If you are planning to utilize a lot of freezer space, you're going to need to make room in your freezer for all that produce.
Speaker 2:
Definitely.
Speaker 3:
And those are the tips that I have that I learned along the way as beginner in food preservation.
Speaker 2:
Well, and those are great tips and you've given I think everyone a lot to think about when you're starting out. But again, I think one thing we didn't never hear Ghaida say was that she was afraid to try. Because I think even with the pressure canner, we encourage people to find your research based recipe, read through it, get ready, give it a try because sometimes we just have to take that last step in and try something new. And if you do it step by step, it's going to likely go very well. There could be some growing pains along the way just like anything else you do starting out. But sounds like so far you've had pretty great success with it Ghaida and you've kind of jumped in with both feet, which has been fun for us to listen to as your teammates and team members as well.
There's so much out there people could be preserving for 30, 40 years and every year there's so many research based recipes out there, you could still find two or three new recipes every year to try that you've probably never done because there's so much out there. Take advantage of all those options and it's kind of overwhelming really. That's another tip, maybe Ghaida for someone new is really, you might just want to pick one or two things to start with because you could really overwhelm yourself if you decide that you're going to do everything this year. And so that could be very overwhelming for a beginner or someone who's been a seasoned preserver.
Speaker 3:
That's exactly right. And to add to that, choose something to preserve that you actually enjoy eating because it would be the worst to spend all that time and effort preserving the food. And then you find out you just don't like that food or it looked good, but you don't normally eat that type of food. It's really important that you actually are going to preserve something that your family and yourself enjoy to eat. And you're [inaudible 00:27:23] I've learned so much from working on the food safety team and from our colleagues and from you, Laurie and I highly recommend attending our Preserving My Harvest Weekly programs to learn about home food preservation because we have a different topic every week. And attending those has really helped me learn about the different techniques and home food preservation and how different things are preserved at home and different recipes are shared. And that's one place where I've learned a lot from.
Speaker 2:
Ghaida. I still learn too every week when I listen because, well, I've been preserving for a while and I grew up watching my family do it, but again, there's just so much out there and so many options and so many varieties and it's overwhelming. So I find that I still am interested in learning different ways and different topics and different recipes and like I just said, they're free. So it is another great way to get some education. And then if any of you are following our Think Food Safety Facebook page, there are a few videos with the kind of basic methods, the approved food preservation methods of atmospheric steam, canning, water bath canning, pressure canning. There's a blanching and freezing and maybe even a dehydrating, but there are four or five videos there that are archived there and go through the processing and the methods and kind of the basic step by step and how to use each of those home food preservation methods.
So that's another nice resource as well as the extension YouTube videos that were shared and are preserving my Harvest weekly classes. So we do have lots and lots of resources available. If you want to search MSU extension for our Safe Food website, you will be able to click on the events tab and there you'll see all of our upcoming classes as well as lots of other resources. Well Ghaida, I think this was great. I think it's so helpful for the audience to hear from someone who's new, hear about tips and tricks and considerations that you've had and that you recommend. It's just a nice way to let everyone know that we're all a work in progress when it comes to preserving food at home. And whether you're a beginner or you've been doing it for a while, we can all learn a little bit along the ways. Any last comments that you want to share?
Speaker 3:
Right Laurie? I just want to say thanks for giving me the chance to share my experiences. It's been a great journey. It's really fun preserving food and I really have enjoyed it. If you are a beginner and you're a little bit intimidated, don't be, just start small, start with freezing and then start water bath canning, and then you'll soon find out as long as you follow the research tested recipe, it's not as bad as it sounds. So it's a fun process and it's something great to try. So don't be intimidated and give it a chance.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, definitely preserving Michigan fresh so you can enjoy it all winter long. That's one of our messages. We share that, like you said, preserving that taste of summer now so you can enjoy it when those cold winter days sneak back around and enjoy it all winter. So. Well, great Ghaida, thanks for joining us today and good luck with your preserving this summer. I'm sure it'll go wonderfully. I look forward to hearing about that. And for everyone listening, check out those resources we mentioned. Check out our MSU extension safe food website and follow us on Think Food Safety. And we want to thank you for listening to our Think Food Safety podcast Today.
Speaker 1:
MSU is an affirmative action equal opportunity employer. Michigan State University Extension programs and materials are open to all without regard to race, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, religion, age, height, weight, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, or veteran status. This information is for educational purposes only. Reference to commercial products or trade names, does not imply endorsement by MSU Extension or biased against those that it didn't mention.
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