Inspiration for preserving in a Crock-Pot with recipes for fruit butter, tomato ketchup and more.
My home canning history began at my mother’s side, just as she had learned, and as her Ukrainian mother before her.
My mother did things her own way, however, and in the world of preserving that usually meant reducing added sugar in recipes or eliminating it altogether.
We cooked over a wood stove and she kept a (now) vintage oval Le Creuset pot on the back of the stove, cooking fruit down for hours to concentrate the natural sugars.
The aroma from that flame-coloured pot would drive me wild: cinnamon, apples, plums and wild Saskatoon berries. Each ingredient preserved with as little intervention as possible into jams and butters, compotes and conserves.
Of course, I have also found my way of putting up the bounty of summer. I still reject the load of added sugar, but I wholeheartedly embrace technology, like preserving in a Crock-Pot.
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