Preserving Australia – preserving, canning, and cheese making at home. SWEEEEET. The Snook and I haven’t been able to find any Mason jars, but that site just pointed me to Redback Trading, who imports them. And they’ve also got stoneware (for sauerkraut and kimchee), cast iron cookware, and smokers? I am in PIONEER WOMAN HEAVEN.
Edited to add: Ooh, maybe I could make my own cheese curd for poutine!
6 responses
Ooh I like it. I’m keen on pickling some snapper. I’m settling for ceviche at the moment. Pickled fish is one of the few reasons I travel to IKEA these days.
The reason you haven’t found Mason jars is because the Australian hom-grown equivalent is Fowlers’ Vacola preserving jars – ‘preserving’ in the Australian meaning of bottling fruit and veg to preserve them, not the US sense of jam-making. You can see the Fowlers’ range at http://www.bakeandbrew.com.au/category23_1.htm
LynS beat me to it. We used Agee jars and Perfit seals/lids for preserving in NZ. You don’t need no steekin’ Masons!
BTW, I preserved all my own fruit and tomatoes for 10 years, if you need some advice. It’s not nearly as scarey as people seem to think.
Ah, see, I use “Mason” jars in the generic sense (like Kleenex). I just mean the type with a ring and a separate lid. I haven’t been able to find ANY like that in our area. The homewares shops carry some lovely jars with clamping lids or with one-piece screw lids, but none of the proper ones for doing heat/vacuum seals. I’m happy to use Fowlers’ if I can get them! Thanks for the link…
In the midwestern US, we refer to any non-jam preserving as “canning.” I’ve eaten my fair share of “canned” veg from my grandma and my great aunts! I’ll leave the jam-making to the Snook. I’m thinking more about things like tomatoes and green beans at the moment.
Beans are tricky – you need to salt them (with **non-iodised salt** or they go black!). But tomatoes are really easy. They are so acidic they don’t need any special treatment. The biggest problem I find now is finding tomatoes with really good taste that are cheap enough to make it worthwhile. We used to get a type called ‘beefsteak’, which were very large and had lot of flesh. Most of the ones you can buy aren’t tasty enough and have too much juice to flesh ratio. If you intend to grow them in order to preserve them, beefsteak and oxheart would be two hybrids to look out for.