Preserving the Harvest with Dick & James

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Preserving the Harvest with Dick & James

Dick and James share their top tips for preserving the harvest so you can enjoy a delicious bounty all year round. Originally published in Practical Self-Sufficiency.

Certain times of the year bring with them a bountiful supply of produce, but the harvesting season is often short and sweet. However, you can make the most of these
seasonal gluts by storing and preserving your produce, allowing you to enjoy it all year round. Some preserving methods also intensify flavours and make tasty treats to cheer you up on cold winter days.

Filling the Larder

If you are living and eating in tune with the seasons, you will notice a change in the foods availab le locally at different times of the year. Yet, by eating purely seasonal produce you could find yourself with a vitamin deficiency in the cold dark days of winter, which a supply of stored summer crops can help to remedy.
Besides, there comes a time in the depths of winter when all you really want is a tasty fruit pudding or tomato sauce with pasta. To achieve this, you need to look ahead in summer and early autumn, and store your produce when it is ripe. Get the technique right, too, so that you don’t end up with a jar of inedible mould.

Best Preserving Methods

Pickles & Chutney
Pickling and making chutney can actually improve the taste of your produce, as well as preserving it. The processes rely on preserving food in vinegar and flavouring it with spi ces and other ingredients. Both are delicious with cold meats, cheese, and curries.

Jam & Jellies
Making jams and jellies is a great way to preserve all those fruits that grow in excess during the summer and early autumn. Drying is the oldest method of preserving produce, and also one of the cheapest and simplest. We frequently dry herbs, tomatoes, seeds, chillies, salamis, and hams, and have built a solar dryer.

Curing
Curing is a preserving technique that is normally reserved for meat and fish. It usually involves using large amounts of salt to draw the moisture out of meat or fish and so make it inhospitable to harmful microorganisms.

Smoking
Hot and cold smoking are methods to preserve food, but are more reliable if you cure or dry it first. Today, smoking is primarily used for flavouring, rather than as a preserving technique. Having said that, if you smoke something for long enough, it will also dry out enough for storage.

Freezing
Freezing allows you to store a wide selection of meats, fish, fruits, and vegetables. We also often freeze soups and le over meals once they have cooled down. The benefit of freezing fruit and vegetables is that most of the vitamins and goodness is retained, but the drawback is that the texture of foods can be lost. Make sure you label and date your bags and containers, and that you organize your freezer well, with the newest produce at the back, or you will end up losing last year’s frozen peas until the next ice age.

Fermenting
Fermenting not only preserves fruit and vegetables for several months, but also gives complex and unique flavours to your produce. Some of our favourite ferments are sauerkraut, kimchi, and cucumber pickles, but we also love to ferment our root vegetables and garlic to make the most of bumper crops.

What to pick & when?
See Dick and James’s month-by-month guide here. You can find more tips and lots of delicious recipes in Dick and James’s book Practical Self-Sufficiency.

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