Home-made preparations for the winter are a great alternative to pickles and marinades, displayed in close ranks on supermarket shelves. Today, conservation is no longer considered philistinism or the inheritance of insolvent citizens. Who better than wife and mother understands the needs and tastes of family members? No marketer or technologist in the food industry can get ahead of her in wanting to provide your table with healthy and delicious food.
Gifts of summer
Vegetables, berries, mushrooms and fruits are abundant in the summer diet of most citizens. But since these products are quickly spoiling, they are the ones that preserve them. Of course, these days you will not surprise anyone with strawberries, tomatoes or watermelon, bought in January. However, their taste and aroma remotely resemble seasonal analogues, and it is better to keep silent about the content of vitamins. Homemade preparations for the winter allow you to keep these products in the most attractive form without loss of quality and taste. And this is very important, because in winter there are so few summer fruits and vegetables! Homemade winter preparations are traditionally done in several versions: drying, pickling, freezing, cooling or canning. Each of the methods has its own nuances.
Drying
Most preferably, natural drying, both in the shade and in the sun. However, if the weather does not help, then you can dry berries, mushrooms or fruits in the oven or in special drying machines. It is advisable to store the finished product in linen bags or pouches and carefully protect it from moisture.
Freezing and cooling
You can store such homemade preparations for the winter until the next harvest, while all useful components remain in the products, and the taste and smell do not change. For freezing, you should choose meaty varieties, rather than juicy ones, otherwise after thawing, apricots or strawberries can turn into an incomprehensible gruel. But if this still happened, do not despair, the perfect raw material for filling pies or boiling compote lies in front of you. If you choose grains from corn, then they will fit into the freezer much more than in the cobs. All products should be stored in bags or containers in batches, preventing them from being saturated with extraneous odors.
When cooling to zero temperature, you can maintain the freshness of foods for up to six months, however, it will be important here to regularly review them and remove poor-quality units in time. There are secrets in this matter - carrots and beets remain fresh for a long time in a container with sand, and an apple in an individual wrapper from newspapers.
Souring
Sauerkraut, cabbage, crispy cucumbers, sharp tomatoes, piquant apples - these delicious homemade preparations for the winter do not require much time for cooking and will decorate any table, from a festive to everyday. The container with the product should be placed in the cold, the ideal place for it would be a basement, balcony or refrigerator. Salt, contrary to a common misconception, does not extend the shelf life, so its excess will not give anything but a spoiled taste.
Conservation
The most time-consuming, but also the most popular of all food preservation technologies. Its undoubted advantage is that it is simple to store cans, they do not need either a certain humidity or temperature. However, if the process technology is not followed, dangerous microbes can get inside and successfully reproduce. If the contents of the jar change color, taste or texture, and the lid is inflated or rusted, throw it away without regret. In the preservation of "usefulness" preservation is also inferior to other methods, but the taste and assortment of recipes is beyond competition. Jam, stewed fruit, jam, marinades, pickles, jams - traditional home-cooked foods favorite since childhood. Salads for the winter from a jar - a separate chapter: with vegetables, rice, tomatoes and even meat, they are able to satisfy even real gourmets.
With a little creativity and a sense of humor, you can turn your stocks into table decorations. Homemade preparations for the winter, photos will only confirm this, they can look appetizing and attractive, but we have already talked about their benefits.