I just did the annual canner run of cranberry sauce. I followed the same general procedures described last year, but this year started with more berries. I missed out on the three-pound bags at one warehouse club--they were only there one weekend and my refrigerator was full of other things--but another club had two-pound bags. I got five.
As I have done previously, I started by culling bad berries. There are always some that have a few soft spots, and some are profoundly bad. It takes a bit of time and I'm sure I miss some even with the sorting; nonetheless, it improves the finished product. FWIW, making cranberry sauce on your own rather than buying what's available already canned makes sense for this reason alone: some of the bad berries may be removed at canneries by quality control procedures, but some probably make it into the finished product. 
I spent close to an hour picking through the berries, and at the end I removed 21 ounces' worth. Last year I noted that I had an 18% fail rate; this year was better--only 13%.
That left me with a lot of berries, and I knew I'd have more than one canner load (eight quarts) of sauce. I upped the water and Whey Low by 12%, using 12 cups of each.
Given the increased quantity, I used my big stock pot, which has a capacity of 20 quarts. It fit everything with ease. After picking through the berries, the only other thing I do to them before pouring into the pot is rinse them in a colander.I let the syrup boil before dumping them in; some rupture immediately but some take a while. Probably 15 minutes elapsed between pouring the berries into the pot and having a finished product ready to ladle into jars. I got about ten quarts. The last quart jar was only about 80% full, so I didn't process it--I just stuck it into the refrigerator. It's mostly syrup, anyway. As the picture below shows, I still have trouble balancing berries and syrup in the jars. I don't worry about it--they all end up being edible.
No comments:
Post a Comment