Marinating Mushrooms

Sunday, January 23, 2011
Marinated mushrooms for Canning

My mother was an excellent cook and one hors d'oeuvre she liked to serve, and my brother and I loved to devour, were her marinated mushrooms. She made them 1-2 weeks in advance so they would absorb all the wonderful flavors and not taste vinegary. I have multiplied her recipe for canning purposes. Processing information is from here

Marinated Mushrooms

7 lbs. small, fresh mushrooms
1/2 C. lemon juice
2 1/2 C. white vinegar
2 C. olive oil
2 tsp. salt (optional)
4 garlic cloves, halved and crushed
parsley, 2-3 tsp. dried or 1 TB. fresh, chopped
1 bay leaf
2 peppercorns per jar

Wipe mushrooms and drop in boiling water with 1/2 C. of lemon juice. Boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Drain and rinse. Mix the vinegar, olive oil, salt, garlic and parsley in saucepan. Simmer 5 minutes. Place 2 peppercorns in each 1/2 pint jar. Fill jars with mushrooms. Carefully pour oil and vinegar mixture, stirring well each time, into each jar, placing one garlic piece in each jar as well. You may have to fish these out of the mixture, but I find the garlic seems to permeate the marinade if it is heated with the other ingredients. Remove air bubbles, wipe well to get all oil off, cap, seal and process in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes. Adjust for your altitude if necessary. Allow 1-2 weeks before tasting, if you can wait that long, and enjoy! Yields approximately nine 1/2 pint jars.

If you don't want to can them and prefer one smaller batch, here's her recipe.

Marinated Mushrooms

1 lb. small, fresh mushrooms, wiped
Drop in water with juice of one lemon, boil and simmer 5 min.
Drain and rinse.
Put in saucepan 3/4 C. vinegar, 1/3 C olive oil, one crushed garlic clove, 1/2 bay leaf, parsley and 2 peppercorns.
Boil 5 min. and pour over mushrooms in bowl or jar. Cool and chill.

Old canning post

Sunday, February 27, 2011
Canning Update
Sockeye salmon was on sale this week for $3.99 lb., so I bought 2 salmon and canned 7 jars in the pressure canner and had enough left over to make some delicious salmon spread for an appetizer. It's super easy, just put cleaned, fresh salmon in pint jars with the skin side next to the glass, and process for 100 min. in your pressure canner.

Then, I had bought a 106 oz. can of tomato sauce at Costco for $2.25, and canned up 8 pints of taco sauce. I need to buy 3 or 4 more cans of that tomato sauce and make some ketchup and some spaghetti sauce. I am having trouble though with finding enough canning jars and the room to store up all of the yummy foods that I am preserving for my family.

Next on my list is to buy some more flour for bread baking. Tonight, I am cooking up some smoked brats that my hubby and I made back in December. I came across a recipe for quick hamburger/hotdog buns and will try my hand at homemade buns. I will serve them with some home canned Boston baked beans for a simple and quick dinner.

I also canned 2 pints of provolone cheese last weekend and am waiting for mozzarella to go on sale to can some of that , too. I melted the cheese in the jars that were sitting in hot water, removed air bubbles and WB for 40 minutes. You'll notice that the provolone turned somewhat dark after being canned. I'm not sure what causes that, but it is still good. I see the date on my camera is wrong so I will have to fix that, the picture was taken today. That's the update on canning in our household.

Canning Sausage

My DH loves the way meat is tender and not grisly after it has been canned. He loves stew meat, hamburger, chicken ans sausage. I bought some sausage on sale this week. We usually make our own sausage but have not found a good sale on pork butt or shoulder recently, so I bought a good brand on sale. Also, our daughters are no longer raising swine for 4-H, so no pork in the freezer.

I made the sausage into patties and partially cooked them in the oven. I wanted to cook them in the oven because pan frying tends to give the meat a "case hardened" texture and taste. The patties didn't shrink up as much as when I pan fry them, so I trimmed them with a biscuit cutter to fit the jars, and then put all the scraps in a jar and canned those as well.Then put them in pint and 1/2 pint jars and pressure canned them for 1 hour 15 minutes at 15# pressure (for our altitude). I also canned up 2 jars of pepperoni and threw those in the canner with the sausage. To do this, I just took packaged pepperoni, layered it in regular 1/2 pint jars and sealed.It cans up wonderfully, although it shrinks down a lot, and it is great on pizza.