paranoia
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Post by paranoia on Sept 24, 2017 16:48:12 GMT 10
Aldi have broccoli in their '7 day deals' at the moment for $1.49/kg, I came home with 4kg of it thinking I could can some of it. In my usual way I took to youtube for research and....
Plenty of people basically saying you cant do broccoli or cauliflower...
Has anyone here tried it? If it doesn't work, why not?
Will probably just end up freezing it all but figured I'd attempt to tap into the well of knowledge that is this forum before giving up. |
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Beno
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Post by Beno on Sept 24, 2017 20:09:06 GMT 10
i reckon it would turn very soft. but then again canned fruit does the same so give it a go anyway and see what happens.
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Post by Peter on Sept 24, 2017 21:51:21 GMT 10
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Post by Peter on Sept 24, 2017 21:52:10 GMT 10
Of course, standard fermenting procedures apply (ie cleanliness, type of fermentation vessel, etc)...
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tomatoes
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Post by tomatoes on Sept 24, 2017 22:25:59 GMT 10
I came home with a couple of kilos of broccoli today from Coles, at $1.50 per kilo. But we'll just eat it in the next couple of days.
I use to make a nice broccoli soup many yrs ago - may not sound good, but it was. I might have to look up that recipe. But what it makes me think is that it could be useful dehydrated. A lot of my dehydrated veg is done with soups in mind. It can be cut nice and small and the finished texture isn't that important.
I can't imagine canning it plain, but if I needed to go that way I'd probably consider something like a mustard pickle. Again this was many years ago, but when we had a flourishing veg garden we use to make all sorts of things into pickles or mustard pickles. I'd probably do that or dehydrate it. Or if I couldn't decide, I'd freeze it.
I have a lot of frozen fruit but I just make sure I have sugar and jars to turn it into jam or preserves (which may not use the sugar) if we were without power for an extended time. If I had a lot of frozen broccoli I'd do the same - have in storage stuff to pickle it if need be.
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tomatoes
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Post by tomatoes on Sept 24, 2017 22:27:11 GMT 10
Your posts always make me think I should try fermenting. Haven't done it yet but will have to try it soon. |
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Post by Peter on Sept 24, 2017 22:32:10 GMT 10
Yep, fermenting veggies preserves the food (although once opened it must be kept cool - as in refrigerated or stored in a cool cellar), and increases the nutritional value of foods, or so I'm told. The bacteria at work also help with gut health. Win, win, win.
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paranoia
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Post by paranoia on Sept 25, 2017 0:12:20 GMT 10
i reckon it would turn very soft. but then again canned fruit does the same so give it a go anyway and see what happens.
Suck it and see hey!
First time I used the pressure canner... took me a bit of fumbling around to find all the gear (wife was completely uninterested in the concept of canned broccoli and went to bed) but I got there.
Oven sterilised the jars, raw packed the broccoli, half a teaspoon of cooking salt, covered with boiling water and then 30 minutes at 10 psi.
Fair bit of discolouration on the broccoli, water changed colour a lot too!
Will test in a week or so and report back on results.
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paranoia
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Post by paranoia on Sept 25, 2017 0:17:31 GMT 10
I'm going to have to finally just go and put a hole in a lid so I can drop an airlock in it. I'm sure I've still got the locks and grommets in storage from when I used to brew.
I imagine the stems would taste amazing fermented. Even if I end up freezing a bunch from this process would be good to having something to do with the stems other than soup...
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paranoia
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Post by paranoia on Sept 25, 2017 0:23:21 GMT 10
I came home with a couple of kilos of broccoli today from Coles, at $1.50 per kilo. But we'll just eat it in the next couple of days. I use to make a nice broccoli soup many yrs ago - may not sound good, but it was. I might have to look up that recipe. But what it makes me think is that it could be useful dehydrated. A lot of my dehydrated veg is done with soups in mind. It can be cut nice and small and the finished texture isn't that important. I can't imagine canning it plain, but if I needed to go that way I'd probably consider something like a mustard pickle. Again this was many years ago, but when we had a flourishing veg garden we use to make all sorts of things into pickles or mustard pickles. I'd probably do that or dehydrate it. Or if I couldn't decide, I'd freeze it. I have a lot of frozen fruit but I just make sure I have sugar and jars to turn it into jam or preserves (which may not use the sugar) if we were without power for an extended time. If I had a lot of frozen broccoli I'd do the same - have in storage stuff to pickle it if need be.
One of my favourite soups ever was made from bacon bones & broccoli stems, a few broccoli heads thrown in for appearance. Was made regularly by chef I worked with just out of high school. If you do dig up that recipe I'd be very interested 
Mustard pickle is the wife's territory, maybe I'll have to put some aside and request it to be pickled. I'll be buying at least a few more KGs at this point as I've got too many ideas now!
Would be good to also have dehydrated broccoli, do you cook it before dehydrating?
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Post by Peter on Sept 25, 2017 10:46:34 GMT 10
I'd slice it & blanch it before dehydrating to accelerate the process. Blanching will help burst the cell walls, allowing moisture to escape faster.
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tomatoes
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Post by tomatoes on Sept 25, 2017 12:01:55 GMT 10
I'd slice it & blanch it before dehydrating to accelerate the process. Blanching will help burst the cell walls, allowing moisture to escape faster. And I read that it keeps longer after blanching. I'm guessing it could make the house smell a bit though. I haven't done broccoli but have done quite a bit of cauliflower - although it was before I knew to blanch it first. First time I cut it by hand, which I felt was quick, but then when I had a few to do I used the slicing blade on the food processor - it was super quick. Made the bits quite small, but that was good for drying. |
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tomatoes
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Post by tomatoes on Sept 25, 2017 12:04:41 GMT 10
[quote author=" paranoia" source="/post/58315/thread" timestamp="[/p]
Mustard pickle is the wife's territory, maybe I'll have to put some aside and request it to be pickled.
[/quote] Perhaps I should point out that I haven't ever actually made broccoli into mustard pickles and it wouldn't be my automatic choice of vegetable for it, but it would be something I would try. I'd love to hear how it goes if you do try it though. |
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paranoia
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Post by paranoia on Sept 25, 2017 22:28:16 GMT 10
I'd slice it & blanch it before dehydrating to accelerate the process. Blanching will help burst the cell walls, allowing moisture to escape faster.
I read your post at work on my phone during lunch and my big take away was 'blanch it first'.
Went past aldi on the way home, picked up another 5kg of broccoli came home on a mission and jumped straight into processing nearly 8kg of broccoli!
Chopped it off the stem, rinised, salt bathed then blanched the lot. 4 full trays 
Feeling rather proud of myself they went into the dehydrator and I retired to my computer desk for the evening with a tea.
Only to read... "slice it and blanch it first"...
Thanks tomatoes for the mention of the food processor!!! I set the slicer blade to 6mm and quickly buzzed the lot of it.
I ended up instead with 8 trays that looked like this:
Now to decide what to do with the left over 2.5kg of stem...
On a side note I mentioned to my wife "hey did you know you can make broccoli stem into mustard pickle?? Want to make me some?" only to be told that it wasn't news to her and that I'd already eaten broccoli stem mustard pickle many times...
I guess it's fermenting if I want to try something new.
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tomatoes
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Post by tomatoes on Sept 26, 2017 9:50:10 GMT 10
That looks great.
Now I'm thinking that I might have to dehydrate and mustard pickle a whole lot of broccoli.
Does your wife have a good mustard pickle recipe to share? It's been a long time since I've done any.
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Post by Peter on Sept 27, 2017 21:34:52 GMT 10
Heck, I'd also dehydrate the stem. I don't see why it wouldn't work perfectly. But I admit that a good mustard pickle is hard to beat. Especially in a corned beef sandwich.....
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paranoia
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Post by paranoia on Sept 28, 2017 20:08:26 GMT 10
As requested, mustard pickle the wife makes:
It's from the "Australian Blue Ribbon Cookbook" by Liz Harfull, it's a country show cooking book with recipes from winning show cooking.
She uses "a little less sugar than that, so it's not too sweet"... |
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tomatoes
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Post by tomatoes on Sept 28, 2017 22:10:54 GMT 10
 Recipe from "Squirrels" cookbook - Squirrels was a restaurant that use to be in Sydney long ago |
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Post by Peter on Sept 28, 2017 23:52:35 GMT 10
The pickle sounds amazing. I can't even imagine the flavour of the soup (either good or bad).
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Post by spinifex on Oct 2, 2017 11:12:11 GMT 10
I have a friend who's a gardening/food preserving enthusiast. She tells me you need to be wary of 'canning' non acidic foods (such as broccoli) as they are capable of breeding botulism bacteria. She pickles stuff like that in salt-vinegar and it's sensational. Fermentation (I assume) is used to preserve brassicas because it creates acidity.
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