Local Food Gift Idea: Apple-Maple Jam

Sunday, December 21, 2008

I like making jam, and my friends and family enjoy eating homemade jam, so it’s one of my standard gifts these days.  However, much as I love eating strawberry marmalade in the cold of January, I hesitate to call such sugar-intensive recipes local, and they require a lot more planning ahead for use as holiday gifts.  Local apples, though, are still widely available, and don’t require as much sugar for gelling.

The two jars above are two different batches of apple-maple jam; the smaller jar, on the left, is this year’s batch, and the larger jar is last year’s.  Here’s the recipe I used:

3 qts chopped, peeled apples (~6 lb)
6 c sugar
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t allspice
1/2 t nutmeg
1/4 t cloves
1 c maple syrup

Prepare as jam and can in a boiling water bath.  (Put apples and sugar in a large pot.  Cook on low to medium heat, stirring, until there’s enough liquid to keep the apple bits from scorching.  Bring to a boil and then simmer until the apples are soft.  Add spices.  Cook a little more, then bring to a boil again and divide into sterile jars.)  Makes about 8 half-pint jars’ worth.

That recipe is really for an apple-y, mapley jelly with chunks of apple suspended in it.  I prefer fruit preserves that are easier to spread on toast or PB&J sandwiches, so I purée mine with an immersion blender.  And I don’t peel the apples.  Otherwise, last year’s batch is pretty close to the recipe.  This year, I wanted to make my apple-maple stuff entirely local, so I used about 2c honey and 1.5c maple syrup instead of the 6c sugar and 1c maple syrup called for.  It came out quite nicely, if closer to applesauce than jam on the preserved-fruit continuum.  , If you’re looking for something to take to a latke party this week, some of what didn’t get canned was very tasty on latkes a few days ago.

Another reason to love brussels sprouts

Thursday, December 11, 2008

I know that just about any vegetable can be made into a pickle.  But the idea of brussels sprouts made into pickles strikes me as kind of bizarre.

The other day on the train I was reading a book on canning and preserving that someone bought me last year, and I noticed that brussels sprouts were mentioned.  Apparently, canning brussels sprouts is a very bad idea.  Sprouts freeze nicely, so it would not have occurred to me to even try to can them…but there it was: canning can unpleasantly intensify the flavor of sprouts and will usually result in a gross discoloration, too.  Unless you pickle them, that is.

Well, now that I got the idea in my head, I can’t get it out.  I do love brussels sprouts, and I’d probably even love them pickled.  And it’s been recommended to me that I try them in a Bloody Mary or Martini, because they are allegedly the perfect addition to a cocktail.  Who knew?

I ended up finding several recipes for pickled brussels sprouts:

• Pickled Sprouts with Fennel
• A pretty standard pickle
• Pickled Sprouts with Cayenne and Garlic
• Pickled Sprouts with Szechuan oil

Brussels sprouts are very in season right now, so I’ll be sure to pick up a few pints of sprouts this weekend and give it a shot.  I cannot resist!

Pickle Time!

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

The last of the harvests are coming in and that can only mean one thing: the final frontier of preservation, pickling! My husband has tried pickling in the past, to varying degrees of success (can’t get the regular, cucumber pickle to not turn to mush, but he makes a mean sauerkraut and pickled green tomato!). So this year, I’m trying 2 different pickling methods: the regular refrigerator pickle and the canned pickle.

First, the refrigerator pickle. I’m trying my hand at an Indian-style pickled cauliflower. I’m thinking it can’t be that authentic (got it from a PA Dutch book). But hey, those people know how to pickle! Besides, a refrigerator pickle is such an easy thing, if I mess up, oh well. There’s still some more cauliflower-time left.
The other pickle is a shelf-stable canned red wine beets. I don’t know who I’m fooling: both pickles are not the fermented kind, so there’s really no fear of failure. But there’s something scary about cooking something and then letting it sit for a few weeks. What if I forget? What if it tastes like crap? It feels like an investment. I just hope that pickling doesn’t turn out like our economy…

On a final note, I’d like to get suggestions from farmers and farm market supporters about marketing issues or questions that they’d like discussed in future postings. I had such great feedback about the website needs of farmers and I’d like to throw in my two cents where possible. So send them in!

Can it, buddy!

Monday, October 13, 2008

Via Ramping Up the Garden, I learned that the National Center for Home Food Preservation has a free, self-study course in home canning.  It’s offered by the University of Georgia WebCT system.  How cool!  It includes:

• Introduction to Food Preservation
• General Canning
• Canning Acid Foods
• Canning Low-Acid Foods

For those of you who want to learn to can but don’t have a class near you, this is a great opportunity to bone up on the basics!

I’ve been on a soup canning kick lately.  I will thank myself later when I drag my frozen carcass home from work and can immediately sit down to a nice, hot, homemade bowl of soup.

Tomatoes!

Friday, October 03, 2008

This may be the last week for a lot of us to get our mitts on fresh local tomatoes, and I for one plan to do just that!  Over the past couple months, I’ve supplemented my own garden and Blooming Glen Farm CSA tomatoes with those from several places around town. 

Anyone who’s canned large quantities of produce knows that it’s so much better with a buddy.  My canning partner this year has been my mom, and together we estimate that we’ve processed about 175 pounds of tomatoes since mid-August.  Early in the season, we canned a bushel of mixed tomatoes from Hideaway Gardens in Harleysville.  Farmers Matt and Lauren Harrington (Lauren is a former contributor to Farm to Philly) hand-picked a lovely selection for us, which you can see above.  For several weeks over the summer, Blooming Glen Farm offered CSA members a great deal 20-pound boxes of San Marzano plum tomatoes, so I snatched up two of those for some amazing salsa.  And just last week, Ray’s Greenhouse had huge baskets of tomatoes for sale at the Indian Valley Farmers Market; we bought about 55 pounds of them and turned them into 14 quarts of sauce.

It seems unlikely, but all of this doesn’t seem to be enough, and I find myself wanting more!  That’s not wrong, is it?

The butter that isn’t butter

Friday, September 05, 2008

I’ve never really understood why fruit butters are called that.  I mean, it bears no resemblance whatsoever to actual butter.  But really, who cares? It’s good and it’s surprisingly easy to make.  I had some peaches that were in deep need of being used up, so I made peach butter on Labor Day.

What I particularly like about making fruit butters is that you don’t need a gazillion pounds of fruit.  I had seven peaches, which ended up becoming five half pints of peach butter.  And yes, it took all damn day to cook…but it was in a crock pot and I only set foot in my kitchen a few times.  And the result is better than I could have hoped for.  The peach butter is heavenly.  Spectacular.  Amazing.  Very, very good.  I’m not even exaggerating.

All right, so, getting started is easy enough.  If you have peaches, a crock pot, and some spices, you’re pretty much all set.

1. First step: prepare the peaches.  The easiest way to peel peaches is boil up some water and drop each peach in for about 60 seconds and then plunge into ice water.  The skin will loosen, making peeling a lot easier.  Remove the peach pit.  Roughly chop the peaches.  Or, you’re like me, tear the peaches in pieces with your bare hands.  Throw peaches directly into your crock pot.  Note: if you have ALOT of peaches, you can fill the crock pot to within an inch of the top.
2. Season the peaches.  Add a couple Tablespoons of cinnamon, a teaspoon of ground cloves, half a teaspoon of allspice, and four cups of sugar (yes, that’s a lot of sugar - but you can substitute fake sweetener for some of it if you really want to.  I’m not sure how honey would be as a replacement); mix well.  Turn on your crockpot to low and cook uncovered.  You may want to throw a splatter screen over top, just in case.
3. Ignore your peaches for about six hours.  Stir if you feel like it.

4. Give the peaches a stir, turn the crock pot up to high, and go away again.  Come back every now and then to give the peaches a stir.
5. After another few hours, use a stick blender to puree the peaches if you want a smooth consistency to your butter.  At this point, your peach butter should be brown and sort of mushy looking.  You are looking for a reduction by volume of about half.  If you like a looser consistency, your peach butter will probably be done in about 12 hours.  I cooked mine for about 20 hours because I like mine a little thicker.

And then can your peach butter the same as you would can preserves.

Super simple, and a great way to use up fruit that’s not getting eaten quickly enough!

A cutlet to spare

Sunday, August 03, 2008

I’ve been trying to eat more vegetarian meals lately.  One thing that becomes obvious when you’re writing about your food intake is just exactly how much meat you’re eating!  And it’s not that I have problems with eating meat - but I feel like maybe I just eat a little too much for my own good.  There are both health and environmental reasons for eating less meat, both of which I am conscious.  And really, it’s so easy to take advantage of the huge amounts of gorgeous locally grown produce in season right now.

Even though I’ve been reducing my meat consumption, it’s not like I’m ever going to be a vegetarian.  I happen to think cows and ducks are pretty tasty, and I have no moral qualms about eating them (veal and foie gras are OK with me, too, for the record).  Since I try to stick to locally grown meat that is ethically and sustainably grown, I worry less about the moral and environmental reasons.  And again, I really like meat.  But this is not a love song about beef, chicken, or lamb - it’s a love song to the vegetarian meal I ate last night.

I made some breaded eggplant cutlets a few weeks ago that I prepped and froze.  Usually I buy up eggplants at some point and make tons of them for over the Winter - they’re great to have on hand for a quick dinner, and they’re easy to make.  I think the most important part is the prep: slice up the eggplant, salt it, and press it a colander for an hour.  The salt draws out the moisture and gives it a meatier, more dense texture.  Dip the eggplant into a bit of egg white, dredge in breadcrumbs, and then bake at 450 degress for about 10 minutes.  Let the cutlets cool and then layer them on wax paper, pop them in a properly labeled freezer bag and freeze them.  Reheating is a snap: bake at 350 degrees for about 10 or 15 minutes.  You can make sandwiches, eggplant parmesan, whatever - all on the fly.

Last night I heated them up and just threw a couple slices of salted heirloom tomatoes on top, and served with sauteed swiss chard with parmesan and new potato and parsley salad.  It was a great dinner, and I didn’t miss the meat at all.

I was also pretty excited about the potato and parsley salad.  Last week’s CSA share included all these super tiny, marble-sized Yukon Gold potatoes, and a few weeks ago I pulled about a dozen of the same potatoes out of my garden (interestingly, I did not grow potatoes this year - they were just leftovers from last year’s potato experiment that went horribly wrong).  So it was just thrilling to find something to do with such tiny potatoes, and it was a great use of the huge amounts of parsley growing like crazy in my garden.

Where it all came from:

eggplant, Lancaster Farm Fresh - 100 miles
egg, Natural Acres - 100 miles
breadcrumbs, made from Le Bus bread - 15 miles
tomatoes, Urban Girls - 29 miles
potatoes, Landisdale Farm - 100 miles and my garden - 0 miles
parsley, my garden - 0 miles
garlic, my garden - 0 miles
swiss chard, Landisdale Farm - 100 miles and my garden - 0 miles
parmesan, Hendricks Farm - 39 miles

not local: olive oil, salt, and pepper

My kingdom for a gherkin

Sunday, July 06, 2008

July is a fantastic month to visit farmer’s markets.  There’s just so much available - tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini are coming into season, there’s tons of fruit, and everything is just beautiful.  A visit to the Headhouse Square Market this morning was too much to resist - and even though I had have a big CSA box full of gorgeous produce and fruit and I was able to get pretty much everything on my grocery list yesterday at Clark Park, I had to buy a few more things that I didn’t really need.

These West Indian Gherkins were available at two different stands, Culton Organics and Yoder’s Heirlooms (I think).  They were just too tempting to pass up, so about a dozen of them came home with me.  West Indian Gherkins are a completely foreign cucumber variety to most of us.  These tinies beauties must be picked before they reach about 1.5 inches long or else they will likely be bitter.  And they are super crisp and very sweet. 

There’s pretty much only one thing you can do with a West Indian Gherkin: pickle it.  I plan to use this recipe.

Bok choy, why do you mock me so?

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

A couple of years ago I grew bok choy in the garden.  It was one of the easiest vegetables I’ve ever grown, but I just didn’t fall in love with it enough to have it in the garden again.  I’ve just never found very many recipes for bok choy that I love or can eat over and over again.  Last year I made a killer wonton soup using a bunch of bok choy from the CSA share, but it’s not soup weather.  And I make a great kimchi, but I still have some leftover from last year.

There was a giant head of bok choy in the Landisdale Farm CSA share last week that, predictably, sat around the kitchen and never got used.  My rule is that if I don’t use it within a week, I have to find a way to preserve it.  After giving it much thought and doing a ton of research, I decided to do two things with the bok choy: dry it and pickle it.

I got the idea for drying bok choy from the many websites that kept saying bok choy stalks have a very celery-like texture - which means freezing is out of the question.  Well, maybe not out of the question, but the texture suffers.  Anyway, I ran into a site that suggested drying celery in a dehydrator.  I stripped off the leaves and sliced up the stalk - it took about six hours on the lowest heat setting.

Pickling bok choy leaves is not quite the same as making kimchi.  It’s more akin to making sauerkraut: you cut the leaves into chiffonade and pack it into canning jars, laying pickling salt in every 1/2 inch or so.  The salt will draw the water out of the bok choy, making its own brine.  If you are super careful about canning, you can run the pickled choy in a water bath after a week or two, but you can just as easily skip all that if your jars are very clean to begin with.

Garlic scapes a-go-go

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Recently I found myself with an overabundance of garlic scapes.  I never thought I would ever utter those words, because you can never have enough, right?  But I had most of the harvest from my own garlic patch, a pound purchased from Fair Food Farmstand, and a handful from my CSA for two weeks in a row.

So what does one do with that many scapes?  I researched ways to preserve them.

Freezing does not appear to do scapes any favors…at least not if you intend to saute them.  They lose their texture and that’s just no good.  You can slice scapes into small bits and freeze for use in soups and things like that, but I didn’t think I’d use them that way.

Scapes can be canned.  Well, sort of.  Apparently, pickling scapes is super easy and produces a nice, crunchy, slightly garlicky pickle.  I seriously love almost any pickled vegetable, so I opted to test drive a jarful.  It’s pretty easy - cut scapes into smaller lengths and put a shallow layer of scapes into a canning jar.  Sprinkle with salt.  Repeat the scape and salt layering until you have about a 1/2 inch of headspace in the canning jar.  Leave the jar on a kitchen counter for a few days to allow the salt to leach the water out of the scapes, forming its own brine.  You may have to add more salt.  When the brine has formed, process in a water bath for 25 minutes. It’s sort of the same process as making sauerkraut, but without the pressing.

Having started the pickled scapes a few days ago, I gave them a try today - delicious!

I saved a few scapes to have sauted scapes with dinner the other night, but for the rest of them I opted to make scape pesto.  I put the scapes in a food processor with some olive oil.  Right now it’s being stored in my fridge until I can get my hands on some Hendricks parmesan and walnuts.  I haven’t decided if I will freeze or can the pesto.

There is a distinct possibility that I may find myself with more garlic scapes within the next couple of weeks.  Well..bring it on, says I.  I think I’d like to make some garlic scape aioli to have on hand.

Sweet, sweet leather

Thursday, May 29, 2008

There’s a brand new dehydrator sitting in my kitchen - a Nesco American Harvest FD-61WHC Snackmaster Express Food Dehydrator All-In-One Kit with Jerky Gun.  I’ve been dying to try it out, so I bought a very non-local bag of cherries, pitted them, and soaked them in white wine and amaretto overnight, and then dried them.  And they turned out pretty well, I’m happy to say.

It was only this week that I was able to try my hand at drying something locally-grown: the rhubarb compote I made last week. 

The dehydrator came with two fruit leather trays.  I couldn’t quite imagine making my own fruit roll ups, but I assure you that it worked like a charm!  I just spread the compote out over the trays thinly, plugged in the dehydrator, and about ten hours later I had two massive sheets of super fresh-tasting rhubarb fruit leather.

Yes, ten hours.  I’m thinking that I will only use the dehydrator when it is loaded with stuff to dry - otherwise, I feel like I’m using too much energy just to dry a few things.

Still, I’m really excited that making fruit leather is so easy.  I’ll be overrun with strawberries in a few weeks - normally I just freeze bunches of them, but this year I’ll definitely puree a bunch and make fruit leather.

A quick jaunt through Headhouse Square

Monday, May 12, 2008

Over the weekend I accidentally ended up at the Headhouse Square farmer’s market with two friends.  For a Spring market, the selection wasn’t bad at all!  Some rhubarb, tons of salad greens of all varieties, bok choy, radishes, spinach…and herb and vegetable plants.  Tons of them!  So if you’re looking for herb plants, head over next weekend - I picked up some super healthy-looking parsley, dill, rosemary, and tarragon from one of the vendors.  Yoder Heirlooms, in particular, had gorgeous looking produce. 

Aside from produce, the market had at least two vendors of locally made bread, as well as cakes and quick breads, jam, honey, artisan sausage and pepperoni, and cheese.  I saw a sign for boneless duck, and noticed two other meat vendors.  There were lots of great eggs available, too.

The real star, though, was asparagus.  Quite a few vendors had really gorgeous asparagus, and from what I’ve been hearing the asparagus crop is stellar this year and extra early.  Last night I made asparagus risotto with the bunch I picked up yesterday at Headhouse Square market - it was delicious!

I really like asparagus, and am always disappointed by the crappy, tasteless commercially grown stuff available in the Winter, so my plan is to buy at least a dozen bunches or so while it’s in season and preserve it for later…in a few different ways.

My favorite method is freezing - it’s the preservation method that saves the most nutrients.  Trim the asparagus ends, sort by thickness, and blanch them in boiling water - 2 minutes for thin spears, 3 minutes for medium, and 5 minutes for thick ones.  And then give them an ice bath, let them dry, and freeze them.  They can be frozen for eight or nine months.

Asparagus can also be canned in a pressure canner.  The texture does suffer a bit, so I usually don’t can them.  However, I do like the look of nice, canned asparagus spears.  Blanch them for about three minutes after you’ve trimmed the ends, and pack them into canning jars while the asparagus is still hot.  Add 1/2 to 1 tsp of salt and boiling water, leaving about 1 inch of headspace.  Close up your jars and process at 10 pounds of pressure for 25-30 minutes.

I also plan on making some asparagus ravioli for a rainy day. 
Freshly made ravioli freezes nicely - just don’t make huge and overstuff ravioli.  Arrange them on a layer of wax paper on a cookie sheet covered in corn meal, freeze them, and then pack them into freezer bags.  They can go right from the freezer into some boiling water when you’re ready to cook them.

Pantry Confessional

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

The tomatoes are gone. The frozen peaches are long gone. Even the carnival acorn squash in this photo are gone- unceremoniously roasted in early March. I know I’m not the only hoarder in the Farm to Philly community, and could you blame us? Other Philadelphians are sipping margaritas on Sunday afternoons in July while we’re sweating over a canning bath. We soldier on like an army of urban, modern-day Laura Ingalls Wilders: oven drying tomatoes, freezing blueberries on sheet trays, and putting up preserves for what sometimes feels like the whole neighborhood. In the spirit of this kind of down and dirty local food heroism- especially since we’ve got so much interest in One Local Summer!- I’m confessing the local foods that have somehow managed to escape my snacking, baking, party-throwing maw.

1 quart bag grated zucchini, frozen
at least a gallon of sour cherries*
2 quarts black raspberries, frozen (a birthday present for my Mom that I’ve been sneaking into for smoothies)
1 pint concord grape puree, frozen
1 dozen jalapenos, frozen
6 pints blueberry jam
5 pints strawberry jam

*which I stupidly froze in one giant plastic container after I nearly had a nervous breakdown pitting them with a paperclip. I treated myself to an OXO cherry-pitter at Foster’s this very week.

Time to ‘fess up, people. What’s in your freezer?

Hoarding

Monday, March 31, 2008

Last winter and early spring, after my first year with a CSA, I determined that my goal for the upcoming growing season was to put a concentrated effort into food preservation.  I felt a little overwhelmed by the amount of food we were given at each pickup, and having absolutely no previous knowledge of canning, freezing and drying food, each week was a kind of trial by fire with researching, buying freezer bags, trying to remember what needed to be blanched, what should be shredded, what couldn’t be jarred, etc.  That, on top of my eyes being larger than my family’s collective bellies (sure, we can eat two pounds of greens, sixteen tomatoes a bunch of basil and a twelve summer squash in six days!), meant that a little bit too much of our bounty ended up as compost fodder.

I had tried my hand at canning a jar of tomatoes the previous summer, mostly as an experiment, but it was enough to instill confidence that I could do it on a larger scale.  I also knew from previous experience, that during the height of growing season, when I’d be bringing home gobs and gobs of veggies from Blooming Glen on top of harvesting our own garden, I needed to leave my pickup day open.  Taking a couple hours on that day to sort through the produce, make a decision as to what I’d be likely to use before the next week and immediately preserving the rest was something that I’d have to commit to, as well.

Overall, I’d say I did pretty well.  I had several canning days at my dad’s, during which we canned straight-up-‘maters, spaghetti sauce, salsa and applesauce.  I committed to memory what veggies didn’t need blanching and would therefore be the quickest to get into the freezer.  I I learned how to dry herbs.  I stocked up on freezer bags and even received a FoodSaver as an early birthday gift, making preservation that much easier.

Yes, last season, I was a produce-preserving queen.  How I loved stacking jars of tomatoes and applesauce on the cellar shelves, lining them up like little soldiers, their brass rings gleaming like a sergeant’s stars.  Putting onions and potatoes to bed, covered with cloth and tucked into a quiet corner.  I’ll even admit to “checking in” on my preserved veggies and fruit, opening the freezer door simply to admire the piles of vacuum-packed bags, each filled with bright green broccoli, vibrant red peppers and glowing orange butternut squash.  As one might imagine, this attachment to preserved food has a predictable downside:  I don’t actually want to use anything.

I realize this is a problem, especially now, on the cusp of a new CSA and garden season.  I’ve begun to force myself to plan meals around the food we have stocked.  Most recently, I added some spicy vegan sausage to a sauce made with the tomatoes, thyme, basil, onions and peppers pictured above, and served it with rice.  The meal was fresh and fabulous—a fact that I’m hoping to parlay into more using of the preserved food in my house.  Fingers crossed!

Stock dividends by water bath

Monday, January 21, 2008

Like Kevin, I also routinely make my own stock.  Anytime I have bones leftover from something, I automatically save them and cook up a pot.  Right now in my freezer I’ve got a few quarts of rabbit stock, although I generally don’t freeze my stock - I prefer to can it.

I really don’t think the way stock is preserved impacts the flavor - at least as far as I can tell.  However, there are two reasons I like to can stock instead of freeze it.

1. Freezing stock takes up freezer space.  I have a chest freezer that isn’t full, so it’s not the worst thing in the world - but I do like to clear up as much freezer space as possible in case I get a big haul of meat or vegetables that I plan to freeze.  You could also make the case that you use electricity to keep stock frozen, although if your freezer is running anyway…well, what’s the difference?
2. I’m sort of an immediate gratification kind of girl.  When I want to make risotto or soup or something, I don’t want to take the time to defrost stock.  It seems much easier to me to can it and have it ready to use.

And it really is easy to can stock, and doesn’t require a lot of equipment. Aside from the stock and the soup pot you made your stock in, you need canning jars that you can buy at nearly any grocery store.  That’s it.  Now granted, nearly all canning sites will say you should use a pressure canner to can stock - but I’ve been canning stock with the water bath method for a decade and nothing bad has ever happened to me. 

Have I cheated death and sickness for a decade on sheer luck?  Maybe.  My grandmother canned her stock this way, and so did my mother.  So even though I know I should use my pressure canner for stock, I continue to use a water bath.  Perhaps one day my luck will run out.  Just keep this in mind before attempting my method - my method is not recommended by food safety experts.

This is how I can chicken stock:

• Sterilize your canning jars.  The easiest way to do this is to put the jars and the two piece lids (not screwed onto the jars) into a dishwasher and run them through a cycle.  If you don’t have a dishwasher, place the jars and lids on a cookie sheet in a 250 degree oven for 10 minutes or so.  Honestly, though, you can skip this step - if you’re going to be processing jars for more than 10 minutes, which I do.  Of course, I’d rather be safe than sorry (which is ironic, all things considered) so, unless I’m in a big hurry, I sterilize the jars first.
• Pour soup stock into canning jars, being sure you don’t fill the jar above the lid threads.  If you’re concerned about fat, refrigerate the stock first and skim the fat off the top before pouring into jars.  I also like to strain the stock through a fine sieve and then into the jars.
• Place the lid on the jar and then screw the rings on - make sure the rings are on very tightly.
• Bring a big soup pot full of water to a boil, and place jars into the pot.  I generally use pint jars (four at a time) to make sure the jars can be completely submerged in the water bath.
• Boil jars for 20 minutes and remove from the water bath.  Turn the jars upside down so that they are sitting on the lid.
• Let the jars cool and then press on the lid to check for a seal - if you press the lid down and it stays down, that’s OK…but if you press the lid down and it flexes back up, that’s not OK.

I do have some things that makes canning easier - tongs, a funnel, a silicon mitt.  But you really don’t need any of that stuff to can.

Keep in mind that not all food can be canned in this manner.  I can most foods in a pressure canner, as recommended, and I suggest you do the same to avoid botulism.  As I said, perhaps I’ve just been lucky but nothing has ever gone awry for me when canning stock in a water bath.