Dehydrate

Make Your Own Bullion

With the growing list of food ingredients that people become sensitive to, it’s easy for families to kind of go numb reading ingredient lists. Not only is it difficult to read the chemical name of some of the ingredients (let alone answer the questions, “Why is this in here?”), but some families are now asking, “What isn’t listed?”

For example, natural flavoring is listed as a single ingredient but can actually incorporate up to 200 different ingredients. It’s a shady practice, because it could be something as simple as a proprietary blend of herbs. Although it’s more likely the summation of chemicals used for extractions of certain elements for flavoring. But how is a family to know what chemicals or processes were used and make the educated decision if this is something that is harming the health of a loved one?

So whether you’re looking to cut some corners in your grocery budget, trying to eliminate ingredients in your diet, or simply wanting to eat more simply (knowing exactly what you’re cooking with, able to say the ingredients, and other reasons) you can make basic kitchen ingredients from scratch. Bullion is one of those ingredients that you can make in advance and have it in your pantry waiting for you to use!

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First Make Your Stock

I’m going to move forward here with making chicken stock and turning it into chicken bouillon. However you can do this by making your own beef stock or vegetable stock. (And I just want to say that when you make your own vegetable stock, it actually has more flavor and tastes a thousand times better than what you will buy in your local grocery store!)

There are also a few different ways that you can cook your stock. You can make stock on stovetop, in a slow cooker in your oven, in a crock pot, or a pressure cooker. The only difference is going to be the amount of time you commit to. With the exception of the pressure cooker, you will want to cook low and slow to release all the nutritional benefits of your ingredients. A lot of influencers, bloggers and You Tubers will encourage you to make a stock in a short amount of time. Of course it is possible, but I want to encourage you to take the time and cook your stock ingredients out.

If you’re making a bone broth, cook it so that you extract the marrow from the bones. If you’re cooking vegetables, don’t assume that because you’re not extracting marrow that you can get by with less time. Check out my post A Touch Bitter? where I specifically talk about vegetable stock.

You know that you have a good and flavorful stock when it has rich and dark colors. The color comes from all the nutrients that you cook out from your original ingredients.

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My Chicken Stock

I’m going to be honest with you here, daddy taught me how to cook by following a recipe. But I inherited a wild cooking hair from mom, where we improvise. I cook by smell, then by flavor, all over what a recipe says. I’m working hard to make notes on my recipes to find a strong base that is pretty average for how my recipes go. Just know that when I have chicken bones to use, I literally use the ingredients that I have on hand. And just like your kitchen, there are ingredients that I run out of. I don’t go to the store for missing ingredients. I run with what I have.

Here’s what I have standard in my kitchen:

onion skins (kept in a vegetable food scrap bag in the freezer)
garlic skins (vegetable food scrap bag)
stems of herbs that dehydrate to make my own dried herbs (vegetable food scrap bag)
dehydrated herbs from my garden (oregano, basil, lemon balm, sage, parsley, chives and others)
dehydrated herbs that I have yet to successfully produce in my garden (ginger, tumeric and others)

General Recipe

In my 8 quart instant pot I add:

the bones of one whole chicken fryer
if the chicken came with gizzards, I cook the gizzards here in my stock.
the vegetable food scraps from my freezer (ideally I aim for the skins of about 4 onions, the skins of 2-4 garlic heads, half a bunch of leafy herbs)
herbs from my seasoning shelves (including salt and pepper)
filtered water that fills my pot up to it’s Max line.

The herbs are generally where I run out of supply and have to improvise. If I have everything the herbs that I like to add are:

Ginger
Bay leaves
Lemon balm (fresh will give you more of a lemon flavor, dehydrated will have more of a green tea lemon flavor, use according to which type you’re using. I like going heavier on the fresh lemon balm)
Rosemary
Oregano

These herbs I go heavy on. If I’m out of any of these, I improvise using other herbs. Sage I use sparingly because it’s such a potent herb. Cilantro I use sparingly because I have family members who dislike the flavor of this herb. So I keep this one low in quantity to still get the nutritional value, but the flavor is not prominent at all. Fresh cracked pepper I use in varying levels depending on what my stock is currently at. Salt, I try to remember to add, but half the time I forget. Because the flavor of salt is not extracted, like herbs, I have no problem seasoning with salt once my pressure cooking is done.

I set my instant pot to pressure cooking, on high, for 3 hours. (No matter which stock type I’m making, I don’t ever go less than 3 hours.) This is what gives you full extraction.

Making Bullion

Once your broth has finished processing, you strain out all the ingredients. With a vegetable stock, I go ahead and compost the vegetable bits that I strain out. With bone stock I strain out all the bones and vegetables and they are thrown out.

If you’re making vegetable bullion, you can cool your stock down to room temperature and then move forward with the next step. If you make a bone broth (chick, beef, venison, goat, sheep, etc.) you will need to cool your broth off over night in your refrigerator. The exception is if you have a fat skimmer that can separate the fat out from hot broth. I do not. So I refrigerate my stock over night.

Once the fat layer has formed on your chilled broth, you skim the fat off of the broth.

You have to skim off of the fat, because when you make bullion you want to have a long shelf life. Fat is the limiting factor in shelf stable food. It will go rancid before anything else goes bad. So by removing the fat, you ensure that you have a long shelf life for your bullion.

When my chicken broth is been skimmed from fat, I grab my jelly roll trays for my dehydrator and set my dehydrator up where it’s going to process the broth. The reason why I set my dehydrator up in location and fill the jelly roll trays on the stacked racks is because the broth is going to run to lowest point. There is not going to be an even layer of broth. So I fill in place and pour the stock until I reach the lip at one point on my tray. This will maximize the amount of broth I can process at a single time.

Dehydrating liquid hack: before placing your liquid on the jelly roll trays put it in a sauce pan and reduce the stock. By evaporating the liquid down, you will cut down on your dehydrating time and save space in your dehydrator.

I run my dehydration temperature at 140-145°F until the broth is crispy like this. Dehydration time is going to vary depending on if you reduced your broth first, the temperature you dehydrate out, and most importantly the thickness of where your broth pools. The thicker sections will be gummy to touch until it’s properly dehydrated. The thinner bits you can leave as is. Or when you check on your progress, you can used a silicone spatula to push the thinner bits in closer to the thicker bits (this makes it easier to remove the thinner sections when you’re finished dehydrating).

In the center of my jelly roll try, you’ll see that I put my coffee/herb grinder in the center. It makes it easy to brush the chunks and bullion dust into the grinder. When the container reaches its limit I remove the tray, cap the grinder and run it for about 10 seconds. Just long enough for the broth to turn into a powder. The bullion powder I put directly into my mason jar that I’m going to store it in.

Just so you won’t be alarmed, what you see in this 1/2 pint size jar is what my 8 quart size instant pot produces. My first time making my own bullion, I was disappointed that it didn’t make more. But that disappointment disappeared when I tasted the bullion. You will not be disappointed with the intense flavor!

This is perfectly save to keep in your pantry or in your spice cupboard.

Personally I have a tiny kitchen, so I keep my bullion on the top shelf of my fridge. The bullion usually doesn’t last my family a year. Although there was a time where I needed to free up some jars and use my canned chicken stock, so I had one batch of bullion powder in my fridge for about 2 years. It was still fresh and flavorful when I went back to finish this bullion off.

Comment below and tell me how you like this space saving flavorful bullion.

How does it compare to what you’ve previous bought from the store?

This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commissions on products purchased through these links, but at no extra cost to you. These items listed here are from Amazon but may be purchased at local markets.

If you don’t have a current dehydrator and are looking for one, I have been very pleased with this dehydrator. This was an upgrade from my very first dehydrator, but still on a budget. If you’re in a tight financial place, with today’s economy, this is the one that I highly recommend. Not only was it a great price, but it also included jelly roll trays for each rack (something that can’t be said with other budget units)

Nesco FD-1018A Gardenmaster Pro Food Dehydrator

Herb Grinder Elictric has been great for keeping all the ground herbs/boullion contained in the grinding bowl.

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Cake Dreams

One of the memories that we are so quick to build are children’s birthday parties. So how do we make memories that last?

Make a cake!

I can’t begin to tell you all the cakes that I remember through the years. There’s the Holly Hobby cake my mom made from me (a popular baby doll from the 70’s). There was the cake that got locked in the trunk on my sister’s birthday. The cakes my sister’s and I made for our parents because finances were tight but the box cake was a big way we could show they mattered. The cake my husband made for me with marshmallow frosting. The cakes I made for my kids.

The list goes on and on….

I could tell a life story just off of the cakes I’ve made through the years.

And I want you to know that you can make cakes that make memories without going to culinary school and gaining the education of a baker!

You can make cakes!

You can make memories!

Even though I have cake recipe books which put a world of recipes from scratch, I’m going to show you how you can make a memorable cake using a box cake–which is in everyone’s price range. And in this age of inflation, when you can still find boxes of cake mix for a dollar, I want that to be available to you.

Box cake mixes are great. The directions are easy enough for my kids to follow and make on their own. (In fact I just made a cake for a local mom and my boys wanted to help because they love baking cakes with me. They had to skip out on this one, but I had to promise that they could make their dad’s cake all on their own without me!)

TIP: you can test the doneness of you cake sponge by poking the cake with a toothpick in the center. When you pull the tooth pick out, and it’s dry, your cake is done. You want no moisture or batter on the tooth pick. Although you might see cooked crumb–that is still done.

Or….

TIP 2: When your timer goes off take a temperature reading in the center of your cake. When you reach an internal temperature of 200°F, your cake is done.

This particular tip is invaluable. If you’ve watched baking competitions you see people testing cakes by poking it like a chef pokes a steak. The amount of resistance tells you the internal state of being done.

The average person doesn’t know what a done cake feels like. We can easily
learn the feel of an under done cake and an overly done (and dry) cake. I’m
going to save you the head ache and just tell you that you only need to reach
200°F and your cake will be perfectly done no matter what. This works for all
elevations. AND it gives you a more accurate unit of measurement to direct you
in how much longer to cook your cake when it’s under 200°F.

Now that you know you do not have an undercooked cake, you’re halfway done.

Some people find the cake (or sponge) cooking the most intimidating. Others find the frosting to be intimidating. But frosting a cake doesn’t have to be intimidating either, because I’m going to show you a trick that I used with the Pinterest inspiration picture that was given to me for the cake I made the other day.

My go to frosting is formulated by Wilton. I’ve successfully modified this recipe to make it flavored. But this recipe gives you three different consistencies. I used two of these for the following Unicorn Cake that I recreated, stiff and medium. I used the medium for the filling between two layers and doe the exterior frosting. The stiff consistency I used for the decorative elements.

When it comes to coloring your frosting, the stores give you the choice of the liquid food dye or gel. The gel will give you vibrant colors for less.

TIP: If you’re a family that is conscientious about food dyes, you can still color your frosting. What you’re going to do is plan in advance and dehydrate the fruit, vegetable, or edible flower for the colors you want. Don’t worry about the vegetables. The Wilton frosting is sweet and can overpower the vegetable flavor, if that is a concern for you.

As a point of reference, it took me about half a pound of strawberries (sliced, dehydrated, than powdered) to turn a single batch of Wilton frosting pink and mild strawberry flavor. I had the pink color to the frosting long before the strawberry flavoring that was requested by the birthday girl.

TIP: When you use a fruit with high water content, you definitely want to turn it into a powder in order to prevent your frosting from becoming watered down.

Frosting the cake is going to look a little differently depending on what kitchen tools you have available. If you can pipe the frosting onto the cake before you spread the frosting, you will be able to do a thin layer of frosting without getting crumbs of cake into your frosting.

Don’t have piping tools (pastry bag, coupler, and decorative tips), that’s okay. The trick is to take your butter knife (if that’s all you have), put dollops of frosting onto your cake, and then spread the frosting around using the flat of your knife.

The number one cause of crumbs in your frosting is your knife hitting the cake’s sponge. If you just move the frosting around, with your knife only touching your frosting, you should eliminate all crumbs.

If you still find you have crumbs, the other reason is that your frosting is too thick. This is particularly a problem with cakes that are light and fluffy. Not a problem!

If your frosting doesn’t spread easily, stop. Remove the frosting and put it back in the bowl. Add a teaspoon of water (or less) and mix it into your frosting to loosen it up. Test the consistency by trying to spread your frosting on your cake. It shouldn’t grip your cake like Velcro, but smoothly spread like mashed potatoes. Once you can easily spread your frosting, make that cake beautiful!

Want to make decorative elements, like an inspiration picture, but don’t feel confident in your piping skills? You will want this trick.

Don’t worry. You can use this trick even if you’re only comfortable using the tubes of colored frosting!

Print out your inspiration picture (with the elements blown up to the size you want them on the cake). If you have face details you want to recreate, make a copy for the body, and a second copy for the face. (The same is true for detailed that are stacked but not faces.)

For example, here’s the inspiration that I was working with.

The original creator had freehanded the design of this cake. I’m fortunate if I can draw a horse head on paper with a pencil, so I needed this trick.

I do have skills in Inkscape where I took the picture and traced the elements and made my own stencils. After I printed out the stencils I put them on top of a metal cooking sheet. To keep them in place, I used a loop of tape. Then on top of the stencils I taped down a sheet of waxed paper.

Once my different colors of frosting were put in piping bags, I started tracing the stencil lines with the planned out colors.

In the instance with the unicorn head, I made the outline, then filled (flooded) the inside with frosting, smoothing everything out with a knife to make it look like a solid piece.

When all my decorative elements were piped out, I put the cooking sheet in the freezer.

You’ll want to plan this one ahead of time. The frosting will take time to freeze. Even with the stiff frosting, you will want this to be in the freezer for at least over night.

When the frosting is frozen, you can transfer the elements from the waxed paper to the cake.

A memorable cake doesn’t have to cost a fortune. In fact, making a cake shows the person that you love them. And it doesn’t have to be perfect.

My favorite cake my husband made was the marshmallow frosting cake. And I guarantee that none of us will make that frosting again. It was not user friendly because it was a pouring frosting instead of a classic spreadable one.

This isn’t the marshmallow frosting cake. But it is the one my boys made on their own, for me.

The most memorable cake I made was my son’s bubble cake. He wanted a bubble cake so I made a tall multi layer cake in the shape of a bottle of bubbles. That sponge would not keep shape. It wanted to disintegrate on me and there was not enough support I could put in to make it stay. Let’s just say I’m glad I made it a fondant cake, because that fondant was the only thing keeping it together. I was in tears. But my son was dancing with happiness over having a bubble cake.

I tell you these stories so that you know that sometimes the best memories come from the imperfections in our cakes. After all, my favorite childhood cake, the Holly Hobby one I mentioned at the beginning, wasn’t all perfection. I look at the pictures from that birthday and only see love. My mom looks at those pictures and sees the cramping in her hands because of all the piping that cake took. She finished that cake with tears of pain. But it meant the world to me.

So don’t be afraid to make that cake for your loved one!

It may turn out to be an imperfect but testament of love that lasts through the ages. Or it may be the cake that blows your mind because you never thought you could do it, but you did! No matter the outcome, it is always worth it to make that cake!

Super hero birthday

Navy Retirement Cake. Inspiration cake and my cake with the medalion that was placed against the center wave in the flag.

Bridal shower cupcake cake.

Embracing Dry Meat

There are just certain cuts of meat that no matter how attentive you are, they just dry out. Instead of stressing out for a dry dinner, I’ve decided to embracethe dry and put it work for me. You’ve had the roast, chicken, and pork loin that just dry out no matter what. I know that I certainly have. And when we were able to get some pork loin for $0.99 a pound, we made the sale and I decided to make jerky!

I decided to try 2 different ways of seasoning, and 4 different flavorings. One was a wet rub (with minimal liquid) and the rest were marinades.

For the wet rub, this is the recipe that I used. It isn’t mine and even after searching through my devices and searching online, I can’t seem to find the post again. So if this is your recipe, please let me know so I can properly give you credit!

The benefit of a wet rub is that you have just enough liquid incorporate your seasoning into your meat without the need to drain off excess liquid. You can pull the meat straight from the bag and place on your dehydrating trays. But you will notice that the marinades absolutely need to properly drain or you will have to clean the bottom of your dehydrator. This wet rub didn’t need to be drained because the salt content didn’t have enough time to extract the water content from the jerky, like you see through the processing of bacon.

1 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
1 tsp. Salt
1/2 tsp. Pepper
1/2 tsp. Ginger
1/2 tsp. Onion Powder
1/4 tsp. Garlic
2 tsp. Brown Sugar

This recipe calls for a rest period of 15 minutes before laying the meat out on the dehydrator racks. I processed at 160°F, even though some people say they process at 145°F. The thinness of the cut (I aimed for paper thin although there were a few pieces that were a bit thicker) I made allowed me to have crispy jerky strips at 5 hours. The thicker bits took another hour.

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And let’s face it, I’m a busy mom and I usually don’t get around to process projects like this until the evening (usually while I’ve got the dinner cooking and I have a few minutes to do another task). The shorter processing time is most definitely my best choice.

For the marinades I chose from the Asian cuisine just because they are all great for an all round punch of flavor and generally well seasoned. From a local Vietnamese grocery store I had purchased a Honey Garlic Marinade and Korean BBQ sauce. From a local restaurant supply store I used Mr. Yoshida’s Original Gourmet sauce. (Mr. Yoshida’s is the sauce that I freezer marinade chicken and pork in for a quick pull out of the freezer “teriyaki” dinner where I don’t have to plan a marinating time.)

For marinating, I used the bowl and zipper bags. Obviously the bowl is the better option. However, in the middle of trying to get Christmas presents created and made, let’s just say I forgot two marinades for two days and am very glad that I used the zipper bags. My fridge space is at a premium right now and they were easier to store than a bulky bowl.

And as a side note, I highly recommend a longer marinade time than the recommended 15 minutes that I used for the wet rub and the Honey Garlic Marinade. Obviously the two day marinade imparted much more flavor into the jerky. 15 minutes on a marinade gives you only a hint of the flavor. However for a wet rub 15 minutes is most definitely all you need and you still get more flavor than the marinades.

Prepping the Jerky

You are going to run into a world of difference of opinion when it comes to jerky thickness. Some love the thin. Others prefer the thick cut. Then there are the people who love jerky that snaps and is crunchy. And others who want more of a soft chewy bite.

I really can’t tell you how you should cut your meat in prepping your jerky. Just know this. If you want the chewy bites of meat, you will want to cut the meat thick. If you want crunch and texture, you want to go with a paper thin cut (think Pho or Fondue, where slices of raw meat are added to the broth and cooked by the soup almost instantly).

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The thickness of your meat is going to drastically determine your dehydrating time. So even if a recipe tells you that the time is x hours, in reality that is when you’re going to check the jerky. Chances are very good that you will need to add a few or several more hours depending on just how thickly you cut your meat.

The absolute cardinal rule of making jerky is that you have to remove as much fat as you can from your meat. Fat is the limiting factor for how long of a shelf life you can keep your meat before it turns rancid and is spoiled. Small thread like seams of fat is not going to be an issue because the heat of the dehydrator will usually render that fat out, especially on the super thin cuts of meat. If you prefer the thick cuts of jerky do not count on any rendering to take place at all. The fat that goes in will still be on the jerky when it comes out.

TIP: If you cut your meat against the grain you will have tender jerky that you don’t have to work and pull to take your bite. It’s the difference between have crispy jerky and looking like you’re a pup working on a raw hide.

Looking at the above pictures (of raw meat), you will notice that there was still fat on my slices. But here (below) you will notice that they rendered out.

In fact, what you see in these pictures is four trays worth of jerky that I piled up before packaging up. On the left is the Korean BBQ. And the right is the Mr. Yoshida’s marinade.

When dehydrating jerky make sure that the meat is laid out flat (not folded over into layers) and isn’t touching it’s neighboring piece of meat. If the meat over laps the jerky is going to stick together. It’s not too much of a problem with the very thin slices. But the thick slices, the meat will still be raw even after several hours of dehydrating.

Sealing it up for storage

The great thing about making jerky is that it does not require fridge or freezer space. If you have air tight containers, chances are that you will probably eat the jerky you made before it goes bad. (This is especially true if you were diligent in cutting off as much fat as possible.)

There are many great products out there. There are vacuum glass or plastic containers. You can vacuum seal in mason jars using a vacuum sealing lid attachment.

One word of caution on this one. There new canning lids have greatly reduced the amount of rubber used on their gaskets. Everything I vacuum sealed with these new seals has completely failed from about 1 month up to 4 months. So please be aware of the lids that you use for vacuum sealing. While these new lids have remained true for water bath and pressure canning, they have been a complete failure for vacuum sealing my dry goods. If you wish to vacuum seal in your mason jars, I highly recommend that you switch to a reusable gasket and lid set like the ones made by Tattler. The more cushion created by a thicker gasket you have, the greater the longevity of your vacuum seal is going to have in remaining in contact with your jar.

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The method that I used for these roughly 15 pounds of pork loin (actual jerky weight is less because weight of water content was removed) was sealing in mylar bags.

Mylar bags can be used with a vacuum sealing system. However I don’t want to discourage you if you are on a budget. The truth is that I haven’t found a vacuum sealing system that I’m in love with. Even sous vide vacuum sealing systems have failed me and I’ve gotten rid of them. What I’m about to show you, I’m not happy with for long term storage. However I am very pleased with the results for at least a year’s shelf stable storage condition.

Below, I’ll leave a link to this model of a mylar sealer. It is not vacuum sealing, but it is economical for the families on a budget.

Once you place your jerky in the mylar bag, place an oxygen absorber. (Oxygen is the enemy of food preservation.) An oxygen absorber is all that you need in a bag like this. The bags, before sealing are open at the very top. Once I have the meat and oxygen absorber inside, I hand press the excess air out of the bag and use the zip lock to close it off.

By removing as much air as possible, it creates less work for your oxygen absorber. And in that process, there’s more absorbing properties available should you fail to seal the bag properly and a little air leaks in.

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Oxygen absorbers are soft when they have the capacity to absorb more oxygen. When they are no longer functional, they become hard.

With the zip lock closed, I then place the bag in the sealing device. (Pay attention to the notched tabs that make opening the bag easier. You want to seal on the far side of that notch or else that feature will not open the bag for you when you’re ready to open your jerky.) This particular sealer works when you press the lever down on top of the mylar bag. There is a light that turns on when it is sealing and turns off when it’s finished. The maker recommends leaving the pressure on for an additional few seconds to make sure the seal occurs. And I highly recommend this step of patience. While this machine is economical, it’s not fool proof. I have better sealing than the sous vide machines I’ve previously used, but it still has its margin of errors.

One thing to look out for when sealing mylar bags are wrinkles in the seal.

As you can see here, the top part of the bag has a smooth seal. The bottom part, closest to the camera, has wrinkles. These wrinkles are where you seal can fail and put your oxygen absorber to work. If you see this, seal the bag again and manually check to see the condition of the seal. There have been a couple of times where I sealed the bag, but the seal absolutely failed and when I checked to see if the top was sealed, it popped right open as if I hadn’t sealed at all. No matter what, always check that seal!

Absorbers

There are two types of absorbers; oxygen and moisture. My jerky is so dry and snaps that I pass on the moisture absorber. If you are making a thicker jerky with more chew, you will most definitely want to add a moisture absorber into your bag with the oxygen absorber. After all moisture is that creates the environment for mold to set in on food. And we don’t want that.

And just because you’ve not had rain for a while does not mean that you are clear to skip the moisture absorber.

This past summer we were a couple months with zero rain and yet we had humidity levels in the 90% and higher range. This is completely unusual for the Pacific Northwest and frustrated me to no end. I was dehydrating my vegetables to turn them into powders for seasoning. I would shut my dehydrator off at night, when I went to bed, and in the morning my dried vegetables were moist and flaccid again. I was so frustrated!

The point of that story is that even though you don’t have rain falling doesn’t mean that you’re free of moisture.

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With these rounds of making jerky I packaged them the same day, after they cooled down. I was not going to chance moisture being in my bags and ruining my jerky. (It also helps that my humidity levels were also in the 50% range, so I know the jerky was not being a moisture sponge while it cooled.)

Pay attention to your humidity levels. When in doubt add a moisture absorber with your oxygen absorber. And if your meat is thick cut, absolutely add that moisture absorber. It will keep your jerky’s texture and minimize the threat to your preservation.

TIP: If your absorbers come in a single large bag rather than smaller packages, you can still use the amount of absorbers that you need and seal the bag back up with your heat sealer. This will prevent oxygen from further exposing your extra absorbers. They will be preserved and ready for you to use when you’re ready to use them.

Which was my favorite Jerky?

I’m going to hands down say that my least favorite was the Honey Garlic Marinade. I had such high hopes for it because it smells so amazing! The problem was that the package directly said it was for 1 pound of meat and my jerky was 2.5 pounds. I will try this one again but make sure the meat to marinade ratio is true. The other problem was that the marinade turned out to be a low sodium finished product. My preference is toward a salty jerky. (Salt is a natural moisture absorber, it draws the water out of the meat. This is why jerky and preserved meat is always so salty.)

If you’re looking for a low sodium option for your jerky, than I think you’ll be pleased with the Honey Garlic Marinade. Both the honey and Garlic were mild in flavor, almost negligible in flavor–again, the problem of meat to marinade ratio.

In third place was the Mr. Yoshida’s jerky. While it was not my favorite and I may or may not make this jerky again, I do have to say that I loved this mild Teriyaki flavor. All the Teriyaki flavored jerky I have ever bought from a reputable jerky brand and always been too sweet and even off putting. I love Mr. Yoshida’s for having that palatable Teriyaki flavor.

I did learn from the Honey Garlic Marinade. So before I turned my dehydrator on, I sprinkled salt on top of this jerky. A light dusting of salt was just enough to season the meat without becoming a salt bomb. It enhanced the flavor of Mr. Yoshido’s. Even with two day’s marinating, had I not dusted with salt, the flavor would still have been bland.

Unless you’re going for a low sodium jerky, always salt it before you dehydrate it.

A very close second place goes to the Korean BBQ marinade. I will most definitely make this one again! There is a hint of sweetness, but you pick up bites of garlic. The reason for this is because the marinade had minced garlic in it. Even if you’re not familiar with Korean food, you will love this marinade just for the garlic. The best part is that you can eat and eat this jerky and you won’t need a breath mint.

This one was also dusted with salt before dehydrating. I played around with the salt levels on this one. A light dusting will keep you down in the lower sodium range. Although this marinade is still amazing with a heavier hand of salt, more to the traditional levels of saltiness. So you can go light or heavy on the salt with this one and still have an amazing jerky that beats out the ones that are bought in the stores.

My absolute favorite was the wet rub! I seriously had to bag that jerky up to keep from eating it all up. And even then it took self control not to open the bags that I just sealed. Flavor wise it’s true to the “original” that the professional brands sell. It’s not a fancy flavor, just good classic jerky. The salt level is probably on the moderate side. For my personal preferences, it’s on the upswing on the salty spectrum, but I also prefer my foods less salty than most people. If you like the salt, I would recommend, for the first time, sticking to the recipe above, and giving it a dusting before you put it in the dehydrator. If you’re a moderate salt person, the recipe is plenty good enough. And if you’re a low sodium person, go ahead and cut back on the salt.

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Whether you’re limited on freezer space, want to take advantage of a great meat sale, looking for shelf stable foods, want a snack that won’t go bad on you, or just want to try something new, making jerky is definitely worth the time and effort!

You don’t even have to keep it in the snack food groups.

The great thing about jerky is that if you’re in a power outage setting you can use jerky as a meat in a soup. Thin slices of jerky will warm up and rehydrate rather quickly. The thicker jerky will give a soup texture. Or maybe you want to try something new with your chili or stew. You seriously don’t have to leave jerky in the category of a meat stick snack. There are so many uses that you can use it for when cooking for meals during an emergency or when you’re out enjoying nature.

What’s your favorite jerky flavor?

Products used in this post

This post contains affiliate links that give us commissions on products purchased at no additional cost to you. These items listed here are from Amazon but may be purchased at local markets.

Lee Kum Kee Honey Garlic Marinade

Mr. Yoshida’s Original Gourmet Sauce and Marinade

ChoripDong Korean BBQ Sauce for Sliced Shortribs This product I could only find on the Canadian Amazon site. However it was at my local Vietnamese market.

Mylar Bags For Food Storage

Heat Sealer

Oxygen Absorber

Moisture Absorber

Tattler Reusable Canning Lids

Regular Mouth

Wide Mouth

Zip Lock Bag Holder Stand

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Baking Blues

In case anyone ever wants to know, the time I can get my cooking on and experiment is when the rest of the family is in bed asleep. The down side is that baking usually wakes my husband up and he has instant munchies. Did I mention that it doesn’t matter how much noise I make, what wakes him up is the aroma of fresh baked goods?

The funny part is that while I was editing photos (while the last batched finished baking) he comes in and asks me which one is the best one!

It’s moments like this where I color coded my muffins. Originally I did it, to make it easier to differentiate between the different blueberries. But it made it easier to give a midnight “unbiased” taste tester say which one he preferred. He chose the yellow muffins, for the record, and we’ll get to the muffins in just a moment.

Difference Between Preserved Berries

Last week I gave the run down on how the different preparations of the berries turned out in their preserved state. Above is a picture that I didn’t use last week, because I reconstituted the berries for making the muffins. From left to right, you’re looking at fresh blueberries, freeze dried, and dehydrated.

I really can’t tell you how much I’ve been enjoying the berries we picked. There is such a difference in quality of flavor. So if you haven’t picked blueberries for yourself, please do this for you. I know you will not look at store berries the same!

The freeze dried blue berries (before reconstituting) were a trip. They had a near fresh blueberry flavor and they were like a powder bomb in your mouth when you bite into them. There was a moment where I had to remind myself what it was that I just bit, because it confuses the brain when you’re not use to this texture. BUT… when you reconstitute them, let me tell you. The closest I can describe them is that they taste just like the store berries. They’re not as good as the fresh berries I picked, but that could have been because they are different breeds of blueberries. That’s enough to give a little flavor difference. I did drink the juice in the bottom of the bowl and that DID taste just like the blueberry juice that I made in this next section. That closeness alone is what makes me sold on freeze dried blueberries. (Aside from the obvious that they are shelf stable and last a lot longer than fresh berries.)

I reconstituted the dehydrated berries for the same length of time as the freeze dried. If you remember from last week, I described the dehydrated berries as having a bite to them. I’m personally not a fan of eating the dehydrated blueberries as is. BUT once they’re reconstituted, they take on a texture very similar to craisins or raisins that are on the drier side. I would definitely put those on a charcuterie board or several other snacking options. I chose not to drink this reconstitution water, as you can see it looks like colored water. I know I would have been disappointed. It might be a different story if I used hot water instead of room temp and/or I let it sit longer than the 20 minutes that I did (while making my muffin mix).

Now that you’re all caught up on the different berries, lets see all that I made with them. Except for the muffins, all these recipes were new to me over the last month. So I hope you get some inspiration also and try something new!

Blueberry Juice

I needed to make blueberry juice for the kiddo friendly blueberry cordial that I wanted to make for the boys. (They heard that I was making cordial for myself and they wanted some too. So here’s the first stop.)

I’m going to save you the time–DO NOT look up how to make this on YouTube! It’s one of those processes where they all look alike and they all do pretty much the same thing to them. And those who were difference, like one lade added milk, it was just not going to fly for making cordial.

Literally all you need is blueberries and water–that is it!

Here I used 3 cups of berries and 5 cups of water.

It was pretty standard across the board that everyone used about 1.5 cups of water per cup of berries. I could have used less water, but I was happy with the amount of liquid with my immersion blender. Everyone I saw used a stand blender. I’m an immersion blender girl and this all fit perfectly in my glass water pitcher. Clean up was just easier for me. So use whatever blending tool you have. You could even use a hand masher if you wanted to or hand squeeze the berries. The bottom line is that you can drink the pulp if you want that in your blueberry juice. Or you’ll end up straining the pulp out and squeeze everything to get all the liquid out. The water is just a medium to make the process flow.

I am going to include a clink for you here though. One lady I saw used her pressure cooker to make the juice. And then she canned her juice for future use and it’s in its simplest form to meet the need of any recipe you’re looking to use. This was just one project that I didn’t want to undertake on top of everything that I already planned to do for this post. But if you’re a canner, definitely check this video out!

NOTE: In canning groups there is a lot of heat surrounding water bath canning and acidity levels. (“Just because Grandma did it doesn’t mean that it’s safe by today’s cooking standards.”) Cooked blueberries acid levels are below the acid threshold, so it is entirely safe to can cooked blueberry juice without adding acid to the juice before water bath canning.

Blueberry Cordial

For blueberry cordial the pulp does need to be strained out. Just about everyone I’ve seen uses cheese cloth. I happen to have a muslin cloth bag that I use for straining fruits all the time, particularly when I’m making my elderberry syrup. So I opted to skip the cheese cloth and just use my muslin bag. It turns a 2-3 step straining process into just a single step.

After straining, you’re left with a clear blueberry juice.

And if you’re wondering, the juice tastes like the blueberry equivalent of the watered down apple juice I’ve given my boys. It’s not sweet. And is nothing like the fresh blueberries that I used.

But that’s okay, because the Cordial recipe I chose to use is from a British gentleman and his process starts off with reducing the blueberry juice anyway. Here’s his video here.

I followed his directions and reduced it down to half its volume. Taste wise, that watered down flavor is gone. And what remains is an acidic version of the blueberries that I picked.

Here is where I agree with him, the sweetness level of your cordial is very much dependent on your preference levels. My volume of cordial was greater than his, and even after making the proper conversions from metric to imperial I still could not add as much sugar as he did.

With my end volume around twice the amount of his, he added roughly 1 cup of sugar to his cordial. I would have been happy with 1/2 cup of sugar. It was at the level of sweetness as a soda. However, with cordial being syrupy sweet I ended up with a final measurement of 3/4 cup of sugar. And at this level that tasted to me like the really sweet cough syrup. This is definitely a treat that I will add this as a flavoring to unflavored seltzer water for the boys.

And I’m sure that my husband will add this to his seltzer water too.

I’m keeping this in my fridge to keep it preserved for a month or two. But I’m sure it will probably go quick and I’ll need to pull out my freezer berries to make some more.

Spiked Blueberry Cordial

After tasting the blueberry cordial above, I’m now wondering how this one is going to turn out. The recipe for this adult cordial I found here. But I have a few weeks of waiting before I can sample this one and see if any adjustments need to be made. (I will come back into this post and add to my assessment of this recipe once I have this one completed.)

Full disclosure, I do not own a large enough glass container to pull off this full recipe. (That and I didn’t have enough fresh berries that were thawed and ready to go.) So I cut this recipe in half. The proportions were exactly the same, so I know this is going to turn out as it should.

If you want the half batch recipe, this is what I used:

4 cups blueberries
28 oz vodka
1/2 cup sugar

Everything else I followed the directions.

Once this process has run its course, I’ll be back to give my thoughts.

Clafoutis

This recipe, Clafoutis, came my way on Facebook from a friend who was excited to pass this one when he heard that we picked blueberries this year. This is one of his favorite breakfasts and was eager to hear how we liked it.

I admit that I modified this recipe by way of the cooking vessel I used. I opted for my Pyrex because my largest pan is actually my cast iron pan I didn’t know if this recipe was going to expand in the oven or not. So it was my faithful Pyrex with a pan to catch anything that might fall over board during the cooking process.

I’m glad to report that nothing cooked over and it stayed in my Pyrex.

The batter itself reminded me so much of making German Pancakes. (This recipe expands, so now you know why I anticipated some expansion.) In fact, it tasted a whole lot like German Pancakes. The difference, of course, is the addition of blue berries. But also the clafoutis retains more of soufflé like structure. It does puff up and deflates a little after you pull it out and cut it. But on the scale of easy to difficult, this is definitely an easy recipe to make.

It’s super easy to bake and is definitely kid approved. I only made a single batch, but I certainly have to make a double the next time I make this recipe.

I wanted to make a quick note that baking did take longer in the Pyrex and there was the issue of the center being undercooked when time expired. The top was already brown. Because I needed extra cooking time, I did have to add some foil over the top.

If you’ve ever made a quiche, then you understand the jiggle in the center means more cook time is needed. The same is true with the clafoutis. If you see some jiggle, give it more time.

Blueberry Muffins

And now to the blueberry muffins I started off this post with!

Let’s be honest. Everyone and their grandmother have a dozen blueberry muffin recipes they can pull and one or two that they swear by. This is the one that I use, and I don’t even go to my cook books to look there. The problem that I have always had is that they are either too sweet or the moment you add fresh blueberries it turns into a swampy mess. Ina Garten’s recipe I swear was made for fresh blueberries to be added into it. It’s has the perfect amount of water to sponge ratio where your hands don’t get damp and sticky eating it.

So whether you want to use the recipe I use or the one that has been in your family for 70,000 generations here is some information that you can use to improve your blueberry muffin game.

I made one batch of muffin batter. And instead of adding the blueberries into the batter, I put the batter into my silicone cups and then added the blueberries to the color coded cups so I could pull off this ultimate side by side comparison. There was absolutely no way there was any difference in the batter or the sponge. This was entirely based off the berries themselves; fresh, freeze dried, and dehydrated.

In the blue cups I added the fresh blueberries.

The yellow cups have the reconstituted freeze dried berries.

And the red cups have the reconstituted dehydrated berries.

As you can see with this first baked picture, there is an obvious hydration difference between the sponges of the muffins.

The fresh berries, blue cup, are the standard reference point for the recipe that you choose to use. In my preference, the sponge is mildly sweet and firm with enough water content to keep it from being dry.

The reconstituted freeze dried blueberries, yellow cup, added more moisture content to the sponge, but the berries taste and texture wise are the same as the fresh berries. I walked away from this muffin with slightly tacky fingers and some crumb stuck to my fingers.

The reconstituted dehydrated blueberries, red cup, made the crumb dry up a bit. Instead of that perfect balance, it had the feel of what the perfect muffin feels like in a day or two after being baked. The crumb itself is still sweet, the dehydrated berries just took some of the moisture out. That being said, the dehydrated berries were sweeter than the fresh or freeze dried. And they offered a little different texture. You know that cheap box of premade blueberry muffin mix that you can buy at the store? The berry texture is pretty much the same. The berries are bigger than that boxed mix, otherwise there’s a very close comparison there.

If you remember above, my husband said he preferred the yellow cup muffins, freeze dried. I found that all too funny because I still prefer the fresh berry or blue cup muffins. But that just goes to show you just how much it comes down to personal preference.

Decorating with Blueberry Dust

Last but certainly not least, here is the secret baking trick that I alluded to last week!!!!!

The best part about the freeze dried berries is the perfectness about how you can break them down into a decorating powder. Not only is it easy enough to make a decorating powder in seconds. It is also sweet and gives a punch of flavor like you can’t imagine until you try it.

Yes! You can use a spice grinder and turn this into a beautifully fine powder that you can add to your butter cream for a beautiful lavender color with absolutely no food coloring. It also gives an intense blueberry flavor without watering down even your stiff peak frostings or fondants.

In this instance, I just put some crushed freeze dried blueberries into a plastic bag and rolled over it with my rolling pin a few times. Literally anyone can do this!

But my absolute favorite part is just how simplistically beautiful this is. Right here is the blueberry muffin mix from above, cooked in a donut mold. Sprinkled on top is powdered sugar and stripes of the blueberry powder. And finally it’s garnished with edible lavender and whole freeze dried berries.

This is the most beautiful and perfect baked good that I’ve made since having my kids. And it reminds me of the beautiful creativity inside me. It’s not anything spectacular. Because I know there are pastry chefs out there that can make me look like a toddler in my kitchen. But this is a simple wow treat that everyone can make for themselves. And all it takes is finding the products to bring into your basic kitchen and just having some fun.

I hope you try some of these ideas in your kitchen this week!

Products Used Today: This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links, but at no extra cost to you.

Thrive Life Freeze Dried Blueberries

Resusable Silicone Baking Cups

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Rolling In Blueberries!!!

This picture was our family’s first time going out to pick blueberries. I have a second berry picking appointment coming up this weekend and I wanted to share with you our experiences and what you can do with any blue-berries that you picked this year. Or if you’ve yet to visit a blueberry farm, than the berries that you can find in your local produce stand or appointment.

This year blueberries were slow to come into season because of our long cold and wet spring in the Pacific Northwest. (In fact, our whole growing season was completely thrown off, not just the blueberries.

Why did I choose to pick our own berries this year?

My youngest two kiddos LOVE blueberries. If my mother in law or we buy a pint of blueberries from the store, these two will gobble them all up while your back is turned making lunch. LOL I wish that were an exaggeration!

My problems with store berries are that produce prices have jumped through the roof so much where I can only afford to buy one fruit, in moderate weight, each time I go to the store. Yes, we’re a family with a tight food budget. And truth be told, blueberry prices make it so that this fruit really isn’t in our range. I can choose a pint of berries or a few bunches of bananas, or a bag of clementines. So If I want to have fruit to last past one meal, you can guess which direction I usually go. And then there’s the problem that when the blueberries are on sale, sometimes I find berries that already turn, or they’re molding in a day or two at home. Again, not cost effective.

So when I saw a social media add for a local blue berry farm, I jumped on the opportunity!

If you know grocery store storage, you know that the fruit you purchase today is already about 3 weeks off of the plant that it grows on. So picking berries ourselves means that they’re the freshest that you can possible get. And you have the bonus of the fruit being picked while ripe, instead of green. (If you know how quickly the vitamins leave your produce once it’s picked, you understand the value of eating your produce as soon from picking as you can get.

Then there is the educational bonus. By taking the boys out to pick, they see where the blueberries come from (not the store refrigeration case), what the blue berry bush looks like, what a ripe berry looks in comparison to a green berry, and what kind of environment it takes to grow blueberries. (Yes, we picked with boots on our feet!)

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This was definitely a learning experience for the boys because we had been picking an insane number of blackberries this summer. And the one thing that they immediately noticed is that they love picking blueberries over black berries because they don’t have thorns!

The remaining bonus to picking blueberries our selves is that we can speak with the farmer and learn about their farming practice. If it matters to your family if a farmer uses pesticides, natural organic sprays, or no sprays at all, this is how you get that information. There are many local farmers out there who do not have the time or money to purchase the “organic” sticker from the FDA. And often times, these farmers use a lot less product on their crops than the companies who can afford that sticker.

Pearson’s Bees and Berries is one of these farms. I would never have known that they skip even the organic sprays had I not met them and talked with them. But the first thing that I loved about this farm is that their bushes are heirloom. This is where I draw the most value from farmers. With as much as society pushes for scientific advancements, I really do not want those advancements in my food. I’m not the mom who buys everything organic. But I am the mom that buys produce (and grow my own) from heirloom and heritage plants whenever I can.

And I’m also the mom that buys directly from local farmers over grocery stores. People are under the assumption that farmers make a lot of money from their crops. Unfortunately, especially for the small farms, they don’t make very much from their crops unless they sell directly themselves. And I would rather my money go directly to a family to invest in their business than a chain. Plus it frees up the grocery resources for the families who are unaware of their local farmers or (for any numerous reasons) can’t make it out to the farms themselves. And if you’ve ever lived in a community where the power goes out or a snow storm comes in and the onion bins are empty, you know what it means to free up resources when you can. (The onion bin is a true story. Every year!)

This first visit to the blueberry farm, we picked 9 pounds of berries. This weekend we’ll pick another 9 pounds.

What do you do with all those berries???

I’m so glad you asked that question!

With my family, the way that we maximize our small grocery budget is by preserving everything that we can for the year. When berries are in season, we store them in a way befitting to how we will use them throughout the year. Apples we make apple sauce. And last year I learned how to can apple pie filling. So in the fall, I can buy the apples at the cheapest price of the year and take care of our apple needs for the year. Black berries, we pick them (for the price of gas to get to our picking location) and have our jam for a year or two for the insane amount of PBJ that we go through in our house.

This is my first year with blueberries to preserve for the year. So I photo documented everything to share with you here. If you decide to hit the berry farms this year before the season ends, you can have an idea on what you want to do with your berries!

Frozen

The first thing my mother in law recommended to use, when she heard of our first trip of picking blueberries, was that they freeze beautifully. And indeed they do!

I took this cookie sheet, and made a single layer of berries. I put them in the freezer to get them frozen and then put them into zip lock bags. I chose the quart sized bags and measured out the berries into 2 cup increments. Most blue berry recipes that I have (and looking at new ones), this is perfect for making a double batch of just about everything. And yes, I always make double batches of everything. With a family of five, with three of them growing, I just overcook to be on the safe side and err on the side of leftovers. And with blue berry muffins, it’s nice to have one baking session with treats for the week.

If I only need 1 cup, then at least I only have a cup of thawed berries in the fridge for the berry thieves to nab!

The baker in me made me dehydrate. I’ve had many recipes where the juice of the berries was just too much for the sponge and it made a soggy mess! So by taking the liquid out of the berries, you not only save freezer space with this shelf stable preservation but you also keep the right consistency to cakes and muffins.

The problem was what is the right way to dehydrate blueberries?

Before I set up my dehydrator my mother in law had already found a news article that stated the way that you HAVE to do it–but the berries in half.

Now I froze 3 pounds of my berries. And that left me 6 pounds of berries to dehydrate. There was absolutely no way I was going to cut all those berries in half. I’m a mother of 3 after all!

So I performed an experiment.

I left berries whole, with an assumption going into this that they would take forever because of the sturdy berry skins, for one tray. The second tray I filled with berries that were cut in half.

As seen above: whole berries and smashed berries.

For three trays I lightly smashed the berries onto a plate, using a glass cup that I could look through. By using the glass cup you can make sure that you see which berries you are smashing, which ones you already smashed, and just how much pressure you are adding in connection to breaking the skins open. For the smashing, I applied just enough pressure that the skins split open, allowing the air in to dehydrate, and yet keep the majority of the fruit structure intact.

When you look at the pictures above, the whole berries and the cut berries looked the same. So I just put the whole berry picture up. Both of those sets were placed on the mesh insert. I’m done with the days of putting fruit directly on the trays. By using just the mesh I don’t ever have to scrub my trays. Plus the mesh you can fold and break up any of the thin bits that cling to the surface. So even the mesh don’t have to be scrubbed either! The Right picture is the smashed berries. You can see what I mean when I say just enough to break the skin. Some got a bit more flat than the other (which looks a lot like the whole berries on the left). But these berries are a bit messier. I wanted to save the mess and not lose out on any of the blueberry goodness. So I dehydrated these on the jelly roll sheets.

The final two trays of blueberries were my fully mashed berries. I’m teaching myself how to seed save from different plants. My tomatoes are not yet ripe, so I can’t practice on those yet. So I chose to use the blueberries as my maiden voyage. And I’ll talk more about that below!

As you can see below, with the final dehydrated product, the fully mashed berries were a mess, a beautiful, lovely mess! So those of course were on a jelly roll insert.

As seen above: smashed and fully mashed.

The drying time and final products actually surprised me! The smashed and mashed took the least time to dehydrate, as anyone would expect. They took about the same amount of time, 13 hours. (Of course we had very high humidity days, which didn’t help here.) The mashed berries pulled off the jelly roll just like any fruit leather would. So if you want fruit leather you can use a blender or you can skip that extra clean up and just use a plate and glass. Of course the blender will give you the means of smoothing out everything across the jelly roll and produce a nice solid leather you can cut into perfect strips. Or you can go the quick and dirty route and skip the whole cutting process. Either way works and is a complete judgment call.

The smashed berries surprised me. I didn’t think they would turn out as perfect as they did. There was very little flesh spread and it looks nearly identical to how the whole and cut berries turned out, when they finished. These look exactly the same as the dehydrated blueberries in the packets of oatmeal or premade blue berry muffin packages. My walking away point is that for the least dehydrating time and same end product, a light smash is the way to go for dehydrating berries!

What surprised me the most was that the cut berries and the whole berries took the same 23 hours to dehydrate. Cutting the berries didn’t speed along the process for me. Even when I ate a whole berry and a cut berry, their textures were identical. I’m not sure why the article my mother in law read said that you had to cut the berries for the best result. There wasn’t a difference.

However there was a difference between the whole/cut berries vs. the smashed berries. When dehydrated the smashed berries had a little bit of pop corn roughness to it, but it had a bit more “airiness” to them. You could say they had a snap and not as dense feel to the teeth. It wasn’t a completely night and day difference between the three methods. But it was noticeable.

My Vote: a quick smash of the blueberries and dehydrating them is the way to go!

One side product you might not have thought of

Before I end this portion of dehydration, I wanted to talk about this one last observation. I like finding ways of using as much as I can of the things I preserve. And if you’ve dehydrated long enough, especially with the jelly rolls, you know there is always that bit from the juice and fragments of flesh stuck to your tray. This time, I decided on another experiment. I scraped off this little remnant. As you can see in the right picture below, I didn’t gain a whole lot of extra bits off of 5 jelly rolls, but I want you to stay tuned because I use this bit in a recipe below and I want you to know that this is completely usable!

What caused me to go to this effort?

I had to scrape my jelly rolls anyway, to make it quicker for washing when I was all done–no scrubbing. I took a taste of these scrapings. And let me tell you what! These scrapings have just as much flavor as the blueberries themselves. So yes, all that flavor, I was definitely going to cook with that.

Saving Seeds

I have no idea how successful this attempt of seed saving will be. I’m very new to this skill set. Including this batch of blue berry seed, I have three other plant varieties that are in the process of cold stratification.

If you are also new to seed saving, perennial plants do require cold stratification in order to tell the seed that it’s ready to sprout. I only have a small garden so it’s not space effective for me to plant seeds in the fall and let them over winter (cold stratify naturally) and hope they take off in the spring. So the best option for me is to go through the stratification method using my freezer and start the seeds indoors and plant any successful starts.

With blueberries, the methods I’ve seen people use for capturing seeds all involved using a blender and wasting the flesh. As you can imagine, I have no intention of losing berries to waste, so I tried something different.

If you remember above, when I talked about mashing the blueberries I mentioned seed saving. Here is what I did. The mashing broke apart the berries that you would see happen in a blender. The difference is that the flesh, I was able to put in my dehydrator and use it as a food source.

On the plate that I mashed the berries on, I removed the thick flesh and left the juice on the plate. With a silicone spatula, I scraped the juice from the plate into the bows that you see here.

As you can see, there seeds were quite numerous from the several handfuls of berries that I mashed. Definitely the seeds are numerous enough to get me a few starts to plant this spring. And I might have enough to share with others.

The method that I used to separate out the seeds from the juice and bits of flesh was the sluicing method. If you’ve seen a video on how you sluice a pan of gold, you understand the steps that I took here. I didn’t pour in very much water, maybe 1/4 cup of water at a time. I swirled the water in the bowl and let the water separate the juice and flesh from the seeds.

It is true what you hear; the seeds to stick to the bottom of your blender, or in this case your bowl. There will be a few floating seeds, but those are the ones that you don’t want anyway.

I sluiced, in my soup bowl, four or five times until you I got to this last picture of the seeds in the bowl.

From this point I continued in the stratification method that others already show how to do; place a damp paper towel in a zip lock bag, place the seeds on the paper towel, and place in the freezer to start the stratification process. (These are placed in the freezer for a minimum of 90 days for blueberries.)

I know that I’m not going to have any blueberries for five years, but I want to start this process now. And I might have to plan ahead and grown several bushes because I definitely have blueberry lovers on my hands!

Freeze Dried

While I do not have a freeze drier, I so wanted to mention this method of food preservation. This method maximizes on the flavor and texture of the blueberry while maintaining the maximum level of vitamin retention. No other food preservation method tops this method at this moment in food history.

That alone is reason enough, but there is also the added bonus of berries being shelf stable and fresh for up to 25 years, 1 year after opening. If you’ve water bath or pressure canned any preserves, you can recognize the benefit of not having a jar or seal failing you.

Maybe you’re like me and don’t have a freeze drier. I want you to know that you still have that option available to you.

More information on freeze dried blueberries can be found here.

I’m going to talk more about freeze dried berries next week, because I’m going to use these in recipes. And believe me, if you are a professional cake or cupcake baker, you’re going to want to see what freeze dried berries can do for you and your clients. You’re going to have all the berry flavor without throwing your water ratio off. Plus the added bonus of being able to decorate with the berries that you can’t do with fresh and less of your precious time than dehydrating.

Blue Berry Recipe

I wanted to share the blue berry recipes that I have and how each of these ways of preserving blueberries act in a given recipe, but I’ve given you ALOT of information already. So be sure to tune in next week for the recipes and how the berries work.

BUT in the meantime I don’t want to leave you hanging with the jelly roll scraping. So here we go on this quick analysis.

As seen above: the berry scrapings and blueberry pancakes (above: whole dehydrated berries, bottom: berry scrapings)

I didn’t have very much of the scraping, just enough for two pancakes for the boys. I made two other pancakes with the dehydrated berries. (And of course some plain flapjacks for the kiddo who dares to turn his nose up on blueberries.)

The dehydrated berries had a bit of crunch to them, but did not disappoint in the flavor department. The blueberry scrapings I absolutely loved! There was the full blueberry flavor without the bite of a dry blueberry, or even the wet squish of pancakes with fresh berries in them.

I’m so tempted to make more mashed berries and spread it very very thin to maximize the blueberry scrapings, because it’s the absolute perfect world for blueberry pancakes–full flavor without messing up the texture of a classic pancake!

Products seen today

These products are affiliate links. We can receive a commission from purchases made through these links, but at no extra cost to you. These products I have purchased for myself. Where I have talked about them, my statements are based on my experience on these products.

Nesco FD-1018A Garden Master

This was a replacement dehydrator for my other Nesco that served me well for over a decade. I wanted to make this recommendation because this dehydrator came with a mesh and jelly roll for each tray. I was prepared to purchase these accessories, but was so pleased to find out that I didn’t have to.

Thrive Life Freeze Dried Blueberries

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