Chutney recipes and other home food preserving recipes.
Feel free to email me recipes for posting or links, personally I'm always on the look out for ways to save vegetables and fruit from the garden.
If you want a particular recipe let me know, I probably have one.
This is also known as Angel Hair jam because of its appearance. I'm posting this in response to a request. It makes about three pounds.
Ingredients
2 1/2 pounds grated carrot grate lengthways for best final effect) 4oz grated ginger 8 floz white vinegar grated rind and juice of two lemons 1/4 pint water 4 tbsp honey 2 tbsp ground coriander seeds 1 tbsp salt 3-4 small chillies 3 tbsp flaked almonds Method
1. Mix everything except the almonds and the chillies in a bowl and leave to stand overnight. 2. Bring to the boil and simmer for twenty minutes, then boil hard for ten to fifteen minutes until thickened. 3. Grind the chillies and add them and the alomnds to the mixture. 4. Spoon into hot sterilized jars. 5. Improves with aging, and lasts up to two years.
This chutney recipe is one you don't come across very often. If you grow green beans though it can be a very useful way of using up excess crop. Strictly speaking it is more of a pickle recipe but you thicken it with flour to get a spreadable mix.
Ingredients
2.5 pounds green beans cut up small. Remove hard strings and pointy ends if they are tough, otherwise just chop them up. 2 pounds soft brown sugar 1 small cup dry mustard 2 tabsp turmeric 1.5 pints vinegar (white) 1 cup plain flour celery stalk.
Method
1. Cook the beans. (leave crunchy) 2. Make the mustard, turmeric and flour to a smooth paste with a little vinegar. 3. Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar and then stir in the flour paste. ( It is easier to add the vinegar to the flour a bit at a time until the flour mixture is thin enough to pour straight into the warmed vinegar, or you get a claggy mess.) 4.Boil for five minutes and then add the beans and finley chopped celery. Cook for a little longer and then pot. 5. This chutney tastes better when aged for at least a month.
By varying the flour amount you can get a thicker or thinner mix. Try adding chilli for a spicy mix. If you want a true chutney for you green beans try piccallili or chow chow.
For a more varied pickle I have added chopped cauliflower.
I've just been sent an alternative to try.
Ingredients
2 medium onions, peeled and finely chopped 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed Black seeds from 15 cardamom pods 1 tsp ground cumin 1tsp fenugreek seeds half tsp chilli flakes 120ml vegetable oil 2tbsp granulated sugar 100ml white wine vinegar Salt and freshly ground black pepper 750g runner beans, trimmed and cut into 1-1.5 cm chunks
Method
Gently cook the onion, garlic and spices in the vegetable oil for 3-4 minutes without colouring until soft. Add the sugar and vinegar, season and simmer for a couple of minutes. Add the beans, cover with water, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 30 minutes. Remove from the pan, leave to cool and store in sterilised jars in a cool place for up to a couple of months. If you want to keep the chutney longer, the jars should be vacuum sealed.
I've not tried this one yet but it does sound more like the real deal chutney wise.
Many people are put off jam making because the recipe says "boil until setting point is reached". It is not really a great mystery when this is. I made jam for many years without a thermometer using a simple spoon test.
To test if your jam has reached setting point take a small amount from the boiling jam pot and drop it onto a cold saucer. Allow it a few seconds to cool and then push it with the teaspoon. the jam has reaches setting point when it sets on the saucer, which is visible when you push it.
If you make a lot of jam it is worth buying a jam thermometer. These clip on the side of your pan and are marked at the various temperatures needed to set jam, jellies and toffee. ( I had marvellous brass one which got lost on one of my moves, and now I have a cheap tacky plastic one.) They both work equally well but the brass one looked nice hung in my kitchen!
If you've ever tasted commercial plum jam and shuddered I can only encourage you to try this recipe, and just taste the difference. It is absolutely astounding how different this jam tastes from the yucky stuff available in the shops. (I would also encourage you to try plum crumble, you may never feel the same about apple crumble again.) Jam making is looked on as a bit of a mystery but it is very very easy indeed, especially if you buy a thermometer to test the setting point. Ingredients
4 pounds (1.8 kg) fresh ripe plums 1 1/2 cups water 6 cups sugar 1/4 cup lemon juice
Method
1. Chop and stone the plums. Don't peel them, the skin is where the colour comes from and you don't notice it in the final product. 2. Mix all the ingredients together in a pan and bring to the boil, boil for about twenty minutes until setting point is reached. 3. Pour into eight sterilized jars.
I only grew squash for the first time last year, and found it was one of those feast or famine veggies that you tend to get a lot of at once. My children weren't that keen either then I found this recipe, which is perfect with cheese or as a side dish. (picture courtesy of tinyfarmblog.)
Ingredients ( for about two pounds)
2 pounds firm yellow summer squash 2 small onions 1/4 cup salt 2 cups white sugar 1 tsp celery salt 1 tsp turmeric 1 tsp mustard seed 3 cups cider vinegar
Method
1. Wash squash and slice thinly. 2. Sprinkle squash and onion in salt and cover in water. Leave for two hours and drain. 3. Mix together the rest of the ingredients and bring to the boil and add the squash and onions. Leave off the heat for a further two hours. 4. Bring to a gentle boil and warm for five minutes. 5. Pack the vegetables into warmed sterile jars and top with liquid.
I just love this recipe, when you taste it it starts off with a sweet taste and then you get a straight chilli kick. This tastes far better than any sweet chilli sauce you could ever buy.
This recipe makes about a half litre, which I put into jars but the consistency is pourable if you have sauce bottles.
Ingredients.
500g very ripe tomatoes 4 cloves garlic, peeled 4 red chillies 2 tsp grated ginger (from a jar is fine) 30ml fish sauce 300g caster sugar 100ml red wine vinegar
Method
1. Dice half the tomatoes. 2.Blend the rest of the tomatoes, garlic, chillies, ginger and fish sauce until you get a puree. 3. Mix the puree with the sugar and vinegar in a large pan and bring to the boil. Stir slowly. 4. Reduce to a simmer and add the diced tomatoes. 5. Cook for a further thirty to forty minutes removing any scum that forms.Stir occasionally. 6. Pour into warmed, sterilised glass jars.
This is the best Preserving book I ever bought. It details basic techniques and equipment and how to use them, and moves on to some of the more complicated techniques. What I like the best though is that whatever part of the world I was living in at the time this book had a recipe for me. If you are more interested in freezing and canning then Food Preserving at Home may be a better choice.
I have moved around the world and collected recipes as I went. I made a few howlers because of assumptions that a tablespoon was the same every-where...it isn't. I have posted these recipes from my collection of grubby bits of paper, ripped out magazine articles and the patchy entity that is my memory, and so the units will vary.
The easiest way to get units you are familiar with is type the question into google.
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book I ever bought. It details basic techniques and equipment and how to use them, and moves on to some of the more complicated techniques. What I like the best though is that whatever part of the world I was living in at the time this book had a recipe for me. If you are more interested in freezing and canning then 
may be a better choice.
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