I just remembered I got some .. interesting experiences with preserving food while at the broken-hip lady's house, listen to this.
The lady would sometimes gift me extra jars of fruit compot or preserved tomatoes in a jar, and every time I would eat some of it, I thought it tasted odd. Alcoholic, like it started fermenting. I would ask her about it, and she would insist she puts no alcohol in her preserves whatsoever, and it's just fruit. I would shrug and go on with my day, assuming I'm just too sensitive to alcohol and sense it everywhere.
While I was at her place, her grape vine was flourishing, and she had me preserve some grapes in a sugary syrup. I was looking forward to learning her method, and she instructed me on what to do. First, pick all the grapes from the stem. Done. Then, fill the jars with them. Do we wash or sterilize the jars first? No, they're fine from being in the basement. I was already feeling a bit twitchy since I sterilize my jars every single time before canning, despite them being washed beforehand.
Then, we make the syrup. We had water boiling, and she instructed me to put, a few spoons of sugar in there. I wasn't suspicious of that because I too like to put as little sugar as possible. So I prepared the jars, thinking we're about to pour hot syrup and then vaccum them shut, however, she went, okay, leave it all to cool down now. I'm all question marks, but I do as she says. Then when the syrup was lukewarm, she had me pour it over all the grapes, and then she told me to put the lids on. And I'm waiting to see if we're now sealing them with hot water โ but she told me we're done. We're done! We just poured lukewarm water with few spoons of sugar over raw fruit and that's it?
Then it dawned on me why the stuff always tasted so fermented. She never cooked any of that fruit. They were filled with raw bacteria. And the jars weren't vaccumed shut at all. Oxygen was freely pouring in an out trough the cracks between the jar and the lid. She was doing ferments, not canning!
Later on we made and canned some tomato sauce, and in this instance she did have me pour the hot stuff into the jar, and we closed them instantly, causing them to pop later just because of the heat of the sauce. This is not how I do things, I would have sterilized and heated the jars first, poured boiling sauce inside, closed them, flipped them upside down, then wrapped them up in towels and blankets where they would stay for days, causing them to become very tightly sealed. If I'm just pouring hot syrup, I make sure to boil the whole jars for 10 minutes until they becoem sealed. This 'they might pop because the sauce is hot' method seemed very flimsy to me.
Anyway, I went yesterday to help out, and in the basement I stumbled upon the jars of grapes we 'preserved' earlier, to find that they are leaking and bubbling because they're mid-fermentation. I brought this up to the lady, and she had me pour everything out in a big pot, cook it properly, and then again, save it into jars after it cooled down. 'It's not gonna bubble anymore, right?' she asked me, and I didn't know. We did get rid of the fermenting bacteria this way, but that stuff is not sealed, I have no idea what cooked fruit does in sugary water when exposed to room temperature. I have no idea how she has not poisoned herself, or me, by preserving things this way, but it gives me hope! If one can be this careless while preserving food and still live their entire life without feeling any of the bad effects of it, then I will be absolutely fine doing my food stash in the more regular and recommended way.
And you people try to shame me for poisoning myself!
