A step-by-step recipe for cooking cucumbers with a candle for the winter
Almost every family makes preparations for the winter every year. Usually this is preserving and salting vegetables, rolling berries for jam and much more. Harvesting cucumbers with a candle for the winter is an original, simple, quick way of preservation, it helps to preserve all the benefits and freshness of vegetables, but it also has disadvantages. The finished product is suitable for salads, various snacks.
Features of harvesting cucumbers with a candle for the winter
Immediately before harvesting, you need to study some of the features inherent in this method. These include the correct selection of vegetables.
Cucumbers should be:
- Fresh. When buying cucumbers, pay attention to the whole batch, rather than choosing one at a time. So, if single copies are not the first freshness, then all the rest will soon wither and deteriorate.
- Before putting the cucumbers in the jar, they should never be rinsed. If the outer layer is washed off, the decay process will begin, no workpiece will work. Cucumbers must be dry and clean. It is best to simply wipe them down with a rag.
- The cucumbers must remain intact. It is important to view not the batch as a whole, but each cucumber separately. Such meticulousness is necessary, in case of damage to one cucumber, all the rest will soon deteriorate.
If the choice is between greenhouse and soil varieties, the latter should be preferred. Greenhouse cucumbers have a thin top layer that peels off easily, vegetables begin to deteriorate.
Advantages and disadvantages of the method
This method of harvesting cucumbers has its advantages and disadvantages.
The benefits include:
- unchanged taste and almost complete preservation of nutritional value;
- cucumbers remain fresh, due to the fact that there is no heat treatment;
- the shelf life of such cucumbers is long, about 3-4 months;
- does not require much time and money.
The disadvantages are much less:
- in case of inattentive selection of cucumbers and a spoiled specimen entering the jar, all vegetables will be spoiled;
- when light hits the jars, cucumbers also deteriorate.
Specificity of selection and preparation of products
Before harvesting cucumbers, they must be selected and prepared correctly. If you use cucumbers from your own garden, it is better to pick them in the morning or evening, and not at the peak of solar activity. After harvesting, place the vegetables in the shade. During active fruiting, they are harvested every 2 days, and sometimes daily.
It is important to prevent the cucumbers from overripe and yellow bloom.It is best to harvest freshly harvested cucumbers, if they lie at room temperature for even 2 days, their freshness and healthy appearance will disappear, the shelf life will be significantly reduced.
Preparing cucumbers for placement in jars is a simple matter. They are simply sorted out, the fruits of the desired size are separated and damaged or deformed specimens are removed.
The shape of the cucumbers is also important, it is desirable that they are almost the same.
How to properly prepare containers
It is easy to prepare containers for harvesting cucumbers with a candle. Banks are disinfected, preferably heated in a water bath. To do this, pour 1 cm of water into a saucepan, put a wooden grate on the bottom, put a jar on this grate. The water is brought to a boil, kept in a jar for another 10 minutes.
After this procedure, the container becomes suitable for harvesting cucumbers.
How to close cucumbers with a candle?
The procurement process itself is as follows:
- Cucumbers of approximately the same size are selected.
- Selected clean and dry cucumbers are placed in a pre-sterilized jar. Fill not completely, you need to leave a place for the candle.
- A candle is installed on top and lit.
- The can is closed after the air is completely released, the candle goes out.
How and how much conservation is stored
Cucumbers canned in a jar with a candle are stored for 3-4 months. Due to the fact that a certain vacuum is created in the jar, vegetables remain fresh and retain all their nutritional value.
In order to increase the shelf life of conservation, jars are placed in cool and dry rooms, where heat will not penetrate.
Places where you should not store canned food - the kitchen, rooms that are heavily heated, places near the heaters. Otherwise, the cans heat up and explode. If this does not happen, then the condition of the vegetables will not be the best, most likely they will soften and become flabby and tasteless.
