Cooking with Last Year’s Preserves

The April category for the 2019 Food in Jars Challenge is one of my favorites – clearing out the pantry by cooking with preserves! For those of us who spend time canning various goods throughout the year, we have mixed feelings about using them. Of course, we make them with the intent to use them. But, as we use the jars, it’s hard to not try to hoard them a bit. (i.e. “I spent half of a well-earned Saturday making this Salted Caramel Pear Sauce and now there is only one jar left – I better save it.”) Save it for what? That is the question.

Canning All of the Things

I am so guilty of this. I started canning about 10 years ago, and there was a 4 or 5-year period in there where I canned EVERYTHING I could. It was so addicting! It still is addicting, but I’ve learned that there are only so many things we can eat, and there is only so much room in the pantry.  I’m kind of in between those two phases now – while I’m not still canning everything I can think of, I am still canning things regularly … and there are still some jars that are a touch more than a year old left in the pantry from my “can everything” phase.

So – this month’s challenge was perfect!  Time flies though, and while I did use a few things from the pantry and tried to be creative with their uses, I still have plenty more things I should use.  Use it so I can make more, right?!

Using the Jam

Proof that this category is close to my heart is shown in this That’s My Jam post I published several months ago with the permission of Food in Jars author Marisa McClellan. I wanted to combine as many ideas as I could of how to “use the jam” from our pantries – and you’ll, I spent HOURS on this post.  Actual countless hours.  There are literally endless ideas out there for using your jam and other pantry preserves in your cooking, baking, and other kitchen projects.

Anyway – let’s get to it.  I’m going to give a quick list here of the things I made this month to use preserves from my pantry.  I have photos of many of the things we did, but not all … sometimes we just cook and eat – and forget to take a picture.

Country Style Ribs with Tomato Jam BBQ Sauce

We slow-cooked some country-style ribs in the oven in my Fiesta 9×13 inch Pan and for the sauce, I mixed a partial jar of Tomato Jam that was in my refrigerator with some BBQ sauce.

Raspberry Jam and Cheese Turnovers

My husband makes pie crust with coconut oil and it is amazing. I’m going to try to make him write it down next time so I can share it here on the blog.

Anyway, he had made us some apple hand pies and there was about a cup of pie dough leftover. I rolled it into circles and on each circle, I put 1 teaspoon of raspberry jam and 1 teaspoon of the cream cheese and powdered sugar mixture. I pinched them shut like turnovers and baked for 25 minutes. (As you can see in the photo, they got a little burnt. They should have baked for 20 minutes instead.)

Duck Breasts w/ Asian BBQ Sauce & Orange Marmalade

In the spirit of pantry cleanout month, we also tried to use some things out of the freezer, including some duck breasts. We make our own Asian BBQ sauce with teriyaki sauce, soy sauce, hoisin or oyster sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, ginger, garlic, water, hot sauce, and whatever else sounds good at the time.  For this meal, we added orange marmalade to the mixture.

We used these duck breasts two different ways – for the first dinner, we ate them whole, with soba noodles and stir fry vegetables on the side. For the second dinner, we made a pizza with Skinnytaste Bagel Dough crust and topped with chopped duck breast, goat cheese, caramelized onions, chopped dried figs, and arugula.

Blueberry Banana Smoothie with Homemade Plain Yogurt and Huckleberry Jam

We enjoy having smoothies, and most of the time you will find Smoothie Freezer Packs in my freezer. I’m all about saving time on busy mornings, as you can tell from my other breakfast meal prep posts for Freezer Breakfast Burritos and Make-Ahead Egg Cups. Lately, I’ve been making Homemade Plain Yogurt in my 6-Quart Instant Pot and I don’t sweeten it at all – so when we use it in smoothies it’s nice to add a bit of jam.  I had a partial jar of huckleberry jam from Huckleberry Haven in the fridge, which I don’t make because I don’t have access to huckleberries. There are two kinds of jam I buy instead of making – huckleberry, and fig.  Coincidentally, they are my two favorites.  Anyway, it was a perfect amount left in the jar to sweeten our smoothie – and get a jar out of the refrigerator!

I went to the local library to see which cookbooks they might have that included recipes for using jam, and I found 750 Best Muffin Recipes by Camilla Saulsbury.  This book is amazing! There are so many delicious muffin recipes in this book.  For the purpose of this month, I chose two and made them … but I may be either borrowing it again soon or buying my own copy.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins

The first recipe I made from the book was Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins.  I used some of my Raspberry Jam that I made from our surplus of berries we get from our Everbearing Raspberry Shrubs.

If you are interested in having raspberries, they literally start producing by July. Then, they make berries every day until it freezes – and that’s in Minnesota. If you live where it’s warmer, I would guess you might get an even longer producing season. These things produce like crazy! These muffins were a bit crumbly, but I don’t think I baked them long enough. They taste just like everyone’s favorite peanut butter and jelly sandwich and they were awesome.

Sweet Potato Orange Marmalade Muffins

The second recipe I made from the 750 Best Muffin Recipes book by Camilla Saulsbury was for Sweet Potato Orange Marmalade Muffins.  I randomly had one cooked sweet potato in the fridge (?? right??) and we had a part jar of orange marmalade in the refrigerator – so it was perfect.

Both muffin recipes also used bananas, and we were trying to use our stash of frozen bananas from the freezer, so it was perfect!  Need a muffin pan? Check this one out!

 

Braided Poppyseed Loaf with Meyer Lemon Curd

I first made Meyer Lemon Curd in January during the Citrus Challenge, and it was actually the first time I had ever had it. I’m hooked, and I made it a second time in April to go with this bread I wanted to try. This one wasn’t really “using last year’s preserves.” However, you COULD have lemon curd to use in YOUR freezer, so I’m saying it counts.

 

 

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Banana Dog Treats

While we were using up bananas from the freezer, my husband decided to make some homemade dog treats.  So, no preserves really being used here, but it counts because we cleared more bananas out of the freezer. Score! The dogs liked them, too.

Sweet Corn Casserole with Cornbread Topping

For Easter, we made some sweet corn casserole with a hybrid recipe. It was my mom’s traditional corn casserole recipe on the bottom and my mother-in-law’s Southern-style cornbread on the top. We mixed a bit of our Green Tomato Salsa Verde into the bottom corn mixture. We baked it in my Round Fiesta Casserole Dish with Lid – with the lid on for first half of baking time and then removed the lid. This experiment turned out great!

Iced Tea with Peach Syrup

In my earlier canning days, I couldn’t make a decent set jam for the life of me. I was too afraid of having it overset and normally made syrup. I’m wiser now (in some ways) and have better luck making jam. But, I do still have a few jars of fruit syrup lurking around in the pantry. We have discovered it’s a great way to gently sweeten our iced tea.

Crown Apple w/ Cranberry Rum Sauce & Sprite

This one doesn’t need much explanation.  It’s so good!

Venison Pastrami Reuben Sandwiches

My husband has made venison pastrami a few times. We freeze it in chunks and thinly slice it for Reuben sandwiches throughout the year.  We had some this month, and we used some of my homemade Sauerkraut from the freezer, and I also made the Thousand Island sauce with mayonnaise, my Homemade Ketchup, and Zucchini Relish. Sometimes we make the rye bread too, but we didn’t this month.

Pork Chops with Green Tomato Bacon Jam

We buy thick-cut, bone-in pork chops from our local butcher, and the only thing that makes them even more amazing is Green Tomato Bacon Jam. In the meal shown, we served them with Air Fryer French Fries, polenta cakes and salad. I made a HUGE batch of the Green Tomato Bacon Jam last year (half with bacon, half without) – so we are working on eating it. It’s good with hamburgers, too!

Smoked Goose Tacos with Grilled Peppers

We also are using salsa in as many things as we can think of. We had an abundance of salsa going into last season and actually didn’t make salsa last year. The goal is to get all of our salsa eaten before it’s time to make some fresh this season. For this meal, we made tacos with smoked goose breast and grilled banana peppers and had some beans and rice on the side with salsa and tortilla chips.

I actually didn’t get near as many things made with my preserves this month as I had planned.  I tried! As you can see, the options really are endless. I had big intentions of using some recipes out of the new Food in Jars cookbook, The Food in Jars Kitchen, by Marisa McClellan.  Unfortunately, I ran out of time for including any in this post, but I am excited to read it! It will be getting page flags real soon while I figure out what to make first.

I hope you enjoyed my “Cleaning out the Pantry” tour.  What’s in your pantry? Check it out, use it up, and tell me about it in the comments!