Master Food Preserver Certificate Program: Kona, Hawaii – WEEK 2

I traveled to Kona, Hawaii with my family to take a Master Preserver Course put on by the University of Hilo. Click here to read about my first week of classes.

Through the 50+ hour course, we are taught about food safety and food preservation methods including canning (water bath and pressure canning), fermenting, pickling, dehydration, freezing and charcuterie. In the second week of classes we pressure canned whole chickens, broken down to fit into 8oz jars, pressure canned salmon from Alaska that my classmate caught, and green beans in water. We pickled beets, bread and butter pickles and dill pickles and we made salmon grav lox with dill. We also dehydrated bananas (sliced and fruit leather), mangos (sliced and fruit leather), pears, grapes and pineapple. We also made delicious chicken shen and used it as stuffing for dumplings and we made Italian sausage that we stuffed into casings. At the end of our second week of classes, we got to taste much of what we had made and that was really fun – everything tasted great!

The chicken we pressure canned (without any liquid) had created a natural broth within the jar and I will definitely do this again at home. But when I make it at home, I’ll add onions, carrots and celery so that the broth has more flavor. The grav lox was amazing, in case you aren’t familiar with it, grav lox is the Nordic process of curing raw salmon with salt, sugar and fresh dill. After about 48 hours, when cured, it’s thinly sliced and enjoyed! Of all the things we dehydrated I enjoyed the dehydrated pear the very best, though it was all good.

Here are some pics from our second week of classes: