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DIY Frozen French Fries
DIY Frozen French Fries
By servantheart, Editor-At-Large
Who doesn’t love “french fries”? But, have you noticed how expensive the good ones have become? Well, why not make your own? It’s easy!
You’ll need:
Potatoes
Seasonings
Working Oven
Cookie Sheet(s)
Sharp knife or French fry maker
Cold Water
Salt
Parchment paper (optional)
Freezer bags
Freezer
Marker
You’ll need potatoes; good, fresh, firm potatoes. Grow your own and you’ll always have them, but in the meantime, you can buy them – just make sure they’re firm. Variety is up to you: Idaho are always a favorite, but red potatoes are great, as are Yukon Gold, and a whole array. Hey, why not mix them? I haven’t tried this yet, but, that could be the next kitchen experiment!
Wash your potatoes well. Unless the skins are green, don’t peel them – the peelings are food, and very nutritious food, at that. But green skins indicate exposure to light during growing, producing “solanine”, which is toxic. Peel the potatoes if the skins are green; otherwise, eat the yummy skins! Do not throw green potato skins in your compost – dispose of them.
Cut the fries to suit you; some people like thick wedges, some prefer thin, so, cut them into the shape you like. A good, sharp knife will do (I like my cleaver!); but, I have vintage hand-operated devices that will push a potato through (using hand power to push, of course) and give uniform french fries; you can buy new french fry cutters, as well, but, they’re made in China…go to ebay or shopgoodwill.com or etsy, etc., and buy a vintage one! They’ll work well and not poison you in the process with toxic paint, or break from defective metals, etc. Of course, there are always electric-powered food processors, and they will give very uniform results, but I prefer off-the-grid methods as often as possible.
Soak the cut potatoes (french fries) in cold, salted water (about 1 gallon cold water with 1/4 cup salt per 5 lb. potatoes should do it) for 20 minutes. Rinse thoroughly. This removes a lot of the unwanted starch and produces a better product. Allow fries to drain on a cookie cooling rack or clean cotton towel.
- While draining, preheat oven to 425 deg. F.
Arrange fries on cookie sheets, single layers only. Parchment paper comes in very handy here. Spray (I bought a small, cheap hand-held spray bottle in the travel section at China-Mart, and it works great), or drizzle with your favorite oil – mine is olive oil (first cold press, extra virgin) for this project. Season with your favorite seasonings: we like sea salt or kosher salt, cracked peppers, lemon pepper, Cajun seasonings, etc. Bake @ 425 deg. F until “done” – how long will depend on the way you cut your fries, the size and calibration of your oven, etc. Just watch them, and keep a note on how long it took to get them where you want them.
When done, remove from oven, and allow fries to stand to cool a bit (try not to eat too many along the way here). When cooled just enough to be safe to pop in your freezer – still on cookie sheets, do this! Freeze completely (how long this will take depends on how you cut them, but a few hours should do it for any cut).
When frozen stiff, bag your fries up according to the portion size you want per bag, date the bags. You could also use your FoodSaver here (I use mine!) and they will, of course, stay fresher longer than in a regular freezer bag (won’t ice up in the freezer!).
To reheat: Oven @ 425 deg. F; bake until thoroughly heated through to suit your personal tastes.
Chemical free french fries when you want them!
Grace and Truth,John 1:14; 1:17; 2 John 1:3
Sha’alu Shalom Y’erushalayim (Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem)
servantheart on Canning Bacon……..
Canning Bacon
by sevantheart, Editor at Large
You will need: a large (tall) pressure canner; a rack on feet OR 2 racks and jelly jars with caps and rings; quart jars with caps and rings, preferably wide-mouth, thick-sliced bacon, and parchment paper (or paper bags).
Get lots of parchment paper; I buy mine in rolls at Sam’s – much cheaper this way.
Get your jars ready - quarts will work best for this project, and wide-mouth will be easier to fill than regular mouth jars.
Remember that canning bacon works best with thick-sliced; most other will disintegrate or turn into a large blob of bacon.
Cook your bacon in advance (trust me when I say this works better than packing raw bacon, although, you CAN do that, too!). I microwave ours; but, cook it until it’s “crispy” (or, however you like it cooked). You will have to cook it up again to crisp it again when you open the jars, but, that won’t take much “cooking” when you pack it cooked.
Tear off a strip of parchment paper to hold about 8 slices, rolled up; if you get it too short, it doesn’t matter; you’ll just pull off another piece of parchment and keep going. Parchment paper cans just fine; don’t use wax paper – it does not. You CAN use paper bags, if necessary, but, parchment paper works best.
Roll your bacon, one cooked strip at a time, in parchment, making sure each strip is rolled and protected from the next strip by paper; if the bacon is wrapped meat-to-meat; it will all stick together after processing and cooling, and you will have one big lump of bacon. Good luck getting that out of the jar!
When you have about 8 strips (you may be able to get more in there!); fold the strips of wrapped bacon in “half”; trim the ends of the parchment, leaving about one (1) inch at either end of the bacon (one inch parchment paper hangover on each end).
GENTLY stuff the folded strips down inside your jars. This is where you will understand why I tell you wide-mouth is best here. You CAN use regular mouth, but, GENTLY work it down, using a spatula, or some such tool. And try not to mutter to yourself too much while stuffing regular mouth jars!
When the jar is filled (it’s o.k. if it’s not “full-full”, as in there are air spaces – that’s normal for this project), wipe jar openings with hot water. Each jar opening needs to be wiped down with VERY hot water and a fresh paper towel; fat is very easy to transfer. Wear protective insulated rubber gloves for handling the hot paper towels, but use one fresh paper towel per jar.
Sterilize your caps and place them; sterilize your rings and place them.
Now, you can process these down in the water, and the result will be “o.k.”. What I find works much better is to DRY CAN THE BACON. This is not running your canner dry – that will ruin your canner; what it means is the jars need to be held ABOVE the water line while processing. (BTW: you can use this method to sterilize tools and instruments, but, that’s another story for another day).
This is where the height of your canner is important, and thus, a bigger canner works better for this project – make sure you have three (3) inches of clearance between the top of your bacon jars and the top of your canner, when it is sealed. So, when you put in all your racks and your jelly jars of water, or whatever, then your next rack and the jars of bacon, you need 3 inches of clearance at the top.
Make sure you have about three (3) inches of water in your canner; you don’t want to run out of water.
Use a rack with legs that hold the jars above the water line (good luck finding THAT!), or – do this:
1. Place one rack in the bottom of the canner, as you always do.
2. Fill at least four (4) jelly jars with water and add lids and rings; you can either process good, clean water (not municipal, fluoride, nano-particle drug water!) and store it as sterile water (an excellent prep item – use for cleaning out wounds, etc.), or, just sacrifice a few caps for the sake of the project without saving the water – you can use the same jelly jars of water as many times as you need. Let them cool a little between loads. You’re going to use the jelly jars to build up the height for processing bacon; YOU CAN NOT DO THIS WITH EMPTY JARS – THEY WILL ‘FLOAT”, AND CRACK DURING PROCESSING. You can not process other food in the jelly jars at the same time, as jelly jars are much smaller than quarts; food processed in a jelly jar for that length of time will turn to mush.
3. Place jelly jars of water atop first rack that is protecting them from bottom of canner.
4. Place a second rack on top of jelly jars – this rack can literally lay across them
5. Set your quarts of bacon atop this SECOND rack. Check your water in canner – you need three (3) inches of water; if water laps bottom of jars, o.k., but you don’t want them immersed in water.
6. Seal your canner and fire her up!
7. On high heat, build your steam; steam it out for 10 minutes, as always (10 minute tornado from the vent pipe);
8. Place your counterweight on the vent pipe; bring to 10 lbs. pressure and process @ 10 lbs. for 90 minutes because we’re doing quarts. After 90 minutes at 10 lbs. pressure, turn off heat if gas, remove from heat if electric.
9. Allow to cool naturally; remove jars; if wide-mouth, remember, they don’t make the noise regular mouth make when sealing, and they don’t make the same sound when tapped. NEVER TAP THE CENTER OF THE CAP TO TEST – TAP AROUND THE EDGES.
10. When thoroughly cooled, wash your jars of bacon in hot, soapy water (fat everywhere!), rinse in hot water, allow jars to thoroughly dry; mark caps with contents and date and store away.
To enjoy: it’s already cooked; you could just set it out in the sun and heat it up, or, eat it straight from the jar. But, Yes! It will be greasy (the paper does absorb a lot of the grease). I like to throw it in a pre-heated cast iron skillet and just “re-crisp” it. It doesn’t take long at all!
This works out great for camping (even though it is in glass). That glass jar comes in handy for storing other leftovers, as well, so, you’ll get more than one use from the jar while traveling.
It’s also convenient to have pre-cooked bacon at the ready for a quick breakfast, casserole, etc.
How long is this good? 5-6 years, if you store it out of direct sunlight, and away from heat sources.
And now you know: how to dry can bacon! If you don’t want to dry can, just use the standard method of one rack sitting in the water; all other instructions do not change.
How to build a solar food dryer that works!
From Rourke: This post originally appeared over at TheSurvivalistBlog.net. It can be seen in its original form HERE.
Provided in response to reader comment - recommended by servantheart, Editor at Large:
Ole Gunderson says:
Great flashlight. Would like to see some more on dehydrating foods and the cooking with the results.
How to build a solar food dryer that works!
You will be building three (3) different box-like units, all of which will fit together and work to dry your food (or, just about anything else!) in the sun.
The finished dimensions of your solar dryer will be two (2) feet by four (4) feet. You will not be building legs from these directions, but could do that very easily “whenever”. If you are going to build legs, we suggest using PVC pipe and setting them in 5-gallon buckets, with enough sand or concrete to hold them in place, but allow for water in the bucket. The water will keep ants and crawly things from crawling up the legs while your food dries. I do not do this; I simply check it from time-to-time and make sure there are no critters; so far, so good.
You can use virtually any wood you like; we used cheap pine, because, well, - we’re cheap! But, it’s not well finished, and I have managed a couple of splinters in handling the pine, so, consider that when deciding what wood to use.
You can spray paint your metal sheet on one side and let it be drying while you build your boxes (see box # 3, below).
Box # 1 (this will be your bottom box): you will need 2 inch x 4 inch wood (untreated –you do not want chemical toxins in your food supply) and a 2 ft. x4 ft. sheet of corrugated metal roofing-type material. This first box or “the bottom box” will hold the sheet metal “heater”. Build your two (2) foot by four (4) foot box – we did not center support this box, but, you can if you want. Attach a sheet of corrugated steel (sheet metal) to the top by whatever means you prefer (nails, bolts, screws), so long as it lies flat against the surface of the frame, and covers the entire frame, two feet wide by four feet long.
You will need food-grade polypropylene screen, and you can order it from the folks below. DO NOT try to use aluminum screening or recycled housing screening for a food project. You will also need screening spline and a sharp instrument for cutting. Stainless steel screening is available; it is best, if you can afford it; feel free to send us some! ; )
We purchased polyethylene screening from:
www.dryit.com email: orders@dryit.com 1-800-609-2160
MacManiman Inc. 3023 362nd Avenue S.E. Fall City, WA 98024
Box # 2 is not one, but two (2) separate boxes built of 2 inch x 2 inch boards, each of them two (2) feet x two(2) feet square. Build your frames. Dado the top of them out to create a groove to receive your screening and spine. Cut your screening to fit across the tops of each of the two boxes, allowing extra to hang beyond frame; place your spline and, using a spline tool, work the splining material into the dado groove. Trim any excess. Having two separate frames will allow you to dry more than one kind of food at a time, if you wish, without having them “blend”.
For # 3, you’ll need sheet metal (either one 2 ft. by 4 ft. sheet, or qty. two 2 ft. by 2 ft. sheets; black spray paint, and two ft by four ft (2’x4’)’ Lexan or Plexiglass (have it cut at any window glass store) sheet, washers and screws, and waterproof clear acrylic sealant). The Lexan we bought was about $40 in 2012.
Box # 3 is a single2’x4’ frame which is braced across the center and will serve as the “top box” while in use; cut sheet metal to fit 2’x 4’(we used qty. two 2 ft. x 2 ft. of sheet metal 1/16 inch thick, because, that’s all we could find). Spray paint both sides of the sheet metal (flat black); allow it to dry.
Use screws or nails to attach sheet metal to one side of 2 ft. x 4 ft. frame; this will become the bottom of this piece. Lay a bead of silicone for the Lexan, all around. Now attach the Lexan across the top; you can pre-drill it and attach with screws, if you prefer. Allow silicone to dry with Lexan in place.
We have old lawn chairs that we use as “legs”. It is important that the solar dryer be slightly angled for natural air circulation and turned toward the sun (duh!). We get a lot of sun in the Deep South, so solar drying is a natural choice. This unit does not utilize any kind of fan, or anything requiring power; you could run a fan under it, and, for some types of foods, it might help them dry faster. Most foods don’t require anything, other than checking from time-to-time until you learn how long that food takes to dry where you live. Some foods, however, may do better if you turn the foods (move them around) every few hours – although I’ve used mine extensively and rarely turn the food, nor have I ever used a fan underneath it. Just sayin’ you could.
Tip: All foods dry better if they are uniform in size; otherwise, smaller pieces will be overly dried while you wait on the larger pieces, or, you’ll have to pick the smaller pieces out in advance of the others, which makes this much more labor intensive – not necessary!
To use, the sheet metal box is the bottom; place food on drying screens (don’t pack it too tight) and place drying screens atop sheet metal heater box. Now place Lexan cover box on top, with black painted metal as bottom of this box and Lexan facing the sun. Start cooking!
I hope you enjoy your homemade solar dryer; keep it out of the elements when not in use, and you should get years of service from it.
We have a new sponsor………Solo Stove
Just wanted to write up this quick blurb to let everyone know we have a new sponsor here at SeasonedCitizenPrepepr.com - Solo Stove.
I am an owner of a Solo Stove and performed a review on it on my other website – check it out here….http://modernsurvivalonline.com/equipment-review-solo-backpacking-stove/.
This is a super lightweight, portable, and useful cooking system which utilizes commonly available fuel such as sticks, pine cones, twigs, etc. Super easy to use – a fantastic addition to anyone’s preparedness system.
Glad to have Solo Stove on board and to 100% recommend their product. Check out their website HERE for more information.
Rourke
Survival Cooking: Solar Cooker Created Out Of Windshield Shade
Video: How to Make a Brick Rocket Stove for $6.08
Great video recommended by Bev. Think I might try this.
There are numerous way to cook without modern conveniences. Charcoal grills, gas grills, open fire, camp stoves, etc. These are but a few. One of my personal favorites it the Deadwood Stove. It allows the use of an endless supply of fuel that is available almost everywhere – wood. It is highly portable and useful. I highly recommend them.
Should you find the need to cook without any equipment, the “stove” featured in the video below would suffice. It is truly ”off grid”.
- Rourke
Cooking when the power goes out……..
I remember living in Athens Georgia back in the early 80′s. I was in 3rd grade and an Aunt and Uncle of mine traveled from Massachusetts to visit and get away from the frigid North in December. Funny thing happened – a massive ice storm came though the day after they arrive and power was lost for a little over a day.
So much for their warm welcome.
My farther was cooking a thick steak in the kitchen when the power was lost. It was smelling so delicious and we all thought dinner was lost. Rather – he simply brought the steak into the living room and cooked it in the fireplace. I remember that as well as several other instances resulting in alternative cooking methods due to power loss.
Let’s first establish what I believe to be a “Preparedness Fact”: An alternative cooking method must be planned as part of any preparedness system.
OK – with that out of the way there are many methods of cooking without power and with redundancy in mind at least a couple should be included in planning.
Here are a few:
Grill – gas or charcoal -
This is grill which millions of people across America have on their patio, deck, and backyard. Whether it be charcoal fueled or gas – the grill is excellent for cooking without power. The issue is fuel must be available to get it to work.
Charcoal can be stored away in a shed or garage to protect it from the elements. A couple of large bags can provide many days of cooking. A can of lighter fluid should also be put back.
Propane grills also work exceptionally well. 20 pound canisters of propane can be stored outside as well as in a shed. I myself feel a bit unsafe storing canisters of propane in the house. A few canisters can provide several weeks worth of cooking.
Camp Stove -
Many of you may have used these Coleman camp stoves while camping. Not much I enjoy more than eggs and bacon in the woods while camping. In an off-grid situation they can work well. There are types that run on small propane fuel bottles such as this one as well as some that can run on a variety of liquid fuels like this.
Extra fuel should be stored with safety in mind. Coleman is a major brand however other brand also exist.
Wood Stove -
When one says “wood stove” thoughts are likely to go toward the in-house large wood stoves that can be used to both cook and heat. These are fantastic and if the option is there – take it.
For the purpose of this article “wood stove” is referring to the device which utilizes wood to cook with outdoors and is somewhat portable. The Deadwood Stove is one excellent example of this type though there are others such as this. The stoves are easy to use with dry wood and tinder which is generally highly available. If area has recently rained then things get more difficult. Due to wood being an endless fuel supply these are excellent.
Backpacking Stove -
These are very small stoves which attach to the top of a small gas canister and can cook/heat a single pot or pan. When I say small – they can be VERY small and portable. Lightweight and excellent on the trail.
Here are a few good ones that perform and are inexpensive as well – click HERE, HERE and HERE.
Solar Cooker -
Out of all the items in these lists this is the one have zero experience with. Solar cookers use reflective materials to reflect the suns light and generate tremendous heat. Obviously the need for bright sunlight is one drawback.
Open Fire/Fire Pit -
People have been cooking over open fire for hundreds of years – no reason to stop now. A simple fire pit can be made digging a shallow hole in the ground, and start a fire in it. Dutch ovens can be used to contain the food during the cooking process and many recipes are available to cook anything from stews to cakes.
When the power goes out – how will you be cooking?
Rourke
D5 Creation