Winter harvesting is a good way to preserve your summer harvest. In the cold season, supplies will help diversify the menu, save money on buying vegetables, and enrich dishes with vitamins. Sweet bell peppers and tomatoes are the best suited for these purposes.
You can harvest at home for the winter not only vegetables that are grown on your own, but also bought in a store or at the market. In any case, in winter, these preparations will have much more taste and benefits than vegetables grown in artificial conditions and lying on the shelves for a long time.
What can you think of to preserve tomatoes and peppers?
Freezing
For freezing, fruits of a large size, irregular shape, with defects are suitable. Wash sweet peppers and tomatoes well, put in a colander to glass the water. Cut the pepper into 8 pieces. Cut it into strips, removing the stem and seeds. By the way, pepper seeds can be dried and used as a seasoning for borscht, cabbage soup, meat dishes.
Cut the tomatoes for freezing into small slices, cutting out the attachment points of the stalk and parts with flaws.
Then put the chopped vegetables into freezer bags. They differ from ordinary cellophane bags in a denser polyethylene. You can freeze peppers and tomatoes separately or by mixing them in one bag.
Pour vegetables into the bag, flatten, tie the edge of the bag, seal with tape or close with a special clip. The same layer thickness of vegetables is required for even freezing. It remains to put the workpiece in the freezer.
In winter, frozen peppers with tomatoes can be used to prepare first and second courses. Without defrosting, put as many frozen vegetables as the recipe needs fresh ones in the food being prepared. Summer flavor in the kitchen is guaranteed!
Adjika boiled
Azhika cooked according to this recipe turns out to be quite spicy. It works very well as a sauce for meat dishes. Rye bread with this adjika and a piece of salted lard is delicious.
Ingredients:
- 1 kg of bell pepper;
- 1 kg of tomatoes;
- 150 g garlic;
- 2-3 pcs. hot pepper;
- 150 g of salt.
Wash bell peppers and tomatoes. Cut out crumpled and deteriorating areas from vegetables, if any, remove pepper seeds. Pass everything through a meat grinder into a saucepan in which adjika will be cooked.
Salt vegetables, add hot pepper in whole pods. If it was not there, you can replace them with half a tablespoon of ground red pepper.
Stir Adjika, bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the fire so that the adjika boils weakly. Cook it, stirring for 20-25 minutes.
Finely chop the garlic, add to the adjika, stir well. Turn off the fire. Put the prepared adjika hot in pre-sterilized jars, roll up.
Adjika without cooking
A good option for adjika for quick use. The absence of cooking preserves all vitamins, but this workpiece must be kept in the refrigerator.
Ingredients:
- 4 kg of tomatoes;
- 1.5 kg of Bulgarian pepper;
- 3 pcs. chili peppers;
- 200 g of garlic;
- 2 tbsp salt;
- 200 ml of 9% vinegar.
Wash vegetables. Peel the garlic. Grind everything. For this purpose, you can use a meat grinder or blender. But you should not make a completely homogeneous puree. Pieces of vegetables in adjika must be present. Seeds from pepper do not need to be removed, they will add a special piquancy to adjika.
Add vinegar and salt to vegetables, stir. Leave adjika for 1 hour.
After that, stir the resulting mass, put it in jars, close with nylon lids. Banks do not need to be sterilized, just wash and dry well. Such adjika is not stored for long. Therefore, you should not increase the serving size. If it ends quickly, it's best to make a fresh batch of this simple and tasty piece.
Lecho
Lecho is served as a cold appetizer. It also goes well with hot boiled potatoes, pasta, baked meat.
Ingredients:
- 3 kg of tomatoes;
- 6 pcs. sweet pepper;
- 1 tbsp. granulated sugar;
- 1 tbsp salt;
- 2 heads of garlic.
Cut vegetables and garlic into strips.
Put half a serving of tomatoes and pepper with garlic in a saucepan. Cook lecho for 10 minutes after boiling.
Then add all the other ingredients and cook for 30 minutes, stirring frequently.
Pack the hot workpiece into glass jars, roll up. Leave them upside down under the covers until they cool completely.
Vegetable salad with rice
For the winter, you can prepare a hearty salad based on tomatoes and peppers with the addition of rice. Jars of this salad will help out in the case when there is absolutely no time for cooking. If you heat it up in the microwave, boil sausages or wieners, a delicious and hearty dinner is guaranteed.
Ingredients:
- 2 kg of tomatoes;
- 700 g sweet pepper;
- 1 cup rice
- 0.5 kg of carrots;
- 0.5 kg of onions;
- 100 g granulated sugar;
- 50 g of salt.
Rinse the rice in running water until it is transparent. Take a saucepan with a volume of 2 liters, pour 1.5 liters of water into it, boil. Pour washed rice into boiling water, stir, reduce heat. Cook the rice until cooked through, stirring occasionally.
While cooking the rice, cut the vegetables into equal sized pieces. Carrots can be grated on a coarse grater.
Put the vegetables in a large saucepan or bowl, over medium heat. After the salad has boiled, cook it for 30 minutes. Do not forget to stir the vegetable mass. If this is not done, it will stick to the bottom of the dish and begin to burn, spoiling the taste of the dish.
Put washed rice, salt and sugar with vegetables, stir. Continue cooking for another 15 minutes.
Wrap the salad jars closed with metal lids and leave for 6-8 hours, and then rearrange them in a cool room.
Pickled bell peppers with tomatoes
An excellent preparation in which each vegetable has its own texture. Tomatoes from the marinade with piquant sourness become tender, and the pepper crunches a little. And the marinade itself is very tasty. It has no aggressive vinegar aftertaste. After you run out of tomatoes and peppers in the jar in winter, you can pickle onions or meat in it.
Ingredients for 1 liter can:
- 2 large bell peppers;
- 4 mugs of onions 0.7 cm thick;
- 1 black currant leaf;
- red and yellow cherry tomatoes;
- 6 peas of allspice;
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar;
- 0.5 liters of water;
- 2 tbsp granulated sugar;
- 0.5 tbsp salt.
Wash the pepper. Use a sharp knife to make a circular cut around the stem. Remove it along with the seeds. Wash the inside of the pepper with cold water. The peppercorns should be of such a size that they can fit into the neck of a liter jar. Place cherry tomatoes in each pepper.
At the bottom of a pre-sterilized jar, put a currant leaf, onion rings, allspice.
Put the prepared pepper in a jar, filling the gaps between it with cherry tomatoes of different colors.
Pour boiling water over the pepper and tomatoes, cover with a metal lid and leave for 15-20 minutes. At this time, in a small saucepan, boil water for the marinade, add salt and sugar to it, stir.
Remove the lid from the jar with the blank, carefully drain the water. Pour apple cider vinegar into it, pour marinade, roll up with a metal lid. Further, the procedure is standard: turn the jar upside down, wrap it up and leave until it cools completely.
Stuffed bell pepper
Ingredients:
- 2 kg of sweet pepper;
- 3 kg of tomatoes;
- 0, 5 tbsp. vegetable oil;
- 2 tbsp Sahara;
- 1.5 kg of carrots;
- 1 kg of onions;
- salt;
- allspice.
Peel onions and carrots, wash, cut into thin strips. First, fry the vegetables separately in a pan using a small amount of vegetable oil until half cooked. After that, mix the onions and carrots, salt to taste, add black pepper. Continue simmering the bell pepper filling, covered, for another 10-15 minutes. Eggplant can also be added to the filling. They need to be cut in half, dipped in salted water for one hour. After that, cut the eggplants into cubes, fry and add to the onions and carrots.
Wash the pepper, clean the seeds. Boil 2 liters of water in a wide saucepan. Dip cups of pepper into boiling water in batches, cook for 2-3 minutes. Place the blanched peppers in a large bowl and cool. Stuff it with minced vegetables.
Wash the tomatoes, mince. Put them in a saucepan, add granulated sugar and salt to taste. Boil the tomatoes after boiling for 20 minutes.
Put pepper in liter jars, pour boiled tomatoes over the jar's shoulders. Take a wide flat-bottomed saucepan. In height, it should be slightly larger than the cans. Lay gauze folded in several layers at the bottom. Put jars of pepper in a saucepan. Pour warm water so that it is 1 cm below the level of the tomato mass in the jars. Cover each jar with a metal lid.
Put a saucepan on high heat, bring water to a boil, reduce heat. It takes 30 minutes to sterilize the jars. At this time, the water in the pan should not boil very much. It is necessary to ensure that it does not get inside the cans.
At the end of sterilization, carefully remove the jars with the help of oven mitts and place them on a towel. Be careful, the water in the pot and the contents of the cans are very hot!
Roll up the jars, leave them on the table until they cool, and then rearrange them to the storage place.
Sterilization of cans
In order to keep the workpieces in glass jars under metal lids until winter, the jars must be sterilized. This can be done in three ways.
Method one: over steam. In a saucepan, bring water to a boil, cover it with a special lid with holes. Commercial sterilization lids usually have three holes. Place cleanly washed cans upside down on the lid. Keep them over steam for 10 minutes. After that, remove the jars with the help of potholders, put them on a towel, cool.
Method two: in the oven. Put clean dry jars on a baking sheet, place it in a cold oven. Turn it on at 180 ° C. Sterilize the jars within 30 minutes. Then turn off the oven. Remove the baking sheet from it, cool the jars at room temperature.
Method three: in the microwave. Put clean dry jars in the microwave so that they do not come into contact with each other. Turn on the device at full power, setting the operating time to 5 minutes. When the microwave is finished, slightly open its door and leave the jars in it for 10 minutes. After that, carefully remove it and use it as directed.
