This is lucky, because the Leungs have made a business out of cooking together. 

The story of their blog, The Woks of Life, begins in 2013, when parents Bill and Judy moved to Beijing for work, while daughters Sarah and Kaitlin stayed behind in the US to attend college. Quickly, the family group chat was filled with photos of what everyone was cooking or eating. Food became a way for the family to check in on each other. “Everyone OK?” That’s a message that could easily be answered with a snap of a steaming bamboo tray of dumplings or a bubbling plate of spaghetti and meatballs. 

But while food connected the clan, Sarah and Kaitlin found there was still a disconnect. They didn’t know how to make the same recipes they had grown up eating, the recipes that Judy and Bill had cooked for years at the family restaurant. The daughters wanted to learn. 

So Sarah started the blog to document the important recipes in her family. Now, nearly 10 years later, the Leungs have a loyal following and a new cookbook, also called The Woks of Life. In it, they share not just the recipes they’ve spent years perfecting but the stories of their family. Interspersed with instructions on how to make the perfect hot and sour soup or braised pork belly are family photos and essays, little glimpses into the family that is literally inviting you to share a meal with them. 

Now, all four members live near each other in New Jersey, where Judy and Bill have a small plot of land to garden and raise chickens, alpacas and ducks. Modern Farmer got a chance to sit down with the Leung family to talk about their new book and how they judge each other’s recipes.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Modern Farmer: Obviously, food is very important to your family. When did growing your own food become important to you all?

Bill: [When I was growing up], we lived in upstate New York, and when I was five, my mother just took a hoe to the backyard and dug a pretty sizable garden. She would grow Chinese vegetables, like snow peas [and] beans, and she was good at it. She really had a green thumb. It came so naturally to her that when I started doing it on my own, I was like damn, this is hard. 

Sarah: Was she growing those vegetables because you guys were deep in the boonies and didn’t have access to Chinese vegetables?

Bill: That was a big reason. But she also grew up in a farming community, and she used to tell me stories about going to the fields and planting rice and riding the water ox!

But it’s always been organic. I refuse to put any kind of commercial, conventional fertilizer there. Over the last year, we’ve really spent a lot of time and focus on composting and replenishing the soil. 

MF: That must keep you busy. Who is the recipe developer among you all? Who comes up with the ideas? 

Sarah: Well, all four of us contribute equally on the recipe front. In the book, about 25 percent of the recipes are done by each of us, and there was a lot of recipe switching, too. If one of us would get stuck on one of our recipes, and we’ve done it eight times already and it’s just not coming together, we could switch between us. 

Once the recipe is developed, and you cook it and feel confident about it, then the other three family members taste it and give their comments.

MF: Judy, Bill, you guys worked in Bill’s parents’ restaurant, so I would assume that a lot of these dishes you’ve been cooking for a long time. How do you approach something that is so classic to try and find a new angle on it?

Kaitlin: For us, it’s not about finding a new angle. It’s about finding the problems that the average person will have, trying to anticipate the speed bumps in the kitchen and adapt them. 

Bill: Sometimes, it’s just slight improvements on the recipe. Maybe changing up the ratio of oyster sauce or soy sauce. Judy said it the other day, that every recipe can be improved—and it’s true. And we do that often. Once we reach the point where we’ve tweaked it enough, then we’ll actually publish it. 

Kaitlin: This cookbook is our family’s story told through food. When we approach these kinds of recipes, we’re trying to preserve what we feel is the most perfect, nostalgic version of what that recipe is. In your head, if you have this taste memory of a dish, that’s how we approach a lot of the recipes. And you know, hopefully, other people find that they’re familiar and kind of bring comfort. 

MF: The book certainly is your family’s story, not just with the recipes but the pictures and memories shared. How did you come to the decision to get so personal with it? 

Sarah: On the blog, our tagline is “a culinary genealogy.” We wanted the cookbook to feel like part family album, part cookbook. 

You know, for my mom’s scallion pancake recipe, she tells a story of how she used to take a few pennies to buy a scallion pancake from a street vendor. And this recipe is how she remembered them tasting.

Because this has always been a family project, with a sense of passing recipes and traditions down from one generation to the next. That had to sort of be reflected in the book. 

MF: Do you still check in with each other on food?

Bill: I think it’s a Chinese thing. When you’re on the phone or greeting someone, you don’t say “what’s going on?” You say “have you eaten yet?”

The post The Story of a Family In 100 Recipes appeared first on Modern Farmer.

No matter how many steps the recipe might have or how involved the cooking techniques are, Yeh explains everything in a soft, confident tone, all while throwing in a few jokes. The whole vibe says “yeah, I can whip up a gourmet meal, and so can you.” It’s approachable and encouraging, just like Yeh herself. 

While she has 11 seasons of the show under her belt now, it was her first cookbook, Molly on the Range, that catapulted her into the national spotlight. That book was a celebration of big moments; the birthdays and anniversaries, the dinner parties with friends. 

But a lot has changed since Molly on the Rage debuted in 2016. Most importantly, Yeh is a mother now. Her world, and her cooking routines, have shifted. With her new book (out today),  Home is Where the Eggs Are, Yeh is zeroing in on the little moments: the favorite meal your toddler can’t get enough of, or what to make when everyone in your house is rushed and cranky. The subtitle of the book is Farmhouse Food for the People You Love and that shines through in recipes made with her family in mind. 

Modern Farmer spoke with Yeh about her new book and why this one is her most personal offering yet. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Modern Farmer: How do you view this book in relation to your other cookbooks and in relation to your show?

Yeh: This is our family’s collection of recipes that we love to have on a regular basis. While Molly on the Range was about big celebrations and huge weekend projects and things to eat when you really want to indulge, these are the recipes that we make so often and enjoy together as a family. It’s not about having big parties or celebrations or big holidays, it is simply about enjoying the everyday meals.

MF: With all of the success of Molly on the Range and your other projects, was there pressure with this book? 

Yeh: Honestly, I just wanted to create this for my family. I want this to be recipes that people cook for their own family, whether that is their immediate family or it’s their best friends or their roommates or just their closest people that they really feel like they can be themselves around. 

After getting to know what that book writing process was like, I was able to slow down and enjoy it a little bit more and I felt a lot more confident. It’s like having a second child or a third child; you have the confidence now to know more about the mechanics of how writing a book works, and that gives you more space to be creative and to really enjoy it and put more heart into it.

With these recipes being everyday recipes, they also did double duty in my life. These were things that I could test on my family, so I wouldn’t have to do recipe development for work and then come home and make a different thing for dinner. It was all very fluid. 

MF: Does it seem like your audience has grown along with you? 

Yeh: I have so many blogger friends, from when I started off blogging, and I was baking a lot of cakes and hosting parties and making cocktails and appetizers and stuff. Now, a lot of those people are settling down; we’re having families. And it’s more about how we can get our toddlers to eat vegetables and protein than if I’m going to make a cake and use a tequila in the frosting. It is a very different stage of life, but that’s a great thing to think about.

MF: This is definitely a book that incorporates family life, whatever that might look like for the reader. You talk about batch cooking, meal prep, using leftovers. And you talk about how you personally cook at home. Why did you decide to get so personal? 

Yeh: You know, there was a big shift in my brain almost as soon as Bernie was born. (Yeh’s daughter, Bernadette, was born in the spring of 2019.) All of a sudden, there was this new person in my life, and if I wanted to write about her on the blog or on social media, I couldn’t ask her if she was OK with a picture. Before when it was just [my husband Nick], if ever I was telling a story about him, I would always have him proofread my blog posts and look at pictures before I put them up. And with kids, they don’t have the ability to make that decision. So, for that reason, and because I just wanted to enjoy our family time without necessarily sharing everything, I really backed off from blogging. 

But with this book, we were planning the photo shoots, and I thought, well, if Bernie’s hands make it in a few shots, I think that would help to liven up some of these photos and to really illustrate the fact that this is a family book. And I was fully expected to just maybe get a few shots of her hand eating chicken soup, and that would be it. But then when we were cooking through all these recipes and taking the pictures, she got so into it and was so excited about it and loved it so much that I let her have her fun and we captured it. 

I mean, it’s crazy to look at the pictures now, because they were taken over a year ago and she looks so different. But I think it captures a beautiful moment in time. So, with choosing the stories, it was the same process of capturing a moment in time, in our real lives.

MF: There’s a story in the book that I loved, where you were preparing for pregnancy by making all of these stews and casseroles and heavy dishes, and then all of a sudden you just craved salads. I just thought, yeah. That’s exactly what would happen in real life. 

Yeh: We might still have some frozen mac and cheese in our deep freeze from that!

The post In Her New Book, Molly Yeh Goes Back to Basics appeared first on Modern Farmer.

On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing enslaved people located in Confederate states. But although slavery was technically over, enslaved people in Texas weren’t notified that they were free until June 19, 1865—more than two years later. The reason for the delay is unknown, although there are some theories that the news was deliberately delayed in order to maintain the labor force. Another theory is that federal troops waited for slave owners to have one last cotton harvest before going to Texas. 

After being freed, many African-Americans continued to work in agriculture, either as tenant farmers and sharecroppers or eventually purchasing their own land. Ultimately, millions of acres of land once owned by Black farmers were lost, often due to racism and discriminatory USDA policies. In 1920, there were nearly a million Black farmers, while today, only about 45,000 remain. 

RELATED: How Did African-American Farmers Lose 90 Percent of Their Land?

In 1865, there were more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in Texas, and a year later, Juneteenth celebrations started popping up. As of 2021, Juneteenth is now considered a national holiday. 

Over the years, the holiday spread throughout Texas and beyond, and celebrations grew to include rodeos, fairs and dramatic readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as Miss Juneteenth contests. Whatever the methods of celebrating, all of the events share one critical component: food. 

And there were staple dishes that graced the tables each year, no matter where the festivities were held. As the Dallas Morning News aptly reported in 1933, “Watermelon, barbecue and red lemonade will be consumed in quantity.”

As more people learn about this seminal moment in American history, vibrant conversations about the foods centered around Juneteenth are happening as well, and Nicole Taylor’s new book, Watermelon and Red Birds, is the first Juneteenth cookbook to be published by a major publishing house. The James Beard Award-nominated food writer has also authored The Up South Cookbook and The Last O.G. Cookbook.

The title is derived from two foods important to the celebrations: Watermelon, which originated in northeast Africa and was brought over to America during the Middle Passage; and the red birds, which refer to a belief in the Black and Native American community that the birds are ancestors who have come back to share good luck. Taylor writes that the cookbook is a “declaration of independence” from traditional soul food and represents the freedom to create and evolve from a culinary perspective.

RELATED: Why Do We Eat Black-Eyed Peas on New Year’s?

Once Taylor nailed down the title, which came to her while riding on a train in New York City, the process of creating and testing the recipes in the cookbook happened relatively quickly. Most cookbooks can take between two and three years to pull together, but it took Taylor only about 18 months. “I had a massive spreadsheet of fruits and vegetables that are summer, along with [a spreadsheet] that historically are connected to Juneteenth and summertime,” she says. “I’ve been writing about Black food and culture for a moment, and the recipes needed to be rooted in the Black table.”

Although there aren’t recipes for Black celebration foods such as macaroni and cheese or sweet potato pies, Taylor has taken ingredients that are traditionally part of the Black experience, developing creative and innovative dishes with them. For example, a sweet potato spritz, yellow squash and cheddar biscuits and watermelon kebabs with citrus verbena salt are familiar yet unexpected. 

“For Black Americans who have been celebrating [Juneteenth], they will look at this cookbook and it will bring back memories of celebrations in the backyard, or getting in a long line to get fried fish or fried shrimp or a turkey leg, and it will get them excited and create these things at home. And also try something new to add to their Juneteenth table, and talk to their family about who made the potato salad,” says Taylor. “For those celebrating for the first time…I hope they walk away understanding that it was a holiday born in Texas, and because of the Great Migration, you find it in backyards in Oakland, in Chicago, in Brooklyn. And those same folks will get inspired to get in the kitchen and cook. Food is a great way to have conversations.”

The post Juneteenth Might Be the Most American Holiday of All appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Colu Cooks: Easy Fancy Food

I’ve been a fan of Colu Henry’s recipes since picking up a copy of her first cookbook, Back Pocket Pasta, in 2017. She’s back with a new collection of recipes, which build on ingredients all home cooks should already have stocked in their pantry. They range from classic and easy, such as soft-boiled eggs with pickled chiles or a Sunday frittata, to elegant and sublime, as is the case with the citrus-braised short ribs, lamb ragú with anchovies and pea shoots and the many iterations of fancy toast.

(April 26, Abrams Books)

Green Fire: Extraordinary Ways to Grill Fruits and Vegetables, from the Master of Live-Fire Cooking

Francis Mallmann, an expert in Patagonian cuisine, is known for his mastery of cooking meat over an open fire. But, as the Argentine chef shows in his new vegetarian cookbook, Green Fire, he can give the same attention to fruits and vegetables. Within its pages, you’ll learn about the different grills that Mallmann uses, as well as how to apply his mastery of flame, coals and smoke to potatoes, cabbages, eggplant, corn, fennel, squashes, fruit and more to really make the ingredients sing.

(May 10, Artisan)

Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island

It’s not every day that an 89-year-old publishes their first cookbook—especially if they’ve never used a cookbook before. For Emily Meggett, a respected elder and “the matriarch of Edisto Island,” the publication of her first cookbook is more than a personal celebration. For all her life, Meggett has lived on South Carolina’s Edith Island, where she’s cooked rich dishes with heirloom rice and vegetables, fresh seafood and local game. Gullah Geechee Home Cooking not only offers culturally important recipes such as Hoppin’ John, Creole Shrimp and Okra Gumbo, it also documents the history of the Gullah Geechee people, descendants of Africans who were enslaved on rice, indigo and cotton plantations of the lower Atlantic Coast, where Gullah Geechee communities stretch from North Carolina to Florida. 

(April 26, Abrams Books)

I Dream of Dinner (So You Don’t Have To): Low-Effort, High-Reward Recipes

If, like me, you’ve felt despair at any point during the last few years, you need Ali Slagle’s cookbook. These recipes require minimal effort and ingredients without sacrificing big flavor. Salumi Butter Rigatoni? Yes, please. Low-Maintenance Grilled Chicken? Now we’re talking. The four-ingredient Buttered Quinoa with Bok Choy? I can manage that, and so can you.

(April 12, Clarkson Potter)

The Kindred Life: Stories and Recipes to Cultivate a Life of Organic Connection

On the 17-acre Kindred Farm in Sante Fe, Tennessee, organic farmer Christine Marie Bailey has worked to build a life of nourishment. After growing up in an Italian-American household in New Jersey, Bailey attended college in Nashville, an hour away from where she and her husband would eventually plant literal and figurative roots. In her debut book, she shares stories from her journey and dishes she’s honed during farm-to-table events the farm hosts.

(May 17, Harper Horizon)

Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home

In his debut cookbook, Eric Kim, a New York Times staff food writer, presents more than 80 recipes that showcase what it means to be Korean American. The cookbook, peppered with short essays about his experience growing up the son of two Korean immigrants in Atlanta, also reads like a tribute to his mother, Jean, with whom Kim tested recipes during the early days of the pandemic. Through food, Korean American explores how traditions—both familial and culinary—are tried, tested and cemented over time. Standout dishes include the Creamy Bucatini with Roasted Seaweed, Meatloaf-Glazed Kalbi, Jean’s Perfect Jar of Kimchi and Gochujang-Glazed Zucchini.

(March 29, Clarkson Potter)

The Miller’s Daughter: Unusual Flours and Heritage Grains

In 2011, father-daughter duo Jeff and Emma Zimmerman founded Hayden Flour Mills in Arizona. For more than a decade, the company has focused on reviving near-extinct varieties of ancient grains. Now, Zimmerman showcases the family business’s grains in a new cookbook, which is organized by grain: White Sonora (a winter wheat), heritage bread wheat, farro, barley, einkorn (an ancient-wheat variety), corn, durum, chickpeas, oats and rye. While there are plenty of recipes for breads, cookies and tarts, The Miller’s Daughter is not filled only with baked goods. There are grain salads, polenta dishes and other savory preparations, too.

(May 17, Hardie Grant)

My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef

In his 2019 memoir, Notes From a Young Black Chef, Kwame Onwuachi explored his coming-of-age story of chasing his dreams as a Black chef. Now, he’s back with his first cookbook, My America, featuring more than 125 recipes that celebrate the food of the African Diaspora. Interspersed between recipes such as Nigerian Jollof, Ackee and Saltfish, Jerk Chicken, Doro Wat and Golden Rum Cake, Onwuachi shares tales from Trinidad, Jamaica, Louisiana and Texas, where he traveled on a personal journey to trace his Afro-Caribbean culinary roots—discovering his America in the process.

(May 17, Knopf)

Salad Freak: Recipes to Feed a Healthy Obsession

If you’ve ever stood over your cutting board wondering why it’s so hard to make a not-boring salad that you actually want to eat, allow me to introduce you to Jess Damuck’s cookbook, Salad Freak. It is truly a salad bible, with helpful tips about how to think of building salads around color, texture, shape and flavor, as well as how to store all that fresh produce so it lasts. Try your hand at making recipes such as the Shaved Fennel and Tuna Salad, Caesar Salad Pizza Salad or the Dilly Double Beans and Farro Salad. You may never need to order from Sweetgreen again.

(March 29, Abrams Books)

The Steger Homestead Kitchen: Simple Recipes for an Abundant Life

In 1988, Arctic explorer and environmental activist Will Steger founded the Steger Wilderness Center near Ely, Minnesota, dedicated to ecological stewardship. At the heart of the homestead is the kitchen, helmed by Will’s niece, Rita Mae Steger, a second-generation homesteader and chef. This new cookbook celebrates the dishes Rita Mae serves at the center, including a whole chicken roasted over a fire pit, mushroom and wild rice soup, berry pie and a vibrant-hued cashew beet butter.

(February 1, University of Minnesota Press)

The post 10 New Cookbooks We’ve Been Cooking From This Spring appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Now, the author, cook and forager still finds blackberries, along with ingredients of all kinds, on her frequent walks near her home in Penzance. As a foraging guide, she takes groups out to learn about the area’s native plants and how to use them responsibly. And on all of those trips, she lets whatever she finds spark her creativity in the kitchen. 

Lambert’s new book, Wild and Sweet (Hoxton Mini Press), is a collection of the dessert recipes she’s made with foraged ingredients such as crab apples, wild fennel and mint, which she has been perfecting for a while. No stranger to publishing, Lambert has written about the act of foraging before, even diving into the depths of foraging for seaweed. But this book is the one that has perhaps been the longest in the making. 

“This is the book that I always wanted to write,” says Lambert, completely sincerely. She’s not drumming up publicity or building a backstory; rather, she is simply enamored with creating recipes from the wild plants she sources. “There was a lot of baking in our house, and a lot of sweet treats. So, when I thought about working creatively with plants, that’s naturally where my mind would go.”

In Wild and Sweet, Lambert organizes recipes by season, taking the reader through a full year of foraging and showcasing a variety of plants, herbs, roots and berries that are generally easy to find across North America, Europe and beyond. She also lists where the plant is native and where it’s been cultivated, so you know whether or not it’s likely you’ll find a patch near you. She covers each plant’s appearance, where you might find it and how best to pick it. 

[RELATED: This Man Grew and Foraged All Of His Food For An Entire Year]

Rather than compiling an encyclopedia of recipes, she focuses on a core group of about 20 ingredients, giving at least four recipes for each. If you have access to a lot of stinging nettle, for instance, but don’t feel up to making a nettle and honey cake, perhaps you’d rather just boil the nettle down with fennel and make a sweet syrup to use later. Or you can combine it with some pre-made filo pastry dough and whip up a nettle baklava. Lambert offers options, as she knows how enticing it is to find a score of a delicious plant, ripe for the taking. 

“It’s always really exciting to find things,” she says. However, Lambert is also careful to explain how to ethically forage ingredients. Just because you spot a large growth of elderflower doesn’t mean you should take it all. “It’s really exciting that you found that patch, but take a step back. Can you see other spots [where the ingredient is growing]? Is this the only patch?” 

Lambert advises asking yourself: If you took 10 percent of the plant, would you leave enough behind for others—not just other foragers but also the birds, animals and insects that might also feed on that plant? “It’s about retraining how we see the environment or how we consider others. I was trying to express that there’s another layer of pleasure there. I’m taking care [of my surroundings] and that can feel good.” 

For those new to foraging, Lambert recommends going with a guide or experienced forager to gain familiarity with your surroundings. There’s an element of safety that comes with an expert ensuring that you’ve correctly identified the plant, that you know it’s freely available to pick and that it’s not rare or only just cultivated. Once you’re comfortable with those basics, there’s not much else to it. That’s the beauty of foraging—you can just start. 

“Start where it’s easy. Don’t give yourself too much of a challenge,” says Lambert. She even highlights common plants we might see across North America that would be fantastic finds for a forager. Depending on where you are, keep your eyes peeled for mint, pineapple weed, berries of all kinds, wild roses and the scourge of manicured lawns everywhere, dandelions. With those ingredients available to you, you could whip up a full dessert buffet. 

Some might see weeds such as dandelions as invasive or at least quite abundant. For Lambert, one easy way to help manage their overgrow is to make something delicious with them, such as dandelion meringues, griddle cakes or her decadent dandelion flower and rum cake. It’s also an opportunity to reframe your thinking about the plants that surround you. “Maybe it’s got a use, maybe it’s got a good flavor,” Lambert says. “There are little things like pineapple weed, which looks like nothing but has an amazing scent. We have cleavers [also known as catchweed], and with the seeds, you can make a coffee. I think that’s often a real surprise.”

The post A Forager’s Guide to Sweet, Wild Finds appeared first on Modern Farmer.

If you’re looking for a reason to get back into a cooking routine this winter, turn to these new cookbooks. In them, you’ll find recipes that are comforting, reinvigorating and perhaps even a little bit challenging. Best of all, they’re worthwhile additions to any cookbook collection. Turn to them in winter—and beyond.

Good Enough: Embracing the Joys of Imperfection & Practicing Self-Care in the Kitchen

Truly a judgment-free cookbook, Leanne Brown’s Good Enough celebrates all the feelings that come up around cooking—the good and the bad. At a time when American parents are overwhelmed, employee burnout rates continue to rise and the new Omicron variant takes the world by storm, we should all be a little bit gentler with ourselves. Begin in the kitchen with Brown’s cookbook, featuring tips on how to stock your fridge and pantry, as well as recipes for morning smoothies and yogurt bowls, simple salads and sandwiches for lunch, as well as entrees that are nourishing without being overwhelming. Take it one day and one meal at a time.

(January 11, Workman)

Unbelievably Vegan: 100+ Life-Changing, Plant-Based Recipes

Chef Charity Morgan has worked with celebrities and NFL athletes (including her husband, linebacker Derrick Morgan) to transform their eating habits and transition to following a plant-based diet. Her cooking was featured in the 2018 pro-vegan documentary The Game Changers, and now she’s sharing more than 100 of her recipes in a new cookbook. Morgan leans on her Puerto Rican and Creole heritage in meat-free recipes such as Caribbean ceviche made with soy curls and pastelillos (hand pies) with saffron aioli. You’ll also recognize ingredients and food traditions from the South, where she lives with her family, including plant-based versions of Creole gumbo and smoky jambalaya.

(January 18, Clarkson Potter)

101 Thai Dishes You Need to Cook Before You Die

Looking to immerse yourself in a specific cuisine this winter and also cut down on your weekly takeout orders? Consider cooking from the latest cookbook from celebrity chef and restaurateur Jet Tila, in which he breaks down all the pantry ingredients you’ll need to make more than 100 classic Thai dishes. He also teaches you how to make your own curry pastes—a key step in getting maximum flavor out of the enclosed recipes. Tila, who specializes in Thai and Chinese cooking, has included everything from panang curry chicken and Massaman beef curry to pineapple fried rice, laarb and Thai sausage.

(January 25, Page Street Publishing)

The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook

Are your backyard chickens laying too many eggs for you to keep up with? Fifth-generation Maine chicken keeper Lisa Steele is here to help. In her new cookbook, which grew out of her popular Fresh Eggs Daily blog, Steele shows you all kinds of different ways to cook recipes with eggs, including steaming, grilling, baking, frying and even drinking them. Bourbon Maple Sour, anyone?

(February 15, Harper Horizon)

Salad: 100 Recipes for Simple Salads & Dressings

At some point this winter, all you’ll want to eat is a fresh, crunchy piece of lettuce to remind you of the warmer weather that’s to come. As Dutch author and food stylist Janneke Philippi shows in her new cookbook, your salads don’t have to be boring. In fact, hers are anything but. Take the radicchio and chestnut salad for example, featuring red apples and a tangy mustard-yogurt dressing, which balance out the aforementioned ingredients’ bitter notes. Or a steamed dumpling salad? Yes, dumplings! There’s also a range of winter-appropriate grain, rice and pasta salads, such as roasted pumpkin with goat cheese and spelt or a black rice salad with beans and red chili. Allow Philippi to show you how to use greens as a canvas, adding savory, spicy, hearty or light elements to match your cravings.

(February 15, Smith Street Books)

The post 5 New Cookbooks We’re Finding Comfort In Right Now appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Cookbook author and longtime vegan Zacchary Bird embraces this sort of association. In his new cookbook, The Vegan Butcher: The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Meat, Bird provides vegans, as well as other eaters looking to consume less meat, with the techniques to make meatless cuisine taste like, well, meat. He includes plant-based versions of classic meat-centric dishes such as roasted turkey, pork belly, Nashville-fried chicken and Korean barbecue ribs, as well as vegan seafood, featuring oyster mushroom scallops, watermelon and eggplant sashimi and Baja fish tacos. The recipes graduate from basic to advanced recipes in each chapter, ranging from store-bought options to making everything from scratch. Bases include vegetables, proteins, legumes, seasonal fruits, mushrooms and more.

Don’t get too hung up on the meat-centric terms used in some of the recipe names—everything in the book is vegan. As food writer Alicia Kennedy pointed out in one of her recent newsletters, the words we use to describe vegan foods are bound to be tied to meat. “Our culinary language is based on meat; as more people move toward plant-based diets, there will be a period of overlap as we come to new or redefined terminology,” she writes. “Just as we’re adapting our diets because of changes in the weather, we can adapt meat-centric language to apply to vegetables where it makes sense without getting too tied up in what exactly the dictionary definitions are of things like ‘ribs’ or ‘butcher.’”

Before the release of The Vegan Butcher, we caught up with Bird to discuss vegetable butchering, meat substitutes and the future of plant-based eating. And as a treat, he shared a recipe for mushroom steak frites with us at the end.

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Modern Farmer: People generally associate the word “butcher” with meat, not vegetables. Why did you choose the title Vegan Butcher for your cookbook?

Zacchary Bird: The name and cover design really captures the book’s mission: to showcase the versatility of what modern plant-based ingredients and techniques look like through familiar meals that look, chew and taste like you’d expect to be off the menu for vegans! The recipes range from simple and traditional—like homemade tofu or mock duck from bean curd skin—to an entire three-layer vegan and gluten-free turducken so that anyone looking to replace meat can find dishes in there that get them excited.

MF: Despite it being a vegan cookbook, a good number of the recipes have meat-centric names. What was the thinking behind naming them after their meat counterparts despite the proteins being substituted with other items?

ZB: Instead of telling people who are used to having fried chicken on a Friday night to have a bowl of lentils, the book is trying to offer a direct vegan substitute for familiar favorites. I wanted the recipe names to focus on explaining what we’re recreating. The book also offers a myriad of ways to replace each ingredient to really drive home the point that you can take flavors from non-vegan dishes and match them to similar textures for fantastically similar results. For example, the Nashville-fried Chicken can be made from seitan, washed seitan, tofu, okara, cauliflower or mushrooms.

MF: Will vegan food ever be able to step out from behind the meat-centric terms used to describe the way it tastes?

ZB: For sure, and it will! But we’re still in the stage where (at least according to my comments on social media) people don’t understand why a vegan would make food that tastes and looks like meat. Vegans haven’t given up meat because of its awful flavor or texture. It’s because they want to eat more ethically, environmentally friendly or (if you want to!) more healthily. It’s a simple fact that people have nostalgia for food they grew up eating, so I don’t think it’s shocking that we try to find better alternatives for them—and until we come together as a society and agree that one single ingredient is the best substitute, such as tofu for chicken—the easiest way to explain what we’re making is to compare it to what it’s trying to be an analogue of.

MF: What are some of your favorite techniques for transforming vegetables into a meat-like dish?

ZB: Smoking, charring and searing are all lovely ways to get a bit of burn in there. Vegan meals tend to be veggie-centric, which doesn’t hold up to long cooking times like meat does to get all that smoky flavor. So things like using a smoker box on your [grill] or introducing liquid smoke [to a dish] can be a great shortcut to that flavor with plant-based food. A good marinade loaded with umami (soy sauce, mushroom, sun-dried foods, fermented foods, miso, etc.) will help add in the rich savoriness often lacking in vegan alternatives.

MF: You include diagrams that show how eggplant can be cut and transformed into chicken schnitzel-like and lamb chops-like meals. Are there other fruits or vegetables that have those sorts of parallels?

ZB: They make such a great parallel to those classic cross-sections butchers have showing the different cuts of meat against the silhouette of a cow. I really wanted to invite the reader to think of plant-based ingredients in this same way as we explore which substitutions work for which animal product. The book has step-by-step images of the “butchering” process of ingredients being prepared as plant-based meat. For example, if you can get your hands on fresh banana blossom (as opposed to the canned stuff popular in vegan seafood recipes, which is also covered in the book!), I show you how to separate the leaves—which are inedible but great to serve things on—then separate the florets and remove their bitter components to be used as pulled pork. Then, we get to the heart of the blossom, which can be sliced up fresh in salads or, as I prefer, marinated, beer-battered, fried and then served as battered fish with hot chips and tartar sauce.

MF: If there were only one concept or idea to take away from your cookbook, what is it? 

ZB: The versatility of plant-based options! I didn’t want to just tell readers to make a bolognese out of crumbled seitan, when I know lentils and walnuts, home-made or store-bought plant-based minced or even rehydrated textured vegetable protein (TVP) make a great meat substitute…so I put them all in! I hope that having multiple options to use as the base for each instills the idea that you can really explore and find your favorite alternative for a particular meat instead of trying the first one offered and deciding you don’t like it. There’s no one official way to do it and that’s wonderful news for a crafty home cook.

Photo courtesy of publisher.

The post Becoming the Vegan Butcher appeared first on Modern Farmer.

But why does he call himself a “revivalist?” Why not “expert” or “specialist” or even “chef” or “recipe developer”? Because, as Katz explains, fermentation has been around for as long as people have been eating and preserving food. “There’s all sorts of innovation in the world of vegetable fermentation, but the basic ideas of how you do it are ancient. I haven’t really observed anyone making up completely new concepts of fermentation,” Katz says.

Instead, he says that the world of fermentation is experiencing a “huge amount of cross-pollination and experimentation and diversification.” Take kombucha, for example, which is thousands of years old. While it’s not a new food, Katz notes that people are experimenting with different flavors or letting it ferment into an alcoholic beverage. And yet it’s all still a riff on the same ancient recipe. This is where Katz shines and where he can shed light on traditional techniques and offer up his own twist on them.

It’s this thread that links the recipes in his latest book, Sandor Katz’s Fermentation Journeys. Part cookbook, part textbook, part personal memoir, the book details not just how to produce fermented foods but how Katz’s own views on fermentation have expanded over the years. When he published his first book, Wild Fermentation, in 2003, it brought sauerkraut, miso and kimchi to mainstream American kitchens, starting a fermentation revolution in the process. Michael Pollan called him the “Johnny Appleseed of fermentation,” sprinkling bits of knowledge wherever he travelled. The book was a manifesto for a generation of home cooks and practiced chefs alike and served as a springboard for Katz.

Through that success, he was able to travel the world, talking more about fermentation along the way. With each talk he gave and every stamp he collected on his passport came the opportunity to learn a new recipe. “I’ve been invited to teach in so many different parts of the world, and hosts who wanted to show me how they ferment,” Katz says. “I’ve gotten to taste and see and learn about making a lot of food.” These travels informed his latest book. While he was always aware that fermentation was practiced the world over, he didn’t always have a clear view of the different styles or techniques of different regions. This new book tries to “give people contextual underpinnings for the fermentation concepts” found around the world.

That sort of global context is needed for fermentation, which is—yet again—having a bit of a moment. Or at least, some kinds of fermentation are popular now (Katz says he hopes that you stick with your pandemic sourdough and feed your starter!), but it’s not an inherently trendy way of cooking. In fact, the method permeates so much of what we eat in the western world, but it’s simply so normalized that we don’t recognize that bacteria and yeast are key to our lives and our plates. Fermentation isn’t just kimchi and sauerkraut, it’s also yogurt and vinegar and beer. “These are not fad foods, these are foods that have enduring popularity,” Katz stresses. “If we step back and look at fermentation in the expansive western diet, there’s coffee, bread, cheese, pickles, cured meats, condiments…all of these things we take for granted.”

In Sandor Katz’s Fermentation Journeys, Katz encourages us to reframe the western view of cooking, to highlight and celebrate global tastes and traditions. “Fermentation is an essential part of how people in every part of the world make effective use of food resources. It’s really integral to food traditions.”

Katz learned that himself when he first tried his hand at fermentation. In his 30s, he moved from New York City to Tennessee, and he found himself tending his first garden. It was everything a rural transplant could dream of, until his vegetables started ripening—all at the same time. “I was such a naive city kid. It never occurred to me that in a garden, all the cabbages and all the radishes would be ready at the same time.” Desperate to do something with his bumper crop of cabbages, he made sauerkraut for the first time. “It was so easy, and so delicious, so satisfying, that I just started playing around with it.” Thus began Katz’s own journey into fermenting, which he says is pretty common around the world. Now, he looks forward to turning something “fundamentally bland” such as milk into something tangy and tasty and more interesting.

For a beginner, Katz says this book is not going to provide a step-by-step guide to fermenting your first pickle (for that, try Wild Fermentation). Instead, this latest release is more of a log of fermentation itself—how it’s evolved and changed from place to place and the pleasure that can be found in experimentation.

Fermenting oats. Photo by Sandor Katz.

Kisiel

The following recipe is from Sandor Katz’s Fermentation Journeys by Sandor Ellix Katz (Chelsea Green Publishing, October 2021) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.

The most fundamental technique for fermenting grains is extremely simple: soak them. Bacteria and yeasts are naturally present on dry grains, but they are dormant in the absence of water. This is true whether the grains are whole, cracked, or finely ground, so long as they are raw. As soon as the grains are soaked, the dormant organisms awaken and begin metabolizing nutrients and reproducing.

Porridges and gruels are among the most widespread applications of grain fermentation, found across all civilizations born of grain agriculture. Unfortunately, these traditional grain ferments have long been waning in popularity, eclipsed by baby foods, sugary cereals, and other processed foods that render porridges and gruels comparatively unappealing to kids, in spite of their vastly superior nutritive content.

At the University of Gastronomic Sciences (UGS) in Pollenzo, Italy, I was excited to meet Andrea Pieroni and hear about his ethnobotanical field work studying traditional foods of the Balkans. He subsequently sent me some of his papers to read, which were fascinating and informative, but also sad, insofar as one of the major objectives of his work is to document disappearing traditional practices. In one journal article, Andrea and a team of co-investigators include a list of the “most uncommon (and endangered) recorded preparations” among Eastern European traditional practices, with “gruels and sour beverages made of cereals” heading the list. “Fermented oat (Avena sativa) dishes were a popular component of the Eastern European diet,” they write, “but now are strongly declining.”

I love oat porridge and gruel. Porridge is thicker and more substantial; gruel is more watered down—thinner and soupier. They both feel so wholesome and deeply nourishing for me—all the more so when they have been fermented. Their nutritional profile contrasts sharply with the processed breakfast cereals that have become staple foods in the Western world and beyond, which are nutritionally deficient, high in sugar, and potentially harmful over time. These processed cereals are also high-profit products through which we transfer wealth to a few vast multinational grain-processing corporations, relying upon them and the infrastructure that enables them to exist for one of our most basic daily necessities, which they satisfy poorly.

Fermented oats have many different regional names. In Estonia, write Andrea and his collaborators, a beverage called kile was made of oat flour mixed with water; it was let to stay in warmth for a night. This filtered sour beverage was consumed instead of sour milk on the side of the meal. If the filtrate was boiled, it became a kind of gruel, which was also called kile, but also kiisel or kisla, and eaten hot with butter or fat or later, as a cold jelly. The boiling procedure took a long time at slow heat and required constant mixing; it had to meet an exact standard of sourness, otherwise it would not produce the required result. Similar gruels (also similarly named) were prepared from rye or from rye and potatoes. In Belarus, lacto-fermented gruel was called kisiel, but also a semi-liquid fermented dish from the oat flour was called by the same name. It was eaten with poppy or cannabis milk and is now, as in Estonia, recognized as a historical use only.

Inspired by this description, I began experimenting. And because my maternal grandparents, Sol and Betty Ellix, came to the United States from Belarus, I adopted the Belarussian name kisiel for this sour oat milk and porridge. Both the oat milk and the porridge that this simple fermentation produces are compelling in their deliciousness.

Timeframe
2 to 5 days, depending upon temperature and taste preference

Ingredients
Makes 1 quart/1 liter of oat milk and porridge for 4 to 6 servings

About 2 cups/200 grams oats, rolled, cracked, or milled into flour
Pinch of salt

Instructions

Soak the oats in about 1 quart/1 liter of water, in a loosely covered container.

Stir, smell, and taste the soaking liquid daily to monitor the evolving flavor. I’ve gone as long as 5 days, at which point I detected notes of coconut.

When you decide it is ready, strain the soaking liquid from the solids. Enjoy the flavorful and nutritious oat milk raw.

Transfer the soaked oat solids to a pot, cover with 4 cups/1 liter of fresh water, and add a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then gently simmer over low heat, stirring frequently to prevent burning on the bottom of the pot, until liquid thickens.

Enjoy your porridge with sweet or savory seasonings, as you prefer. (I love mine savory, with butter, peanut butter, miso, and garlic.)

The post The Godfather of Fermentation Loves Your Pandemic Sourdough appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Flavors from the Garden: Heirloom Vegetable Recipes from Roughwood

Food historian William Woys Weaver knows a thing or two about how to write a book—he’s authored more than 15 of them. In Flavors from the Garden, the heirloom seed and heritage food expert shows CSA shoppers and home gardeners how to turn their vegetables into tasty dishes. With 80 recipes that follow the seasons, he shares comforting dishes such as a Pennsylvania Dutch-inspired saffron corn soup, corn waffles with ham and bean gravy, ramp pesto and Lemon Blush tomato pie.

(October 12, Rizzoli)

The Korean Vegan Cookbook: Reflections and Recipes from Omma’s Kitchen

Joanne Lee Molinaro, the woman behind @thekoreanvegan on Instagram and TikTok, shows the plant-based side of Korean cuisine, which is synonymous with grilled meats and fish sauce. In her debut cookbook, she offers a guide to using essential pantry ingredients such as soy sauce, doenjang (a fermented soybean paste), gochujang (chili paste), gochugaru (pepper powder), dashima (kelp) and dried mushrooms. The included 80 recipes cover bbang (breads), kimchi and salads, soups and stews, noodles and pastas, as well as banchan, the collective name for the small side dishes that complement Korean meals.

(October 12, Avery Publishing Group)

Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora

As Bryant Terry writes in the introduction to Black Food, this cookbook is “a communal shrine to the shared histories of the African Diaspora.” The chef, activist and author has edited this collection of stories and recipes from dozens of Black chefs and cooks, which include everything from green plantain crisps and creamy grits to smoked collard greens and black-eyed pea beignets. The book also includes a playlist curated by Terry.

(October 19, 4 Color Books)

That Sounds So Good: 100 Real-Life Recipes for Every Day of the Week

In her second cookbook, Carla Lalli Music, formerly the food director of Bon Appétit, presents 100 recipes—more than 50 of which are vegetarian—to get you through the week. The first half of the book features quick meals to make Monday through Thursday, when work and school schedules can make it difficult to whip up a good dinner. There are steamed lemongrass mussels, avocado and fresh chile caprese, chickpea pancakes with shaved vegetables and fat noodles with mushrooms and herb sauce. The second half, for Friday through Sunday, includes plenty of stews and soups for Lazy Sundays, as well as more ambitious dishes for when you have a little more time on your hands.

(October 19, Clarkson Potter)

Grist: A Practical Guide to Cooking Grains, Beans, Seeds, and Legumes

This is the cookbook to cozy up to. Chef Abra Berens celebrates the beauty and versatility of grains and legumes and the farmers who grow them. She offers an approach that helped her reframe her own view of cooking with them: Instead of making a big batch of lentil soup, for example, cook a big batch of lentils and use them in different ways throughout the week. Grist features more than 125 recipes for 29 different types of grains, legumes and seeds, plus hundreds of different flavor variations on those. She also, hilariously, addresses the inevitable farts that tend to come with eating whole grains and legumes: “My mom swore by Beano. In short, find what works for you. Me, I just think farts are funny, so I take no prophylactic.”

(October 26, Chronicle Books) 

Grains for Every Season: Rethinking Our Way with Grains

Joshua McFadden, whose James Beard Award-winning Six Seasons helped transform the way many home cooks prepare vegetables, is back with a new cookbook about grains. Written with Martha Holmberg, Grains for Every Season has 200 recipes for salads, soups, grain bowls, veggie burgers, cookies and crackers that feature barley, brown rice, buckwheat, corn, millet, oats, quinoa, rye, wheat and wild rice.

(November 16, Artisan Publishers)

New Native Kitchen: Celebrating Modern Recipes of the American Indian

Indigenous foodways of America have largely been ignored by the culinary scene for centuries, but no longer. Freddie Bitsoie, a member of the Navajo Nation and the former executive chef at Mitsitam Native Foods Café at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, teamed up with James Beard Award-winning author James O. Fraioli to showcase the Indigenous heritage of American cuisine. The varied recipes, such as prickly pear sweet pork chops and sumac seared trout with onion and bacon sauce, are hyper-seasonal and hyper-regional, and they offer a modern take on traditional Native American cooking.

(November 16, Abrams)

The post 7 New Cookbooks We’re Cozying Up With This Fall appeared first on Modern Farmer.

To Soak or Not to Soak?

There are two main things you need to know about canning legumes. The first is that they’re only safe to can in a pressure canner (not a water bath canner) since they’re low-acid foods. And second, dry beans and peas need to be rehydrated by soaking in water before they’re packed into jars. Lentils don’t need to be presoaked. Peanuts will need to be soaked, but the process is a little different.

I know you can find recipes on the Internet that don’t include soaking the beans or peas, but they’re not approved methods. When you don’t presoak the dried beans and peas, you run the risk of them soaking up all the water and becoming a big clump of beans. There’s no way to tell if the heat penetrates the center of the clump to make them shelf stable. The beans and peas can also swell so much that they break the jar. There’s nothing more depressing than opening up the canner and finding broken jars.

There are two ways to soak beans: the overnight method and the quick-soak method. For both methods, you need to wash the beans or peas and remove any small pebbles that might be mixed in with them.

For the overnight method: Put the cleaned beans in a large bowl or stockpot and add 10 cups (2.4 L) of water per 1 pound (454 g) of beans or peas. Cover the bowl or pot and put it in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours and up to 24 hours.

For the quick-soak method: Put the cleaned beans in a large stockpot and add 10 cups (2.4 L) of water per one pound (454 g) of beans or peas. Bring the water to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil for 2 minutes then remove from the heat. Let the beans soak for 1 hour.

Photo by Imfoto, Shutterstock.

I prefer to use the overnight method for soaking legumes as I think there is less issue with the legumes splitting and the skins coming off. I also think it’s more hands-off than the quick-soak method; however, if I’ve forgotten to soak the legumes the night before, I’ll happily use the quick-soak method so that I can get the canning done that I’d planned for that day.

Every once in a while, someone will ask me about canning sprouted legumes, ones that have been soaked long enough that they start to germinate. The official answer is that there are no approved guidelines or processing times for canning sprouted legumes. In my opinion, the extra nutrition that’s gained by soaking legumes would be destroyed by the high heat of the pressure canner. Also, the enzymes that cause digestibility issues are water soluble, which means they’ll leach out during they soak and that water will be discarded.

If you’re extra sensitive to the digestive effects of legumes, use the overnight soak method and change the water several times.

How to Can Legumes

Once the beans have been cleaned and soaked, they’re ready for canning. To keep things simple, I’m going to just use beans as the example, but know that peas and lentils are canned the exact same way. The instructions below are an overview on canning legumes.

On average, 1 pound (454 g) of dried beans will give you about 7 cups (1.2 kg) of cooked beans. This is a very rough estimate and the actual amount will depend on the size and shape of the bean. You’ll need three or four 1-pint (500-ml) jars or two 1-quart (1-L) jars to pressure can a pound of dried beans. This should help you estimate how many jars you need to prepare.

Pour off the water that the beans were soaking in and give the beans a quick rinse with fresh water. Drain again. Put the beans into a large stockpot and cove with fresh water. Heat the beans over medium-high heat and gently boil for 30 minutes. The beans will not be fully cooked by the time they’re done boiling; they’ll finish cooking in the jars while being processed.

While the beans are boiling, prepare the pressure canner, jars and lids. Wash the inside of the pressure canner and the rack with hot, soapy water. Place the rack in the pressure canner and fill it with a few inches (8 cm) of water, according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Place the canner on the stovetop and heat the water over medium heat.

Wash the lids in hot, soapy water and set aside. Check the instructions on the box of lids; some manufacturers (Bernardin®) recommend that the lids be placed in boiled water to keep them hot and some manufacturers recommend that the lids simply be washed (Ball®).

When the beans are finished boiling, it’s time to remove the hot jars from the canner and pour out any water that is in the jars. Don’t dry the jars; the water remnants will evaporate quickly.

Turn the heat off from under the beans and ladle them into the jars, leaving a generous 1 inch (2.5 cm) of headspace. Don’t discard the water the beans cooked in, as that will become the broth to fill the jars with. I like to use a slotted spoon and evenly distribute all the beans between the jars before adding the broth; this way I don’t end up with a jar with very little beans in the end.

You can add ½ teaspoon of non-iodized salt per 1-pint (500-ml) jar and 1 teaspoon of non-iodized salt per 1-quart (1-L) jar and any dried herbs at this point, if desired.

When the beans are distributed, ladle the bean broth into each jar, leaving 1 inch (2.5 cm) of headspace. Using a bubble remover tool remove the air bubbles from the jars. Recheck the headspace, adding more broth if necessary. If you run out of broth, top the jars off with boiling water.

Wipe the rims with a clean, damp cloth and add the lids and bands. Tighten the bands to finger-tight, like you would a mayonnaise jar. Place the jars in the prepared pressure canner and lock the lid in place. Process the jars at 10 psi (69 kPa) for 75 minutes for 1-pint (500-ml) jars and 90 minutes for 1-quart(1-L) jars, adjusting for altitude if necessary.

Photo by Lost_in_the_Midwest, Shutterstock.

Be sure to let the canner vent for 10 minutes and fully come up to the correct pressure before you start timing.

When the beans are finished processing, turn off the heat and allow the canner to naturally depressurize. This will take 30 to 60 minutes. Refer to the instructions that came with your canner.

Once the pressure canner has depressurized, lay a clean kitchen towel on the counter to set the jars on. Remove the weight from the vent opening or open the petcock and let the canner sit for 10 minutes before opening the lid. This keeps the liquid in the jars from surging and the lids from being compromised.

When you remove the canner lid, open it away from your face to avoid the blast of steam. Let the jars sit in the canner for another 5 minutes before removing them.

Using a jar lifter, remove the jars from the canner and place them on the prepared towel to cool. Leave at least 1 inch (2.5 cm) of space between the jars. Let them cool for 12 to 24 hours and then check the seals. If everything has sealed, the jars are ready to be stored away. Use home-canned legumes within one year. If any jars failed to seal, put them in the refrigerator to use within a week.

Butter Beans and Ham

In the South, mature white lima beans are often called “butter beans.” Creamy butter beans and ham are a classic Southern comfort food. And if you want creamy butter beans, you have to cook them long and slow and stir them often…or you can just pressure can them. These can be served as a side dish or as the main dish by serving them with a pan of corn bread.

Yields 14 (1-Pint [500-ml]) or 7 (1-Quart [1-L]) Jars

Ingredients:
2 lbs (907 g) dried mature lima beans (aka butter beans), presoaked*
8 cups (1.9 L) water
1 lb (454 g) diced ham
2 cups (320 g) chopped onions**
7 bay leaves

*The beans need to be soaked using the overnight or quick-soak method before beginning this recipe.
**You’ll need approximately 3/4pound (340 g) unprepared onions.

Instructions:
Prepare the pressure canner, jars and lids. You’ll need 14 (1-pint[500-ml]) or 7 (1-quart [1-L]) jars. Fill the canner with a few inches(8 cm) of water, according to the manufacturer’s instructions, and put the canner on the stove over low heat with the jars inside to stay hot.This is a hot-pack recipe, so the water needs to be about 180°F (82°C).

Drain the water from the soaking beans and put the beans into the stockpot with 8 cups (1.9 L) of fresh water. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to a gentle boil. Boil for 30 minutes.

The beans will not be fully cooked by the time they’re done boiling; they’ll finish cooking in the jars while being processed.

Remove the beans from the heat, and using a slotted spoon, put them into the prepared jars. Divide the ham and onions between the jars. Add1/2bay leaf to each 1-pint (500-ml) jar and 1 bay leaf to each1-quart (1-L) jar.

Fill each jar with the water used for cooking the beans, leaving 1 inch(2.5 cm) of headspace. Remove the bubbles with a bubble removal tool and recheck the headspace. If you end up short of broth, top the jars off with boiling water. Wipe the rims with a clean, damp cloth. Put the lids and bands on the jars and load them into the pressure canner.

Process the jars, according to the manufacturer’s instructions, at 10 psi(69 kPa) for 75 minutes for 1-pint (500-ml) jars and 90 minutes for1-quart (1-L) jars, adjusting for altitude if necessary.

After processing, allow the canner to depressurize naturally, then remove the jars and let them cool on the counter for at least 12 hours. Check the seals and store the jars for up to 1 year.

For serving, empty a jar of Butter Beans and Ham into a medium stock pot and heat over medium heat for 10 minutes, or until the liquid is bubbling and the beans are heated thoroughly, stirring frequently.Remove the bay leaf before serving. Serve with a side of corn bread or biscuits.

The post How to Can Legumes appeared first on Modern Farmer.