most environmentally friendly way to defrost food

[Chris Green]

You'd be surprised! The first jar I looked at (Aldi strawberry jam) has 60g of sugar per 100g of jam, i.e. it's more than 50% sugar.

[Andrew]

Microbiologically, that is the safest way to do it.

[Tim+]

Stop buying “low sugar” versions. Therein lies the problem.

Tim

[S Viemeister]

Those disks may still be available - I know I saw them about 10 years ago.

[Rod Speed]

[e-mail] [e-mail] wrote

I don't defrost most food, cook it straight from the freezer.

The only real exception is the cold meat for the massive great open sandwich I have every 4 days for the main meal with the fresh loaf of bread from the bread machine, the top of the vertical loaf, with my relish and lettuce leaves.

A roast leg of lamb which is my preferred roast lasts too long when used for that so some of it goes in the freezer after eatinf the roast, otherwise it goes slimy and mouldy in the fridge before it gets used up on those open samdwiches and one ot two meals of cold meat with a roast potato and veg.

I have just started using what we call silverside as the source of the meat for the massive great open sandwiches and given that I don't care to eat it alone for the main meal, even the smallest ones from the supermarket do last too long when just used for the sandwiches and also go slimy and mouldy, do I cut in half and freeze one half.

I defrost those in the fridge.

Are you really that poor that that matters ?

This whole post of yours is clearly a pathetic excuse for a troll.

[wrights...]

Not really Rod. Trolling is when the person tries to deceive others into taking a ludicrous post seriously. In this case I wrote a ludicrous post assuming that everyone in the group was intelligent enough to see that it was a joke — a parody of environmental extremists in fact. You clearly weren't quite quite bright enough to realise. I'm sorry that this has caused you embarrassment.

Bill

[Chris Green]

Of course they are, essential marmalade making supplies.

[Rod Speed]

But have to fart around shopping much more often or eat out all the time.

[Rod Speed]

No it doesnt. whatever those are.

I never add anything to mine and it keeps fine for years.

[Rod Speed]

My commercial marmalade never goes mouldy and I never keep it in the fridge.

[Rod Speed]

Fraid so.

<reams of trollshit flushed where it belongs>

[Rod Speed]

Nope, I put mine in commercial marmalade jars with metal lids.

[Brian Gaff]

I believe treatment is now available privately for your condition. Look at it this way, while you decide, time has passed. You cannot change the past, and in most ways have little or no control of the future, so live for the 'now' and stop worrying about it. Brian

[Jim Jackson]

I've always wondered about that. Does it include the sugars already in the fruit? And when you make jam, the usual recipe is to weigh the fruit(/water) and add the same weight of sugar (I know it can vary). Then you boil it up, so there is water evaporation from either added water or the natural fruit juices, but not sugar evaporation. So at the end the sugar concentration has gone up - beyond 50%.

I always use less sugar than recommended by the standard recipes and generally get good sets - even when doing strained jellies. The jam/jelly is always more "fruity" in taste that most standard shop jams/jellies - the down side is, once opened, it can mouldy quicker.

[Jim Jackson]

As is older Raspberry Jam - the taste changes mirrors the change in taste between a young and and very young red wine.

My wife opened a jar of 2011 home made ginger plum jam the other day. Perrfectly ok and, as you say very tasty.

[SH]

I have got into jam making relatively recently.

However my daughter will only eat seedless jam.

So I heat up the raspberries in a pan and mash it up so it becomes a "raspberry juice" I then run this through a Sieve to remove the seeds. And then only then do I add the sugar to make the seedless raspberry jam.

(Previously I used to do the 50%-50% mix of raspberries and sugar and then sieve but this was hard work as the jam had thickened in the saucepan.)

So given my "new" way of making seedless jam, shoudl I still follow the

50%-50% recipe using the gross weight of raw raspberries or use the weight of the raspberry liquid for the correct quantity of sugar?

To my logical mind, given the amount of seeds on the raspberries it seems logical to make a reduction in the sugar as the seeds don't really do anything for the jam apart from supply texture and fibre!

[Fredxx]

That is quite funny! I did think it was so unlike Bill to have such strong thoughts on the environment but I still felt obliged to post!

[Jim Jackson]

absolutely no idea. Given the sugar quantity affects the set, and the set depends on the fruit pectin - do the seeds contain pectin?

If you were making raspberry jelly - i.e. you'd boil up the raspberries with just covering water and then straining all the solids out with a "jelly bag" - the classic recipe is 1lb sugar to 1 pint (UK!) of strained liquid. Whether this still works out at 1lb sugar to 1lb original fruit weight, I don't know. But it is going in that direction.

I'd just experiment until you find something that what works for you.

[Reentrant]

I know honey needs to be 20% or less water content (ie 80%+) sugar in order not to ferment in the jar. Beekeepers check a sample while in the comb and only remove it from the hive when it's "ripe".

You can get cheap (around £15) high-brix low-water refractometers on Ebay to do this.

I assume jam and marmalade are similar; either way the water content needs to be less than that in bacteria / yeast cells so they are dessicated by osmosis and can't grow.

[John J]

Spoken like a true climate onanist