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Canning is a great way to preserve vegetables for the winter. If they are grown with their own hands, then vegetable preparations will cost quite inexpensively. But even if you have to buy products for canned food, the savings will still be tangible, since at the height of the vegetable season all the necessary ingredients are quite inexpensive.
Every family has its own food preferences. Therefore, the assortment of canned vegetables prepared for the winter is individual in each house. But there are recipes that almost every housewife uses. Zucchini is especially good in this regard. The vegetable has a neutral taste, which allows you to cook a wide variety of dishes from it, ranging from desserts to spicy snacks.
One of them is mother-in-law’s tongue with tomato paste. In different variations, these canned food are present on the table in every house in winter. This vegetable salad is also good because you can cook it even in late autumn, since quite mature zucchini are also suitable for it, and tomatoes that are quite expensive at this time are replaced by tomato paste.
This salad is as sharp as mother-in-law’s tongue. But the degree of sharpness is selected by each hostess to her liking. For those who like it “hot”, you can put more hot peppers and garlic, and if someone prefers a neutral taste, you can take quite a bit of these hot ingredients, just so that canned food does not deteriorate in winter. They make blanks with the same name from eggplants.
There are many options for preparing these canned food. Changing the proportions and composition of the ingredients affects the taste of the finished product. In order to find the very recipe that will become a favorite for many years, you will first have to try several different options.
Very sharp mother-in-law’s tongue
This recipe is for lovers of “fiery” food, it has a lot of everything – garlic, hot peppers, tomato paste. Products for canning will require the following:
- zucchini – 2 kg;
- sweet feather – 300 g;
- medium-sized garlic – 3 heads;
- hot pepper – 2 pods;
- tomato paste – 400 g;
- sugar – 2/3 cup;
- refined vegetable oil – 2/3 cup;
- salt – 1,5 tablespoons;
- vinegar 9% – 4 tablespoons.
Mix tomato paste and water. We do this in a saucepan in which the mother-in-law’s tongue will be cooked. We divide the garlic into cloves, peel, cut off the top of the hot pepper, cut the peppers in half, completely remove the seeds, as well as the partitions to which they are attached. Similarly, prepare sweet peppers.
We skip all the peppers and garlic through a meat grinder and put them in a saucepan. It’s time for the zucchini. They need to be washed well, if necessary – remove the skin, cut off the hard tips.
Young fruits are easier to peel and cook faster. But in mature vegetables, the taste is more pronounced.
The traditional form for zucchini in this blank is elongated pieces that look like tongues. But such cutting takes a lot of time. If you don’t want to spend it irrationally, and the aesthetic component is not important, you can cut the zucchini into pieces of any shape. The main condition is that they should be large enough, but such that it is convenient to put them in a jar ready-made.
Season our sauce with salt, add sugar and vinegar, vegetable oil, mix and bring to a boil. Put the zucchini into the boiling sauce. If they do not fit completely into the pan, you can divide them into batches and put them in turn, waiting for the previous part of the vegetables to settle a little.
The workpiece is cooked for no more than 20 minutes after boiling.
Banks for canned food need to be prepared in advance. They must be dry sterilized. It is best to do this in an oven heated to a temperature of about 150 degrees. For liter and half-liter, an exposure of 15 minutes is needed.
We pack the prepared salad in jars, tightly roll it up and turn it over. When cool, we put the canned food in the basement or any other cool place where they will be stored.
Banks are turned over to check the tightness.
Mother-in-law’s tongue with mustard
Here, in addition to the usual spicy ingredients, there is mustard, which adds even more spiciness to the dish. It is designed for those who are accustomed to spicy dishes and cannot imagine a single meal without them.
To prepare a winter harvest you will need:
- zucchini ready for cutting – 3 kg;
- tomato juice – 1,4 l;
- tomato paste – 2 tablespoons;
- Bulgarian pepper – 3 pcs.;
- hot pepper – 3 pcs.;
- peeled garlic cloves – 100 g;
- finished mustard – 1 tablespoon;
- sugar – 1 glass;
- salt – 3 tablespoons;
- vinegar 9% – 4 tablespoons.
My vegetables. We cut the zucchini in half horizontally, and then into slices having a thickness of 1,5 cm and a length of 10 cm.
In a saucepan, mix the tomato ingredients, salt, add sugar, pour vinegar, add vegetable oil, put mustard. We chop the garlic. We do the same with peppers, removing the seeds from them. I put everything in the sauce. Bring it to a boil. Add cooked zucchini and bring to a boil. Stir gently, being careful not to break the zucchini pieces. Cook the vegetable mixture for about 40 minutes.
Put the zucchini in dry and sterilized jars and pour the sauce up to the shoulders. Immediately roll up and warm for a day.
For those who love this salad, but do not want or cannot, for health reasons, eat too spicy dishes, there is a sparing option with moderate spiciness.
Mother-in-law’s tongue is moderately sharp
It will require:
- zucchini – 2 kg;
- sweet pepper – 500 g;
- hot pepper – 1 pc;
- garlic – 1 head;
- sugar – 250 g;
- salt – 80 g;
- vinegar 9% – 50 ml;
- tomato paste – 250 ml;
- water – 0,5 l;
- optional – allspice, cardamom, cloves.
Tomato paste must be mixed with water. Let the pot heat up. Meanwhile, peel and chop the garlic cloves and both types of pepper.
Add everything to the pot. While the sauce boils, wash, clean the zucchini and cut into thin plates that look like tongues. Add the rest of the ingredients as required. As soon as the sauce boils, put the zucchini. You need to cook the workpiece for half an hour. Ready mother-in-law’s tongue is packaged in dry sterilized jars.
They need to be rolled up using sterilized lids, turned over to check for leaks and wrapped well. After a day, we transfer the jars to permanent storage in the cold.
In conclusion, another recipe in which there is unexpectedly a lot of tomato paste. This gives the workpiece a rich tomato flavor. Tomatoes are a healthy vegetable; during heat treatment, most of their medicinal substances are preserved.
Mother-in-law’s tomato tongue
There are also a lot of spicy ingredients in this recipe, so the dish is for lovers of spicy.
We need:
- zucchini – 3 kg;
- hot pepper – 4 pcs.;
- sweet pepper – 5 pcs;
- peeled garlic – 100g;
- 1 glass of sugar and vegetable oil;
- salt – 4 tbsp. spoons;
- vinegar 9% – 3 tbsp. spoons;
- tomato paste – 900 g;
- water – 1l.
Mix water and tomato paste. Boil thick sauce. We dissolve sugar and salt in it, season with vegetable oil and vinegar. We twist the garlic cloves and peeled peppers with a meat grinder. We send them to the pan with the sauce. Cut the peeled zucchini into slices or medium-sized pieces and put in a thick sauce. We cook the workpiece for 40 minutes.
We lay out the prepared zucchini jars and fill them with sauce. Seal immediately. Canned food should be wrapped warmly for 24 hours.
Conclusion
Mother-in-law’s tongue is a universal winter preparation that can be cooked in any version – spicy or not. But whatever it is, it will not have to stand for long. This delicious dish, both hot and cold, is eaten first.