Cucumbers with a candle for the winter: a step-by-step recipe for cooking, storage in jars

Almost every family annually prepares for the winter. Usually this is the preservation and s alting of vegetables, scrolling berries for jam and much more. Harvesting cucumbers with a candle for the winter is an original, simple, quick way of preservation, it helps to preserve all the benefits and freshness of vegetables, but it also has disadvantages. The finished product is suitable for salads, various snacks.

Features of harvesting cucumbers with a candle for the winter

Immediately before harvesting, you need to study some of the features inherent in this method. These include the correct selection of vegetables.

Cucumbers should be:

Fresh. When buying cucumbers, pay attention to the whole lot, and not to choose one at a time. So, if single copies are not the first freshness, then all the rest will soon wither and deteriorate.
Before putting cucumbers in a jar, they should never be washed. If the outer layer is washed off, the process of decay will begin, no blank will work. Cucumbers must be dry and clean. It's best to just wipe them with a cloth.
Cucumbers should be intact. It is important to view not the batch as a whole, but each cucumber separately. Such meticulousness is necessary, in case of damage to one cucumber, all the others will soon deteriorate.

If the choice is between greenhouse and ground varieties, preference should be given to the latter. Greenhouse cucumbers have a thin top layer that peels off easily, vegetables begin to spoil.

Advantages and disadvantages of the method

This method of harvesting cucumbers has its advantages and disadvantages.

Benefits include:

invariable taste and almost complete preservation of nutritional value;
cucumbers remain fresh due to the fact that there is no heat treatment;
the shelf life of such cucumbers is long, about 3-4 months;
does not require a lot of time and money.

Much fewer disadvantages:

when inattentive selection of cucumbers and a spoiled specimen gets into the jar, all vegetables will be spoiled;
when exposed to cans of light, cucumbers also deteriorate.

Specific selection and preparation of products

Before harvesting cucumbers, they must be properly selected and prepared. If you use cucumbers from your own garden, it is better to pick them in the morning or evening, and not at the peak of solar activity. After harvesting, remove the vegetables in the shade. During active fruiting, they are harvested every 2 days, and sometimes daily.

It is important to prevent overripe cucumbers and their yellow coating. It is best to harvest freshly picked cucumbers, if they are left at room temperature for even 2 days, their freshness and he althy appearance will be lost, and the shelf life will be significantly reduced.

Preparing cucumbers for placement in jars is a simple matter. They are simply sorted out, the fruits of the desired size are separated, and damaged or deformed specimens are removed.

The shape of the cucumbers is also important, it is desirable that they be almost the same.

How to properly prepare the container

It is easy to prepare a container for harvesting cucumbers with a candle. Banks are disinfected, preferably heated in a water bath. To do this, pour 1 cm of water into the pan, put a wooden grate on the bottom, put a jar on this grate. The water is brought to a boil, kept in a jar for another 10 minutes.

After this procedure, the container becomes suitable for harvesting cucumbers.

How to close cucumbers with a candle?

The harvesting process itself is as follows:

Cucumbers of approximately the same size are selected.
Selected clean and dry cucumbers are placed in a pre-sterilized jar. Fill not up to the end, you need to leave a place for a candle.
A candle is placed on top and lit.
The jar is closed after the air is completely released, the candle goes out.

How and how long canned food is stored

Cucumbers canned in a jar with a candle are stored for 3-4 months. Due to the fact that a certain vacuum is created in the jar, the vegetables remain fresh and retain all their nutritional value.

In order to increase the shelf life of preservation, jars are placed in cool and dry rooms where heat will not penetrate.

Places where you should not store canned food - the kitchen, rooms that are heavily heated, places near heaters. Otherwise, the cans heat up and explode. If this does not happen, then the condition of the vegetables will not be the best, most likely they will soften and become flabby and tasteless.