Mango Season Means a Full Preservation Day

Mangoes were the first thing I saw on this Nashville grocery run. Piles of them. That usually means I'm coming home with far more food than fits neatly into the refrigerator.

I love international grocery stores for ingredients I can't easily grow or find near home. This trip included Hawaiian purple potatoes, shallots, daikon radishes, fresh paneer, fish, lemongrass, red jalapenos, young ginger, French tarragon, carrots, and those mangoes.

Then comes the work.

Preserve it before it gets forgotten

The day after a big grocery run is a mad scramble in my kitchen. Daikon and carrots get pickled. Lemongrass, jalapenos, and ginger get ground and frozen in portions I can grab later. Greens get steamed and frozen for palak paneer through winter.

French tarragon was a particularly good score. Some went into vinegar and some got salt-cured for future dishes. Tarragon isn't something I run across fresh very often, so wasting it would make me nuts.

This same routine works for a kitchen garden glut. Ten pounds of carrots showing up at once sounds fabulous right up until you're staring at ten pounds of carrots on the counter. Ask me how I know.

Process produce when it's fresh. Pickling works well for radishes and carrots. Peppers can be chopped or ground and frozen. Shallots store well after proper curing if they're coming from your own garden. Potatoes need a cool, dark storage spot after curing. Each crop has its own storage requirements, so don't toss everything into one basket and hope for the best. The interwebs help.

September is a good time to take inventory

Late September is when my attention starts shifting toward winter food. In much of the South, fall garden crops are growing now, summer peppers may still be producing, and storage crops are coming in. Local timing changes with climate and frost dates.

I keep an eye on what we actually eat. There's no point growing or preserving jars of something nobody wants in February. I like to eat, and I am picky. Grocery store produce can be gross, and inflation is high. Putting away food I know we'll use makes sense.

Start small if food preservation is new to you. One batch of refrigerator pickles or a few freezer portions is plenty. For shelf-stable canning, use a current tested recipe from a reliable food-safety source. Acidity and processing times aren't a chaos-gardener situation. Follow the recipe.

Freezing is far more forgiving and happens to fit my personality better. Label everything with the ingredient and date. I learned the hard way that six mysterious green packages in the freezer are not nearly as fun as they sound.

Garden harvest or international grocery haul, the principle is the same: deal with fresh food at its peak and future-you gets a much better dinner. It's a ridiculous amount of kitchen work for one day. For a kitchen nerd like me, that's a pretty good day.