While The Canner Was Out

Seriously huge kohlrabi

When I dig the pressure canner out from the basement, I usually try to make a few things with it before I put it away again. I made beans yesterday and today I made turkey stock. Six pints were processed in the canner successfully. A seventh pint didn't seal so I used it for dinner, which was:

Broccoli cheddar soup except it wasn't broccoli - it was kohlrabi. The farm share provided us with a kohlrabi that was as large as my head - no kidding! So I chopped up half of it and cooked it with some onion, turkey stock, milk, salt and pepper, and then puréed it with my immersion blender. After that, I melted two cups of cheddar cheese into the soup, and served it with the bread from the farm share - a small boule. One of us had the soup in the boule, the other had the soup with the bread that I pulled out from the boule. 

Now, what to do with the other half of a giant kohlrabi?

Navy Beans

The farm we use now doesn't just have summer farm shares. It has mushroom shares, dahlia shares, fruit shares, winter shares, and all sorts of other creative local produce collections. We are alternating weeks currently with the mushroom share and the winter pantry share. One of this week's items is a kohlrabi literally as large as my head. (Still thinking about what to do with it.) Another was about a pound of dried navy beans.

We've been using more white beans in our cooking, but not often enough to just cook these and keep them in the fridge. So I canned them! I soaked them overnight then boiled them for 30 minutes. Then I put them, with their cooking water and 1/2 tsp salt per jar, into four pint-sized jars and processed them in the pressure canner. 75 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.