Introduce me to home canning & preserving. What do I need to know?

Cafe Society
1

We’ve decided that this summer, we’re going to do some home preserving. Our local vegetable / fruit stand is opening up this week with strawberries and cherries on the horizon, and I realized that I’m way behind on my prep… like learning wtf I’m doing!

First of all, because I know people will recommend it, I’ve ordered a copy of this book. I’ve heard its sort of the de rigueur canning bible. However, I’m curious if there are other equally valuable sources of info.

What I would like to do this summer is make homemade strawberry, blueberry, and raspberry jam (or a mixed berry). Also I want to can tomatoes, green beans, corn, and maybe some homemade salsa and spaghetti sauce. Maybe some beets. I’d love to can pickled jalapenos: I’ve got two plants growing in the yard right now.

The only equipment I have is the stove: a big base camp propane stove that should work well. All the rest of the equipment, including canners, I’ll have to get. I’d prefer to stay away from pressure canning but IIRC some thing (like anything with garlic in it) needs to be pressure canned. I know some folks that will let me borrow their water bath canners. I’ll have to buy a pressure canner if I go that route. Is there any brand or features I should be aware of and look for?

So help a noob out. What tips or tricks do you recommend? Anything I should stay away from or avoid?

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Regarding pressure canners, Amazon has these that are quite reasonable to my inexperienced eye. The description says they double as a water bath canner. It has good reviews. I assume something like this is adequate?

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The USDA used to publish an awesome guide on food preservation back in the 1970’s. I just checked online and it appears they’ve got a somewhat more abbreviated guide online

https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html

4

Read the book you ordered. It will answer most of your questions. :wink:

Here are the main points to remember:

High acid, along with salt and sugar, will stop the growth of bacteria, including botulism bacteria that produce botulism toxin. For this reason, high acid foods such as most jams and jellies, tomatoes and pickles of all sorts are safe for water bath canning. As Ball recommends, increase acid for tomatoes or other foods with commercial lemon juice or vinegar to ensure a high enough acid content. You can test with pH strips if you are particularly concerned. If your acid content is correct, you need never worry about botulism.

You boil your jars in order to sterilize the product contained in them. Once the jars and their contents are sterilized, nothing will grow in them that can make you sick.

Low acid foods must be pressure canned.

Some dense foods such as whole garlic and mashed pumpkin can harbor botulism bacteria, and they can’t be killed at the temperatures reached only with water bath canning. You can safely water bath can pickled garlic, but cut the cloves in half to ensure your pickling mixture reaches the interior of the clove. Never can mashed pumpkin, either by water bath or pressure canning. Cubed pumpkin can be safely pressure canned. Any time you are in doubt about the density or acid content of your product, cut it smaller and/or pressure can.

Follow recipes until you are comfortable with the process and learn where you can safely deviate from it. Always adhere to recommended canning times.

If you buy the Presto 23-quart unit, you’ll be pleased – but only if you add the graded pressure canner regulator. If you’re just going by the gauge, you’ll spend all your time hovering over your canner, constantly adjusting your stove temperature. This is called see-sawing, and it will cause your jars to spit. Seal failure ensues. Very frustrating, especially if you danced around the canner for 90 minutes or so beforehand.

The little regulator will gently rock when the appropriate temperature has been reached, and it will release steam to keep the temperature steady where you want it. It’s an absolutely indispensable accessory for the Presto.

If you pressure can things like spaghetti sauce, salsa or chili, you’ll be happier with the end products if you refrain from adding your herbs for the canning process. Add them when you open your jars and reheat. Pressure canning changes the flavors of your herbs, often making the product bitter.

Good luck and have fun!

5

Whether you need a pressure canner or a hot water bath depends on the acidity level. And there are a lot of things – including your peppers and corn – that aren’t acid enough to can without a pressure canner, unless pickled (the vinegar and salt in the pickling brine make them safer.)

Fruit jams and jellies come into the high-acid category; but pepper jellies etc. are generally low-acid and need different techniques.

Don’t change levels of salt or vinegar in a recipe without checking to make sure that you don’t need to adjust processing times and/or processing type. Don’t change the relative amounts of types of vegetables, either. A salsa or tomato sauce recipe that’s plenty acidic enough for a hot water bath may need pressure canning if you add more than the recipe calls for of low acid foods, such as peppers. For that matter, some tomato varieties are lower acid than others; most modern recipes I’ve seen call for adding acid (citric or ascorbic acid) to tomatoes to make sure they’re acid enough for a hot water bath.

As others have said, all this will be in the book. Just remember that it’s not like most cooking for immediate eating in that unless you understand extremely well what you’re doing you really do need to go by the recipes, and not just play around according to the ingredients you’ve got handy.

If you’ve got or can get a freezer, some things (but not others) freeze better than they can; and freezing is faster and easier and you can mess with recipes pretty much as much as you want (except that a few things don’t freeze well at all, such as potatoes.) Doesn’t work so well if your power often goes out, though. If you get a freezer, get a chest type; much more efficient, and produce will keep longer in it as less warm air gets in when it’s opened so things stay colder.

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Just become a mormon and tell them you want to do canning. You’ll soon become an expert.

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The main thing in canning is to use approved recipes and do NOT deviate from them. If the recipe says 1/4" head space, then 1" head space is not safe. If it says ‘add 1 tsp lemon juice per jar’, make sure you do it. We have a friend who keeps bringing us things she’s canned where only half the jar is filled. They go directly into the trash bin.

I highly recommend making your own pickles. You can water bath sweet or dill pickles, but we prefer to refrigerate our dills, rather than process them. Only problem with making your own is you’ll never go back to store-bought. You can buy pickling spice at any spice shop or even at a local grocer, or just make your own.

If you’re making jams, do yourself a huge favor (and a lot of heartache) and use Sure-Jell pectin. If you follow the instructions, your jam will come out perfect. My wife makes a killer blueberry jam by adding spearmint, lemon zest and lemon juice.

Canning tomatoes is dead easy. We usually do 40 pounds each year. Buy over-ripe tomatoes. Peel by cutting an “x” in the bottom and then dunking them in a hot water bath for about 15-30 seconds. The skins will come right off.

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Get some good prep equipment. For example, you mentioned strawberries and cherries in your post. You can hull strawberries or pit cherries by hand or with ordinary kitchen tools. But that becomes a really bad job when you’re prepping a couple quarts of fruit. You’re better off spending a few bucks and buying a decent huller or pitter. Sure, you’re buying a tool that only does one job - but you’re going to be doing a lot of that job.

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Also, when pitting cherries or dealing with beets, wear gloves as they will stain you hands.

Your local cooperative extension service office may have a website or hotline you can use if you get into a pickle or worse, a jam with your canning. :smiley:

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If you like more fruit than sugar in your jam, use Pomona pectin instead.

But yes, if you’re making jam or jelly, get some sort of pectin. I’ve used the boil-it-down no-pectin method. It takes forever.

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It not only takes forever, but more times than not it ends up burned.

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When I was a kid we canned a good deal of tomato sauce, but most of the vegetables we froze, using a vacuum sealer. That worked very well; frozen veg is much better than canned.

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Not if you use a good quality pot (the pot really makes a difference), and stand over it stirring it often enough.

Re standing over it stirring it often enough: that’s why I recommend instead getting some pectin. Stirring for two minutes or so is more fun than doing it for two hours or so.

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I never make it any other way than no pectin. I have had some batches take longer than others to boil down (higher moisture content, I reckon), but not for an unreasonable amount of time.

I do usually start the jam the night before, mixing sugar and fruit in the pot and giving it time to co-mingle. I use a thermometer and don’t use the spoon method.

Re burning, I do stir it a lot, especially as it approaches the gelling temperature of 220F. Not for anything close to 2 hours, though.

No disrespect to those who choose to use pectin! We all have our preferences. :slight_smile:

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I’ve tried everything from a heavy-bottomed stainless pot to a Le Crueset Dutch oven, and by the time the temperature gets to 220, there’s burn. I finally convinced my wife that we had to start using pectin. For some reason, she thought that it was some sort of chemical. :smack:

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Thanks all for the info. You’ve given me a lot to think about.

One thing that’s been mentioned a couple of times is freezing veggies and sauces. I confess that didn’t occur to me… I don’t know why. My parents always canned and I guess my default assumption was canned = better. We do have a stand-up freezer and a couple boxes of vacuum sealer bags would be cheaper than the canning equipment.

That might be a better way to go. I’ll give it some thought.

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It really depends on the item, your tastes, and your purposes.

IMO most fruits and vegetables taste better frozen than canned: but I like most of mine minimally cooked, so the canning process, to my taste, overcooks them. Tomato sauces however get cooked to the point at which they may as well be canned anyway, and there’s no sense taking up room for them in the freezer. Pickles need to be canned or refrigerated (and you can pickle lots of things, not just cucumbers. Mmmmm, dilly beans). Potatoes don’t freeze well at all, so some people can them; but they store pretty well if you can just keep them dark and moderately cool. Jams and jellies need minimal processing time and taste fine that way, you can freeze them but again why take up freezer space? Most people have a lot more cupboard space than freezer space, and it doesn’t cost anything to keep cupboard space running.

Tastes vary; some people like things canned that I prefer frozen. Plus which, of course, if part of the intention is storage not dependent on electricity, then canning’s better than standard freezers. (Non-electric freezers exist, but they’re expensive and generally of limited capacity.)

Most people I know who put up food do some of each, depending on the item.

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The first time you do it may seem like a big production, you may fumble a few jars, but afterwards you’ll see it’s not that difficult once you’re prepped. OTOH you may not see any advantage in doing it other than for the interesting experience.

Why are you hesitant about pressure canners? Did your grandmother’s pressure cooker explode?

19

Our tastes run very similar. I mostly can tomatoes, dilly beans and pickles, preferring most vegetables fresh. I do keep a variety of pressure canned complete dishes around for “fast” food such as chili and spaghetti sauce. I also like to pressure can fresh tuna.

To the OP: If you eat your veggies in season, you’ll find don’t need to can or freeze many. Our growing season allows fresh veggies nearly year round.

You can plant things like peas, spinach and lettuce both spring and fall. Beets and beet greens are fairly quick. By harvesting judiciously, you can have broccoli for many months. Chard will grow nearly year round. Brussels sprouts keep nicely on the stalk and will benefit flavor-wise from a light frost or two, as will cabbage and cauliflower. I usually plant half a dozen of each and start harvesting them quite young in rotation.

Peppers, beans and corn are best eaten fresh and peppers will keep nicely on the stem for awhile. They are fun to can, too.

Don’t overlook dehydration as a food preservation method. I don’t can fruits because the sugar ruins them for my taste. If I can’t eat them fresh, I dehydrate apples, pears and plums. (I do can a batch or two of apple pie filling just to have it handy.) You can also dehydrate cherries, though I prefer to freeze those after pitting so they are handy for cherry pie. Peppers dehydrate well. Be careful; before you know it, you’ll want to start smoking them and grinding them to make your own smoked paprika. :cool:

All berries freeze very nicely, if you don’t want to make them all into jam.

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I should mention that after using a water bath, the lids will not necessarily be sealed. I always place the jars on a wire rack; as they cool, you can hear the lids pop as the vacuum takes hold. Let the jars sit for 12 hours before moving them to another location.

Also, you can reuse the screw tops, but not the vacuum lids.