Canning 101
I can officially say that I have canned food! I learned so much on my maiden voyage and I am going to share it all with you! All of this is for high acidic foods that require hot packing with a water bath or steam bath.
High acidic foods that will work with this method of canning are:
First, DON'T PANIC! I was pretty nervous to embark on this little journey. It was intimidating. Do I have the right jars? Will the food burn when its processing? What does it even mean to process the food in the jars? Why do the jars and lids need to be hot? How do I know if its sealed? Does everything need pectin? How much is this going to cost? What foods can be canned? Do I boil the jars? Do I microwave the jars? What if I don't leave enough room at the top of the jars? why do I have to leave space at the top of the jars? Where do I store them when I'm done. How long will the food last in the jars? What supplies do I need?
As for supplies. Here is a list of what you need to get started:
- Enamelware Set
- Pot and Rack
- Canning Tongs
- Canning Tongs and racks
- Jars- these come in so many sizes and brands. As long as they are made for canning, they will work just fine!
- Lids- if you have wide mouth jars, make sure to get wide mouth lids
- Rack
- Bubbling tool and lid magnet
Canning does require an investment, but from what I have mapped out math wise, for me personally, it paid for itself after 2 rounds of canning! Now all future canning is just the cost of lids and fruit! Below are links to different kits, and individual items. Just make sure you have what is listed above.
All that was a tornado of thoughts in my mind while I was summoning the courage to tackle this project. Finally I just said "That's it! I'm just gonna to do it!" and I put the pedal to the metal and it all worked out much easier than I thought!
The first thing I learned is that MANY people have MANY different opinions. But they are just that, opinions. I dug into the internet for the facts because I wanted this to work the first time. I didn't want to waste any food or time. I was losing my mind seeing different processing times for the same elevation from sea level, seeing different positions the peaches need to be placed in the jars, how tightly to put on the lid ring, how long to heat the jars, etc. So here are the facts from what was many, many hours of research.
- Steam bath and water baths do the same EXACT job and the steam bath uses MUCH less water and is so much easier and less intimidating.
- The easiest way to get your jars and lids sterilized is to run them through a pots and pans cycle in your dishwasher. They get washed, rinsed well and come out PIPING HOT. A hot jar gives helps the jar to seal properly. When I run them, I only put the jars and lids in the dishwasher. I don't put in any dirty dishes with them but I assume the outcome would be the same.
- Jars are reusable, the lids are not. Some people say they can sometimes get two seals from a lid, but 95% of the research said to get new lids. The rings are reusable as well.
- If the jars aren't sealed after close to 24 hours, you can re-process them with a new lid. Always make sure to clean the rims of the jars really well and you should be able to avoid sealing issues.
- Processing times for most fruit are 20-30 minutes in a water or steam bath. I found a great website with tables breaking it all down in an easy to understand way. It has all the info I gathered from 22 different sources in one place. CLICK HERE to see the cooking times.
- Your exact location above sea level matters for processing about as much as eating a cupcake matters for gassing up your Flintsone car (in this scenario with high acidic foods). DON'T STRESS ABOUT IT. It matters when you are working with more delicate less acidic foods (which we aren't even talking about, so we are letting it go 😂).
- Never use commercial jars. This means not to reuse your orange marmalade jar to can your new plum jam. You NEED jars meant for canning. HERE are some examples of the right kind of jars.
- Keep your food and jars hot while you wait to process it. Don't fill all your jars and let them sit while you process in batches. The best way to do this is to keep jars in the dishwasher on the heated dry setting and the food in the pot until you are ready to process them. Fill what fits in your water/steam bath and process it. Repeat.
- The work and the reward don't match like you would expect. Going from a counter of fresh peaches to 6-8 jars of canned peaches feels kind of weird. Its a lot of work for a smaller result, but you are learning a great skill, that yields delicious results and you saved money in the process.