I brought out my canner for the first time this year last night. I spent a lovely evening putting up a beautiful strawberry-rhubarb compote. My new stainless steel canner was a pleasure to use. Waking up to the row of rosy red jars lined up on the counter put a smile on my face in spite of the nip in the air that I know is cooling off my tomatoes’ feet and slowing their growth as I write this.
For all of you just starting to preserve food, I have a word of warning. I bought a new food preservation book this week. It arrived in the mail and I couldn’t wait to try some of the recipes but I have to say, I’m concerned. This is a relatively new book but some of the information is dead wrong. The time given for boiling beets is a ridiculous two hours and the author is still recommending oven canning, something the USDA frowns upon. If you are learning to use a canner, please start with one of the standard books like the Ball Blue Book or Keeping The Harvest. If you can find an experienced mentor to work with the first few times you should do that but be sure that this person is following the newest guidelines. Preserving food is not difficult but it is a science and not something you can afford to be cavalier about. Use the best equipment, the best ingredients and the best instructions.
After three years of talking about Peak Oil to everybody who will listen, It was amazing to hear the President give a speech on it last night. I am watching the early morning news shows and that’s all the heads are talking about. I don’t know if it will change anything or not but one can only hope that it will get people thinking about a future where we see energy shocks and shortages. The cost of food (and everything else) will be drain on family economies. One of the best ways to address the problem is produce as much food as you can locally. If you can’t grow it in your yard, then talk to your local government about public spaces being used for garden spaces. Churches and schools and parks can be landscaped with perennial food plants. If you buy in bulk from local sources then preserve the harvest for your daily use. You will save money, eat better, support your local economy, enhance your community and mitigate the effect of the coming energy crisis.
June 16, 2010 at 8:24 am
Hi Kathy, I highly recommend the book Putting Food By (author Janet Greene)- it is comprehensive and detailed and widely recognized as the “bible” of home canning.
June 16, 2010 at 8:27 am
I agree!
June 16, 2010 at 8:29 am
Another note on canning cookbooks…it is best to double check the recipe with another one.
I also applaud the suggestion on the Ball Blue Book. Your county Extension Agency can also provide you with the instructions and I have found that the maker of your canner will have instructions on the reccommended times and instructions for canning.
I am canning meat today. I did some the other day and will continue to can up what I have stored in the freezer.
Those full jars give you a deep down, practical satisfaction that nothing else can give!
June 16, 2010 at 9:31 am
Great post Kathy – I’ve been canning all of my life and totally understand the smile on your face at the sight of your compote the next morning. My dream is a back lit storage cabinet for my jars of produce.
I too would recommend Putting Food By and your mentor idea is spot on. Nothing beats actually seeing this done – especially the first time you use a pressure canner. I remember how nervous I was with all of those knobs and gauges. Works like a dream though.
The garden is in and growing – I also feel people need to plant open pollinated seeds and learn to collect them – you just never know. And put that root cellar in!
Whew –
Thanks.
June 16, 2010 at 9:36 am
Hi Kathy, speaking of growing our own, I wanted to ask you about grapes. I seem to recall you saying you canned the juice of concord grapes. We have some grapes that are producing for the first time this year. They are all wine varieties, but we don’t expect to have enough to make wine this year. Also, there are probably just too many other things on my husband’s plate this year, and he’s the vintner.
So, would you consider doing a post on canning grape juice or anything else you do with your grapes? If our grapes are good for eating straight out of hand, that might take care of the issue for us. But I’d like to have a sense of how else to store them if we don’t like them as fresh fruit. Raisins, perhaps? And do you do anything with the grape leaves either fresh or preserved? I’d appreciate hearing about whatever has worked well for you.
June 16, 2010 at 2:11 pm
I love canned meat! It is the handiest stuff to have on hand. We grow grapes but the vines are new and not producing yet. The jusice I canned was from the wild (fox) grapes that are rampant around here. I put the grapes in a big pot with some water and let the mess simmer for a bit. Then I strain it out an can it according to the juice directions in the Ball Blue Book. I have also juiced the berries in a steam juicer.
June 16, 2010 at 6:54 pm
Interesting article regarding the disaster and future oil supply…
http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/09/news/companies/simmons_gulf_oil_spill.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2010060913
June 16, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Kathy, I admire your optimism. I just listened to Obama’s speech after reading your blog, but felt that there was little to be optimistic about. Yes he talks about peak oil — without mentioning the term of course! — but at the same time says that deep sea oil drilling will continue provided it is “safe” (whatever that means, and by whoever’s standards), he talks about ‘clean’ energy, but I didn’t hear him say that we can’t go on living the way we are. Of all people I think he would be the only one who could get away with telling people that everybody has to tighten their belts and we all have to do with less and live simpler lives, but he doesn’t (although I’ll admit that he probably can’t).
June 16, 2010 at 7:17 pm
My only optimism came from the fact that it will get some people talking and that has to be a good thing, I was dreadfully disappointed that he did not mention belt tightening and conservation and sacrifice. I am hopeful that he plans to do that as time goes on but I am not counting on it. That kind of talk is up to all of us who see the folly of unbridled consumption and unlimited growth on a finite planet.
June 16, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Please tell us in a post what the book is so we all can avoid it!
June 16, 2010 at 9:42 pm
Now I’m in a pickle. I hate to trash somebody else’s work but as I opened my big mouth (keystroke?) I guess I have to tell. It’s How To Store Your Garden Produce by Piers Warren. There is some good stuff in it but not the best for sure.
June 17, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Piers Warren is a UK author and so it shouldn’t be surprizing that some of his recipes/instructions do not coincide with “accepted” USDA practices.
Kathy, I know that you want to encourage your readers to can safely and the USDA has done a lot to study improved canning methods. And I know that most your readership is from the US so it is natural for you to encourage them to use American books.
However there are those of us from other countries who have been canning for just as many years as anyone here in the US. I have canning books from trusted Canadian publishers that I’ve used for years. Not all of the recipes follow USDA recommended procedures but they are time-tested tried and true recipes.
June 17, 2010 at 1:09 pm
That’s a very good point. Do you can in an oven? I am really interested in learning about this as I am unfamiliar with the prectice. I undedrstood that there was a problem with getting the interior of the food hot enough. I do still see steam canners on the market and I know those are not recommended either.
June 17, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Thanks for the info, I would rather be safe than sorry, still pretty new to the food preservation deal, I know what my grandmother did in the past is a no go now days so I am relearning lots of things
June 17, 2010 at 9:10 pm
I’m from Engalnd, now living in Canada for five years. I’ve never come across hot water bath canning in England. All canning – ie jams, chutneys etc – is done by putting boiling hot product into very hot jars (thoroughly washed in hot water, rinsed out with boiling hot water adn then put in the oven to keep very hot), capping and letting them cool. I’ve made jams and chutneys this way for several years but after reading all the Canadian / US books, can’t see how I’ve managed to avoid the dreaded Botulism. In fact, cookbooks in England never mention Botulism! We just open the jar, if it’s mouldy then you scrape off the mould and dig in! I find the difference very interesting.
Having said that, I’ve also not come across canning meat, vegetables etc in the UK, I guess that’s because you can pretty well grow produce all year round with the mild climate so don’t need to put up veg.
I enjoyed your book and your website. Thank you for helping us with our preps.
June 18, 2010 at 10:22 am
I have the same book, and pretty much just ignored the canning section. There’s plenty of other useful information in that title.
I’m of mixed thoughts about USDA canning regulations. On the one hand, I take food sanitation seriously, having been trained as a chef. And I recognize that putting food into a sealed anaerobic container is an invitation to nasty organisms if one is not careful. On the other hand, I think the USDA not only puts an irrational fear into many people over food storage (eggs *must* be refrigerated – really?), but they also issue guidelines that are designed to be failsafe for idiots. My feeling is that they build in a huge margin of error for everything that could possibly go wrong – a range of acidity in a given food, a faulty gauge on a pressure canner, lack of adjustment for elevation, people with minimal reading comprehension and measurement skills, and those who are lackadaisical about sanitation to the point of stupidity. After all, this is the government trying to issue guidelines for safely doing something to the general populace. Assuming that most people are smart enough to do every little thing correctly is a recipe for disaster. And we are an incredibly litigious society.
While I don’t think “my grandmother always did it this way” proves that anything is safe, people obviously canned for decades before the latest recommendations were in place, and mass food poisoning failed to ensue. I do follow the guidelines pretty carefully myself – because I want to be on the safe side. And I’d never encourage anyone to play fast and loose with the official guidelines. I don’t want to be liable either. But still, I feel that we’re a bit white-knuckled here in the US about food safety.
June 18, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Hi Kathy,
No, I’ve never oven canned. However, I do some open kettle canning of relishes and pickles which the USDA also frowns upon.
I believe that open kettle canning is frowned upon for the same reason you mentioned that oven canning is frowned upon.
But this is my thinking on it… with open kettle canning whatever you are canning has been brought to a boil and is then kept at a low boil for the time it takes that particular recipe to cook. Then it is quickly spooned into hot, sterilized jars and lids added. The contents are boiling hot going into the jars and I can’t see how the contents are going to get any hotter by then processing in a water bath canner for 10 or 15 minutes.
Now that’s not to say that I do all my canning by open kettle. Fruits/tomatoes are water bath canned. Veggies, stock and meat, as well as meals get pressure canned.
August 1, 2010 at 2:32 pm
And yet that is one of my absolute favourite books on preserving the harvest! I am both a long time canner and a librarian, I reccomend that book all the time.
I do use the Bernardin canning book though for processing methods and times. I wouldn’t use the advice of ANY single author for those.
The book is prime though!