Home Food Preservation – Is it safe?
I mentioned that being prepared could be a lot of fun. I get a great deal of personal satisfaction when I home process (can) a batch of [fill in the blank] and see the pretty jars sitting on my pantry shelf. Home canning can be labor intensive if you don’t plan ahead and break it down into manageable steps, but the end product is something you can be proud of.
As of this writing, on the pantry shelves I have these home processed items:
- 7 pints (sixteen-ounce jar) of carrots
- 6 pints of tomato juice
- 11 three-quarter pints (twelve-ounce jar) of salsa
- 6 quarts (thirty-two-ounce jar) of chicken corn soup
- 12 pints of ground beef
- 7 half-pints (eight-ounce jar) of lemon cucumber pickles
- 12 pints of peaches
- 12 quarts of sliced apples
- 9 pints of chicken breast
- 17 half-pints of Cowboy Candy
- 13 pints of Bread & Butter pickles
- 9 pints of blueberry pie filling
- 5 half-pints of peach jelly
- 7 half-pints of apple jelly
- 5 half-pints of grape jelly
- 3 quarter-pints (four-ounce) of caramel apple jam
- 6 half-pints of apple chutney
Those numbers will change rapidly, maybe even by the end of the day I’m writing this. That food is there for us to eat, not admire. (All the jars are colorful and pretty, though!)
Is home food preservation really safe? Yes! There is an organization called the Nation Center for Home Food Preservation (https://nchfp.uga.edu/) that has tested hundreds of home-canned items. They explain the process in easy-to-understand terms. You can access the website or you can purchase a book that has the same information as the website.
Or you can go cheap and download each page as a .pdf and keep it on your computer, which is what I did when I first learned about NCHFP.
If you follow what they tell you, home canning is safe. If you cut corners, maybe not so much, which leads me to something called rebel canning.
Rebel canning is what it sounds like – being a rebel and not following approved and tested methodology. Is rebel canning safe? I don’t do it and I don’t recommend it. You need to make your own choices.
If you follow the approved directions and recipes, when you process the jars in the canner, whether it is pressure or water bath canning, the air is forced out of the jars and the contents heated to kill bacteria. When you remove the jars from the canner, the special metal lids seal, keeping the air out and creating the environment for the food to stay safe. As long as the seal is intact, the food should be safe.
IF AT ANY TIME YOU THINK A SEAL HAS BEEN COMPROMISED, DISCARD THE CONTENTS OF THAT JAR. Yes, the jar can be washed and used again, but never reuse the metal lids for canning. Don’t take a chance with a bad seal. The food could contain botulism and that is nothing to mess with. Botulism can be deadly.
And on the matter of lids, never reuse metal lids when canning. The seal on a metal lid is manufactured for one-time use only.
Don’t throw the lids away, though. They can be washed and used on jars you store dehydrated goods in, or to store something in a jar in the fridge for a few days. Just DO NOT CAN with them again – with one caveat.
Having a few jars of canned, sterilized water on the shelf for first aid isn’t a bad idea. I have a 23-quart Presto canner which can process seven quarts or up to eighteen pints at a time. If I don’t have seven quarts to fill the canner, I’ll add a jar of water and I will use a used lid for that. The jar of water usually seals, so that’s good, and since it’s water, if the seal doesn’t hold, the water is not going to go bad. And if I need a jar, I can always take a jar of water and use it to water a plant so I can utilize a jar and a NEW lid. Be prepared. Having water handy is always a good thing.
There is another option apart from the metal one-time-use lids.
There are two brands of reusable lids that I know of - Tattler and Harvest Guard. These are two-piece lids having a separate O-ring seal with a plastic lid. I’ve used the Tattler brand and have had success equal to that of the standard metal lids. There’s an extra step to using them, but it’s not anything difficult. You just have to remember to do it. I recommend getting some and canning a few jars of water so you can learn the process.
With the shortage of mainstream metal canning lids, I’ve used the Tattler lids on every batch of jelly and jam I’ve made since I got that type of lid and they are maintaining their seal just fine. My plan is to begin using the Tattlers on things like soup which won’t be on a pantry shelf for more than a year and is not a high-dollar item to lose if a seal fails.
Canning is very satisfying work.
Next up: More about jars and lids. (This is not clickbait. This blog is not monetized.)
The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)
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