Canning Basics

Canning is a wonderful way to preserve foods in a shelf stable manner.  In general, canning isn’t extremely complicated but there are some rules you need to follow to ensure you preserve your food in a safe way.  (For instance you need to know what foods can be canned in a water bath as opposed to a pressure canned.)  Few things would be worse then having to depend on your canned foods only to realize they’ve spoiled.  The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving book is a great resource to have on hand!

Water Bath or Pressure Canning?

  • Water Bath Canning: Highly acid foods like tomatoes, fruits, jellies and jams, pickles, salsas, vinegars, condiments, pie fillings, tomato sauces, 
  • Pressure Canning: Low acid foods like meats, seafood, vegetables, meat sauces, stocks and soups, chili, 

Supplies Needed:

  • Canner:  You’re going to need a water bath canner or a pressure canner depending on what you want to can.  If you’re just starting out and want to give it a try, I’d start with a cheaper water bath canner like the one I have linked ($37) or better yet- if you frequent your local thrift store, these show up frequently!  Although you can sometimes find pressure canners at thrift stores, it’s less likely.  This is an affordable pressure canner on Amazon ($130) and they go way up in price from there.  
  • Tools: You’ll need a jar grabber and funnel… I like this Ball Utensil set because you’ll get those plus a headspace tool and it’s only $11.50!  
  • Jars: Of course you’re going to need jars!  What size you’ll need depends on what you’re going to put in them.  (And there’s also wide mouth jars and regular… decisions decisions!)  If you’re going to do jellies and jams, you’ll probably want smaller jars like 8 oz or maybe 12 oz. If you’re doing sauces you might want to put them in 16 oz jars.  For most other things I use the quart size.  (They also have half gallon jars, which I LOVE to use for dry things like sugar and flour and we also used to store our goat’s milk in this size.)  The prices of jars online is sometimes a good deal and sometimes not at all!  Besides on Amazon, you can find jars at Wal Mart, Target, some outdoor stores and even thrift stores.  (This brings me to another rule, you can reuse jars and rings from the thrift store but you never want to reuse lids!  Always buy new lids or you can end up with bad seals and spoiled food!)  Lids seem to be harder to find so I try to buy them anytime I see them in the store.  
  • Food: Whatever food you’re going to can and sometimes a preservative like salt.

The Basics (this is just a very quick overview to hopefully show you that canning isn’t as intimidating as it sounds):  

I cannot recommend the Ball canning book enough because everything you can is going to be slightly different!  The general jist of canning is you’ll want to first make sure your hands, jars, lids, rings are very clean.  You’ll need to cook/prepare whatever food you’re going to be canning according to the directions you’ve found either in the canning book or online.  

If you’re water bath canning, you’ll put your prepared jars in the canner and make sure that there’s enough water in the canner to completely cover your jars.  Once your water begins boiling you start your timer for the amount of time your specific recipe takes.  

If you’re pressure canning you will definitely want to make sure you follow the directions for your specific canner… in general though you’ll put your prepared jars in the canner with water (amount will be specified in your canning manual), put the lid on and start building up the pressure in your canner (using the stove heat) until it reaches the correct amount per your recipe, maintain that amount of pressure and start your timer.  When your time is up, you need to turn off your stove but DO NOT OPEN THE CANNER until the pressure has completely dropped.  (Another important rule to canning!)  Pressure Canners have a bad reputation at times but if you follow the directions, they can be very safely used… you just never ever ever want to open a pressure canner while there’s pressure still build up or it can explode.  

With either method, once you take your jars out of the water, you’ll want to set them on the counter to cool down and you’ll notice the center of the lids will begin to pop down.  (You’ll be able to hear the pop… it’s a magical sound!)  Let the jars cool for 24 hours on your counter.  Before storing them make sure you remove the rings and feel each lid to make sure it’s popped down; sign of a good seal.  Why remove the rings?  Sometimes lids malfunction and the seal breaks… without a ring you’ll be able to see that it unsealed and you’ll know it’s no good.  If you leave your rings on the lid could actually reseal and you wouldn’t know that the jar is no longer good.  

Enjoy!!!