Home 'canning'

N9eav

This year I canned in jars loads of rhubarb. the jars were all sterilised, jars warmed and the rhubarb hot. They all sealed. When I opened some up last night to make a pie, there was mould growing on top. What did I do wrong?

squeaky

N9eav wrote:

This year I canned in jars loads of rhubarb. the jars were all sterilised, jars warmed and the rhubarb hot. They all sealed. When I opened some up last night to make a pie, there was mould growing on top. What did I do wrong?

Until our resident expert turns up you could try the page in the link below, but you might have to read through quite a lot of stuff before you find what you want.

On line canning course

N9eav

Too much reading for my want to know now attitude...

Ted_Hutchinson

I either use the water bath method or (if I've only got 3 jars to do) the pressure cooker.
With both these methods the lids are put on filled jars but not tightened down, so the fruit, syrup jars and lids are all raised to the sterilising temperature, kept at that temperature and then as soon as the time is up the lids tightened before the contents cool.

I suspect that you didn't get your lids sterilised so that although the fruit/jar were ok the lid wasn't. If you were using recycled pasta sauce jars (or other commercially preserved food glass jar) then there's the chance that the rubber inside the lid has got damaged but I've found my success rate with recycled jars is no different than with Kilner jars and new gaskets. There is bound to be a bit of pot luck if you haven't done it before or if you haven't done it for a long time.
Rhubarb should have been upt to 5lb pressure for 1 minute before slow cooling and lid tightening the instant the pressure cooker has cooled, slowly 10mins, sufficiently to remove the lid safely.
With water bath method raise from warm 100f to simmering 190f over 25/30mins maintain for 2 mins .Remove from bath and Tighten lids.

FairyElephant_2

I find that cutting a circle of greaseproof paper a bit bigger than the lid and then putting this over the jar and screwing the lid over the top seems to prevent the mould growing on homemade jams, pickles etc.

cath-w

Were the jars sealed properly? They only time I have had failures were when I did not seal the jars correctly.

N9eav

This was the odd thing. The jars were sealed and had to be forcibly opened. I can only presume that the lids were not sterile, or the fruit was not at a high enough temp. The lids would therefore seal but the bacteria would remain.. Hey ho, live and learn for next time.:doh:

redfraggle_2

I was wondering if its possible to essentially preserve anything in a jar if you sterilse the jars etc

My nan used to have jars of home-grown skinned tomatoes that were essentially the same as tinned tomatoes

Anyway, I've been thinking as I have a glut of peppers, tomatoes and courgettes and was thinking of whipping up some ratatouille. However, as I'm desperately trying to clear and defrost my freezer I don't want to freeze any of it. Though sooo difficult as I love this thread!

therefore I was wondering if I could jar any of it up and use like a tin in the near future?

What does everyone think?

serena

Canning is very popular in the States, so a google should turn up some good advice.

Meticulous sterilisation, and making sure that the seal is perfect is really important (remember that from my grandma!).

Do not under any circumstances store in oil (eg dried tomatoes) as there is a small but definable risk of botulism. More details on the Foods Standards Agency website.

champys

I have just been doing some 'canning', also because the freezer is full and I usually freeze batches of roast tomatoes to use during the winter. I have bought small-ish preserving jars, of which I can fit 3 at one time in the pressure cooker. They have 'capsules' (flat metal lids) instead of the usual rubber ring plus glass top arrangement. I filled the clean jars with the warm roast tomato mixture to the indicated level, and cooked under pressure for about 10 minutes. The flat metal caps are now tightly sealed by vacuum to the jars. There is a screw-on lid to cover it. I think it is looking good!
If the quality of the end product turns out to be as good as the frozen stuff, or at least usable in soups, sauces etc., I will definitely do more of it next year.

Hawthorn

You can. You can even can meat How you can, depends on the substance to be canned. Some products require pressure canning, others hot water bath canning.

The Ball blue book of canning, is an excellent resource for this. It can be picked up cheaply, from Ebay.com. It tends to be pricey over here.