Home 'canning'

Patchwork_Quilt

Just to add that we opened (after a long struggle) our canned potatoes and beans this week. They'd been in the pantry for a year and seemed fine.

Red_Doe

Sorry if this is a repeat, haven`t got time right now to read right through this excellent thread.
The rhubarb jam going mouldy is the result of putting hot rhubarb into too cool a jar, or cool jam into too hot a jar. Both jam and jars need to be hot and sealed immediately.
Hope this helps. I make my own rhubarb jam too.
Of course, the preservative with jams is the sugar content, which is why we tend to not need a canner or pressure cooker for jams. Either salt or sugar in a recipe is the preservative and so long as the jars are sterilised and properly sealed the food keeps.
With meats and veg though, it`s a different story and a lot more technical. I wish dearly I could get hold of an American canner but they`re like gold dust! The only ones I`ve seen are a bl**dy fortune!! :eek:

Gary.I

Hi, I have a lot of new potatoes from my allotment, I've given quite a few away to family and friends but I'm left with quite a few small ones. I'd like to preserve them in a jar of brine (like the tinned ones you can buy) but I'm unsure of what to do.
Any advice would be welcome.
Thanks.

DawnW

Hi and welcome

I don't think it would be safe to do as you suggest. However, you can freeze new potatoes if you have a freezer. You will need to blanch them first.

If not, they keep for several weeks in the fridge.

zippychick

might this thread help with ideas on using them up? i can't find a specific thread for what you've specifically mentioned

Storing potatoes may also help

Zip

valk_scot

Gary.I wrote: »

Hi, I have a lot of new potatoes from my allotment, I've given quite a few away to family and friends but I'm left with quite a few small ones. I'd like to preserve them in a jar of brine (like the tinned ones you can buy) but I'm unsure of what to do.
Any advice would be welcome.
Thanks.

Proper canning of produce is quite a bit more complicated than simple jam or pickle making because you need to sterilise the contents of the jars once they've been potted up, usually by using a commercial home canning water bath or a pressure cooker for just one or two jars. You'd need Kilner jars as well as a pressure cooker, plus a cooking thermometer and a couple of other small things which I can't remember off the top of my head.

I've had an allotment for many years though and can tell you that potatoes store perfectly well just as they are. Use brown paper bags, thick enough to be lightproof, or thinner ones inside a cardboard box with a few airholes punched through. Keep this storage box somewhere cool, dark and rodent proof, like a garage or unheated utility room and they'll be fine for at least three months without losing that new potato flavour and longer than that as just ordinary potatoes. Unless you have several excess sacks of spuds, it's probably not worth trying to preserve them.

zippychick

we do have a home canning thread?

PipneyJane

What Valk-Scot said.

If you really want to bottle them ("can" as our American cousins call it), look out for Marguerite Patton's Jams, Preserves And Chutneys book, which has a small section on sterilising vegetables in a pressure cooker (as she calls it). It is the only book I've found that covers the topic which was written for the British market.

zippychick

as this thread has dropped way back ive merged it with our canning thread

zip

dandy-candy

When I first started reading American prepping sites, they all talked about "canning" which I though meant they were making up tin cans of food! In fact they were doing what I think of as bottling, but instead of just jams and pickles they are doing stewed meats and bolognese etc. I think this is brilliant and would love to try it too, but they use a sort of pressure cooker that uses really high pressure - more than the cookers i've seen over here for sale in Argos or John Lewis - those seem to be more for cooking dinner and the Xmas pudding!
Do they sell the high pressure cookers for canning/bottling in the UK? Any pointers as to where sells them would be great - esp with Xmas coming, I can put it on my present list!
Also does anyone already do this kind of storage? Please let me know what you have made