The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

Nonnadiluca

Really useful information, thanks, much appreciated.

maryb

looks good Si.  Do you water bath them or pressure can?  It looks like you reuse lids.  Do you find they work ok?  I mostly pressure can and it’s for things like chicken stock and chilli con carne where I don’t feel comfortable reusing lids.  But I might try it for bottling rhubarb or plums

Si_Clist

maryb said:

Do you water bath them or pressure can?  It looks like you reuse lids.  Do you find they work ok?

Water bath for fruit, pressure canner for veg here.  We keep on reusing Kilner jar lids until either we dink the edge of one when opening a jar or it shows other signs of damage, and we have done for years.  If we're in any doubt at all about a lid, though, it gets reserved for fruit  That's the original Kilner lids or the Leifheit ones, by the way - not the modern "Kilner" lids made in China. 

We keep them ready in some water simmering in a pan (to soften the seal) until they go on to the jar, and although most years we do 300+ Kilner jars, it's very rare indeed we get a failure.  When we do, it's invariably a lid defect that we really should have spotted but didn't.

Incidentally, we bought some cheapo ripoff 500ml (current type) Kilner jars off Ebay last year at £14 a dozen delivered and although some are a bit wonky, they're fine for fruit.  Also on Ebay there's still a Chinese listing for unbranded 68mm diameter stainless steel lids for the current 500ml jars.  Price was good when we bought some and the quality's superb - streets ahead of the rather limp things that come with the current jars.

Finally whilst rambling on about reusing stuff for bottling, all our jam (around 100 jars most years) goes into wombled glass jars and yes, we keep reusing the quarter-turn metal lids of those too without any problems whatsoever.  And (shock! horror!) we even use bigger wombled jars and lids for bottling fruit when we run out of Kilners ...

srn

Si_Clist said:
Water bath for fruit, pressure canner for veg here.  We keep on reusing Kilner jar lids until either we dink the edge of one when opening a jar or it shows other signs of damage, and we have done for years.  If we're in any doubt at all about a lid, though, it gets reserved for fruit  That's the original Kilner lids or the Leifheit ones, by the way - not the modern "Kilner" lids made in China.  

We keep them ready in some water simmering in a pan (to soften the seal) until they go on to the jar, and although most years we do 300+ Kilner jars, it's very rare indeed we get a failure.  When we do, it's invariably a lid defect that we really should have spotted but didn't.

Incidentally, we bought some cheapo ripoff 500ml (current type) Kilner jars off Ebay last year at £14 a dozen delivered and although some are a bit wonky, they're fine for fruit.  Also on Ebay there's still a Chinese listing for unbranded 68mm diameter stainless steel lids for the current 500ml jars.  Price was good when we bought some and the quality's superb - streets ahead of the rather limp things that come with the current jars.

Finally whilst rambling on about reusing stuff for bottling, all our jam (around 100 jars most years) goes into wombled glass jars and yes, we keep reusing the quarter-turn metal lids of those too without any problems whatsoever.  And (shock! horror!) we even use bigger wombled jars and lids for bottling fruit when we run out of Kilners ...

I am in awe of the amount of food you bottle and the amount of jam you make but how do you eat it all in a year before you start adding to it from the next year's produce?  I make jam but we struggle to eat more than about 10 jars a year at the most and end up giving the rest away.  Do you produce for friends and family or do you have a small business selling home produced specialist food?  This is no criticism just curious and I am wondering wether to try water bathing and canning but don't want to end up doing all the hard work and then giving it away!  Thanks for the info regarding the preserving book, going to try to get it.

euronorris

We aren't big jam eaters here either, and are only just getting through the stash I made in 2018 of blackberry jam. I didn't make any last year, as we had no need, but will do this year. I have been saving all of our jars so far this year.

I, too, am in awe of all the canning! I'm not sure I have the space, and definitely not the equipment to do all of that, but I wish I did. I watched a youtube video the other day of a couple in alaska who grow, and can, as much food as they possibly can and store in an underground storage cupboard thing (basically, they dug a big hole in the ground and surrounded it with earth bags, and covered up). Being outside, it's nice and cold (hovering on freezing) and really quite humid. They obviously aim to store enough to keep them fed for the entire winter, as they are pretty much cut off for most of that time. They stored a LOT. And still ran out of some things. They kept carrots and beetroot, and onions I think, in wood shavings, in plastic buckets, and although they lost a few that way, the majority were just fine and meant they still had some crunchy veg in the depths of winter. Not sure I could replicate that kind of storage here.

They were looking at other ways of storing things long term (like dehydration), as they needed propane to heat the water to can the food, and the price of that was really stacking up for them. It was really interesting, and I am in awe of the country where it was warm enough for them to grow a significant crop of food in the summer, and yet regulary sustains temperatures of -20 - -30 in the depth of winter.

maryb

Si,
Is it this one?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10Pc-Stainless-Steel-Detachable-Lid-Sealing-Leak-Proof-Cap-for-Mason-Jar-Canning/303517539784?var=602728025724&hash=item46ab0e1dc8:g:hgIAAOSwtC5csCn-

The silver ones are out of stock.  Lakeland do 12 Ball brand lids for £3.99 (Presumably not stainless steel) but currently showing as unavailable

Si_Clist

maryb said:

Si,
Is it this one?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10Pc-Stainless-Steel-Detachable-Lid-Sealing-Leak-Proof-Cap-for-Mason-Jar-Canning/303517539784?var=602728025724&hash=item46ab0e1dc8:g:hgIAAOSwtC5csCn-

Yep, that's it.  Heading clearly states stainless steel, so I assume the gold ones are stainless too.  If we needed some more (which we don't 'cos we got 40), I'd order the gold ones and if they turned out to be the usual relatively thin ordinary steel ones, I'd simply rely on Ebay to sort it out

For us, the whole point of getting them was if they're stainless, odds on they'd be better than the current 68mm "Kilner" ones, which we reckon to be a very poor thing.  And IMO they are better.

Don't forget how slow the boat from China is at the moment ...

DigForVictory

Just leapt & only gold left. <shrug> as you say, if not stainless, ebay ho...
Wares of knutsford do new quarter turn lids in various widths & colours if you or your lucky recipients are picky. A scout mum trades 10 empty jars for one full one & felt she had to explain vintage Kilner jars are a bit more expensive to one Scout - "That's OK" came the reply, "Granny likes your strawberry jam better than mum's." (!)

Si_Clist

srn said:

I am in awe of the amount of food you bottle and the amount of jam you make but how do you eat it all in a year before you start adding to it from the next year's produce?

Hmmm ... it does seem a bit OTT to us sometimes   Actually last year's tally was 312 proper Kilner jars (mainly 2lb but perhaps 40 or so 1lb), 24 modern 500ml ones, and 22 large wombled jars (as used for Lidl pickled gherkins and suchlike), this latter being mainly apple slices and and small whole apples.  Right now we have just 7 jars of last year's fruit left.  The rest of the 2019 fruit went into pies, crumbles, various other puds - and straight into our tummies.  The last of the 2019 bottled veg was the runner beans, which we ate just before Easter. 

OK it's a lot of work between now and when it tails off with the apples in October, but we absolutely rely on it to give us a stash of good quality fruit and veg when there's not much to be had off the back garden and the allotment.  We don't buy any fresh fruit or veg at all, and the only home-grown that relies on the freezer is the broad beans and half the strawberries (they're for flans - the rest is bottled for scoffing).  Yes, storage is a bit of a problem, and rotating the jars as we empty them can be a PITA at times, but we like doing it, it saves us money, and at times like this it's a nice feeling having the stash.

Nearly forgot about the jam.  We do indeed get through a lot of it ourselves (e.g. I have a weakness for bramble jam with my breakfast porridge).  Any surplus left by this time of year is carried forward against a poor crop.  As an example of that, last year I picked 63lb of brambles and 50-odd pound of raspberries, but this year both brambles and rasps (which we usually make a lot of) look anything but promising

Oooops.  Sorry for waffling on so much about the bottling

euronorris

Funny how these things vary. Blackberries round here are looking like they will produce bumper crops (haven't been hacked back by the council due to Covid-19). My raspberries though....I won't even get one punnet. It is only the second year. Last year I got one! haha So it is definitely an improvement on last year, and there is a new cane that should hopefully signify a better bounty next year, but I had been hoping for more this year. Oh well.