Calling All Canners!

Fruball

Hi

I did a search but couldn't find any threads specifically dedicated to canning.

If you're unsure what canning is, it is a type of food preservation that uses hot water bath or a pressure cooker/canner to preserve foods so they are shelf stable in jars, avoiding the use of freezers that may fail in a power failure, but also to provide lovely home made foods, stocked in your pantry/larder/cupboard to save you time and effort for food prep.

Canning can be done with just a large stock pot and jars you have at home.  No specialist equipment is necessary, although I am having fun shopping for extras!  

I have made a few jams/jellies in the past but have turned my hand this Autumn to canning.  I have basic equipment and have practised water bathing chutneys and jams (although they don't need to be actually processed in a WB or PC)  

I know canning is huge in the USA and many other countries but why not here? 

I have watched so many videos and read so much and am now confident to start canning soups and stews etc.

So, I cannot be the only one here who cans food for the pantry.  

Where are you all and please tell me all about your canning adventures! 

flaneurs_lobster

I'm a bit confused by your conflating of two techniques:

Canning - heating a sealed container of food to temperatures sufficient to kill any organisms that would cause the food to spoil (or become dangerous). 

Water Bathing - heating food in eg sealed bags or containers at temperatures below boiling to cook them.

I know that the term "canning" in this context does not explicitly refer to preserving food in metal containers but it does differ from the more common (in the UK at least) "bottling", typically used for high sugar/high acid foods like jams or pickles, where the foodstuff is heated (usually, but sometimes not) and placed in sterilised jars and sealed.

Maybe I just need to read up more on the subject although personally I find that freezing takes care of most of my food preserving needs (plus a bit of jam making).

PipneyJane

I do some pressure canning, but not a huge amount.  The hardest part about pressure canning in the UK is getting a large enough pressure cooker!  Mine is a 10L, which holds 3 large Kilner jars, but it was almost impossible to find anything that large when I purchased it 22 years ago.  The best I’ve seen were in L!dl earlier this year, and they were 7L.

The other important point to note is the PSI. Most American pressure canning instructions tell you that, if you are using a pressure cooker, you need to process your jars for an additional 20 minutes, because their pressure cookers are usually 5lb PSI, whereas a pressure canner reaches 15lb PSI.  This shouldn’t be a problem here because ours usually reach 15lb PSI, but it is worth checking.  (Mine reaches 13lb PSI - I checked with the manufacturer - so I add 5 minutes to my pressure time.)

HTH

- Pip

gwynlas

Many people make jams, chutneys or pickles from home grown or foraged ingredients using sterilised jars.
I believe that canning is far less popular possibly due to the fact that few preople grow sufficient surplus produce to make it worthwhile.
Many american bloggers talk about canning green beans, tomatoes and made up sauces sometimes buying in produce whereas here we are far more likely to freeze surplus vegetables from  our gardens or allottments.
The usual exception to this is purchasing shallots or red cabbage to pickle for Christmas.
Older readers might remember beans being salted for preservation but I have never seen these.

PipneyJane

gwynlas said:

Many people make jams, chutneys or pickles from home grown or foraged ingredients using sterilised jars.
I believe that canning is far less popular possibly due to the fact that few preople grow sufficient surplus produce to make it worthwhile.
Many american bloggers talk about canning green beans, tomatoes and made up sauces sometimes buying in produce whereas here we are far more likely to freeze surplus vegetables from  our gardens or allottments.
The usual exception to this is purchasing shallots or red cabbage to pickle for Christmas.
Older readers might remember beans being salted for preservation but I have never seen these.

So true, @gwynlas.  Beyond jams and chutneys - cooked and placed in sterilised jars - I usually only can things when I don’t have enough freezer space, the one exception being apples, which I stew when presented with a surplus.  (IIRC, I pressure cooked those for 20 minutes.)

My best British resource for canning information is the  Farmhouse Kitchen Cookbook from the 1982 Yorkshire Television series.  I never saw the series but my mum had a copy of the book, which I remember reading as a teenager.

- Pip

Fruball

flaneurs_lobster said:

I'm a bit confused by your conflating of two techniques:

Canning - heating a sealed container of food to temperatures sufficient to kill any organisms that would cause the food to spoil (or become dangerous). 

Water Bathing - heating food in eg sealed bags or containers at temperatures below boiling to cook them.

I know that the term "canning" in this context does not explicitly refer to preserving food in metal containers but it does differ from the more common (in the UK at least) "bottling", typically used for high sugar/high acid foods like jams or pickles, where the foodstuff is heated (usually, but sometimes not) and placed in sterilised jars and sealed.

Maybe I just need to read up more on the subject although personally I find that freezing takes care of most of my food preserving needs (plus a bit of jam making).

Hi

There is Pressure Canning (PC), with the use of a pressure canner but also Water Bath Canning, (WBC) using a large pot with a lid and keeping at a rolling boil.  Water Bath canning takes longer than pressure canning.  Both techniques use glass jars.  

Open Kettle canning is where hot food is placed in hot sterilised jars and then sealed, no further heat treating.  This is less reliable as there is more risk of bacteria being in the jar before sealing and is commonly used for high acid foods like fruit and tomatoes, never low acid foods.  I don't think I would take the risk of open kettling tbh except for jam or chutney. 

HTH

maryb

I splurged on a big All American pressure canner way back when the exchange rate was a lot more favourable and I have used it quite a lot over the years.  But these days with it being just the two of us I often use my old Prestige Hi Dome bought secondhand on ebay.  I wanted an old one from the days when they were made in the UK to a high standard.  It works for canning because you have to vent the canner for 10 minutes before you put the weight on.  Some European pressure cookers automatically start coming to pressure as soon as you close the lid, which you don't want in this case.  Also the weight comes in three parts - 5 lb, 10lb and 15lb.  10lb is enough for canning unless you live halfway up a mountain, because that raises the temperature high enough to destroy botulism spores in low acid foods.  As Pip says, a pressure cooker that reaches 13lb is good enough provided you can vent it first

Most of the available information online comes from US sources because official UK advice didn't recommend canning/bottling other than for fruits.  I think this may have been a policy decision in the 1940s because not many people had pressure cookers and there was a shortage of production and the Ministry of Food was concerned that people would try to bottle low acid vegetables using waterbath canning methods.  So to avoid confusion they simply did not recommend bottling vegetables.  Interestingly, my old Hi Dome came with the original instruction booklet which did give instructions for bottling meat and vegetables.  Later versions of the instruction booklet left these out

Europeans often preserve vegetables using waterbath canning.  If you look on the Le Parfait website there are lots of recipes available in English though the translation is sometimes - imaginative!!.  Americans have conniptions at the very thought!!  However botulism is a lot more prevalent in US soils and their advice has to cater for people living on remote homesteads etc. 

I have read that it is not the botulism spores themselves that kill you, unless you are particularly frail or vulnerable but rather the toxins they produce.  Although you have to heat food to a higher temperature than boiling to destroy the spores, the toxins can be denatured by ordinary boiling for 10 minutes so people who do this always say to reheat food to boiling point for at least 10 minutes after opening the jar.  I prefer not to risk it especially as pressure canning is quicker, uses less fuel and doesn't steam up the kitchen

Fruball

maryb said:

I splurged on a big All American pressure canner way back when the exchange rate was a lot more favourable and I have used it quite a lot over the years.  But these days with it being just the two of us I often use my old Prestige Hi Dome bought secondhand on ebay.  I wanted an old one from the days when they were made in the UK to a high standard.  It works for canning because you have to vent the canner for 10 minutes before you put the weight on.  Some European pressure cookers automatically start coming to pressure as soon as you close the lid, which you don't want in this case.  Also the weight comes in three parts - 5 lb, 10lb and 15lb.  10lb is enough for canning unless you live halfway up a mountain, because that raises the temperature high enough to destroy botulism spores in low acid foods.  As Pip says, a pressure cooker that reaches 13lb is good enough provided you can vent it first

Most of the available information online comes from US sources because official UK advice didn't recommend canning/bottling other than for fruits.  I think this may have been a policy decision in the 1940s because not many people had pressure cookers and there was a shortage of production and the Ministry of Food was concerned that people would try to bottle low acid vegetables using waterbath canning methods.  So to avoid confusion they simply did not recommend bottling vegetables.  Interestingly, my old Hi Dome came with the original instruction booklet which did give instructions for bottling meat and vegetables.  Later versions of the instruction booklet left these out

Europeans often preserve vegetables using waterbath canning.  If you look on the Le Parfait website there are lots of recipes available in English though the translation is sometimes - imaginative!!.  Americans have conniptions at the very thought!!  However botulism is a lot more prevalent in US soils and their advice has to cater for people living on remote homesteads etc. 

I have read that it is not the botulism spores themselves that kill you, unless you are particularly frail or vulnerable but rather the toxins they produce.  Although you have to heat food to a higher temperature than boiling to destroy the spores, the toxins can be denatured by ordinary boiling for 10 minutes so people who do this always say to reheat food to boiling point for at least 10 minutes after opening the jar.  I prefer not to risk it especially as pressure canning is quicker, uses less fuel and doesn't steam up the kitchen

Agree with all of that!  The Le Parfait times are a lot less than USA timings and Le Parfait check regularly and update when new information becomes available through testing. 
I would love an electric pressure canner but they are nigh on impossible to source in the UK, but so easy in the USA!