Canning and Preserving Food

by Susan Lott

Once you get the hang of it, home canning and preserving is easy and a lot of fun! It prevents waste, saves money, tastes better and is often more nutritious than store-bought alternatives. Most importantly, you have complete control over how much sugar, salt, or other preservatives go into your food. Home canned items make up a good portion of my food storage.

National Center for Home Food Preservation has recipes and instructions for just about every type of food you want to preserve. An excellent resource!

The Ball/Kerr website has some good information as well, but they're very focused on selling you their products (most of which you don't need), rather than helping you learn the techniques. Their tutorials are helpful for beginners, if you disregard all the sales pitches along the way. For example, you don't need a magnetic lid lifter, just fish your lids out of the water with tongs or whatever.

Tips for Beginners

If you're just starting, here are the basic supplies that I use every year:

Canning Pot – The cheapest I've found is $25 at amazon.com:
Granite Ware 21-1/2-Quart Covered Preserving Canner with Rack

Jars – If you don't already have these, they're roughly $10 a dozen, slightly less for pint or half-pint jars, slightly more for quart size. Wide mouth jars are easier to fill, but standard jars are fine too. I get these at the grocery store from mid-summer through late fall.

Caps – These are available at the grocery store too during the harvest season. New jars come with caps, but for every subsequent use of the jars you'll have to buy new caps. It's smart to keep some extra caps on hand – my mom remembers the nightmare year that all the caps were defective and nobody's jars sealed unless they had backup caps – but don't let them get too old before use.

Rings – Again, new jars come with these, with the option to buy caps with rings if you need more.

Other supplies include tongs, a jar lifter if desired, thick hot pads, paring knives, and a thick board of some kind to put hot jars on to cool.

Once you have all your supplies in place and your produce ready to can, follow established recipes for best results. Here are some of mine:

Detailed instrucions for canning tomatoes

Plum Jam

Peaches (reduced sugar, no-syrup method)

Salsa Rojo

Salsa Verde

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