leek wrote:
Today we stemmed and washed them, separated the skins from the pulp and pureed them with some sugar, cooked, used a food mill to remove the seeds, cooked more (with sugar and lemon juice), water bath canned them, and 4.5 hours from start to finish I have 7 one-cup jars of jam! I have heard 5 pops so far... (not sure how to embed from Instagram) http://instagram.com/p/dxhcpwDlzw/

Where did you get your cute jars?

pairs4life wrote:

leek wrote: http://instagram.com/p/dxhcpwDlzw/

Where did you get your cute jars?

I hate to say I don't remember I got them last year or maybe the year before. They have the old non-BPA-free seals.

I tend not to stray far, so it was most likely one of the following:
Menard's (Clybourn near Costco)
Strack and Van Til (on Elston)
Ace Hardware (Lincoln just S. of Irving Park)

Live Pressure Canning class: Green Beans, October 10 at 3 pm EST at this link:
http://ball.yourbrandlive.com/c/greenbeans/

Hi,

I make pickled corn, because my Mom likes it. I finally found a use for pickled corn, where I will more eagerly commit to making it in the future. I made a salad with half a pint jar today: I drained the liquid into a serving bowl, then added some olive oil and whisked it together. I tossed in the pickled corn. I thinly sliced red onion and some green shoot from red onions who had gone into reproduction. I cleaned radishes, sliced them lengthwise and cut them into thin half-moons. If I had parsley, I would have added some. I considered adding cucumber, but left it for another use.

This was definitely the favorite salad of the evening. I liked it enough to put pickled corn on the canning to-do list this year.

Regards,

I like chow-chow where corn is the primary. Great on sandwiches, salads, tacos, and chili.

I am salting zucchini for British, Bread, and butter pickles but since I am going to use pasturization AND have a day job + like to sleep at night I am curious as to the deleterious effect of holding the salted vegetables for a longer period of time, say overnight.

Thoughts?

Hi,

I have done this. I kept them in the refrigerator and put some ice on top. If you kept them in fridge, that will be enough.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

I have done this. I kept them in the refrigerator and put some ice on top. If you kept them in fridge, that will be enough.

Regards,

Thank you!

Can I ask you another quick canning question?

I have read online that canning jars, lids, and rims can be sterilized by being washed in a dishwasher using the hot dry setting. However, info on the the National Center for Home Food Preservation gives me the impression that this is fine for cleaning but does not eliminate the need for sterilizing in boiling water. Burning Issue: Pre-Sterilizing Jars before Canning
Would you agree that sterilizing by boiling is still necessary after dishwashing and hot drying?

Part of your answer is in your link Burning Issue: Pre-Sterilizing Jars before Canning:

So, in summary: Is a 5-minute process time enough to sterilize jars? No. If you are using a process time of only 5 minutes, such as for some jellied or pickled products, then you need to pre-sterilize jars before filling them (or increase the process time to 10 minutes). If a process time is 10 minutes or more then will the jars be sterilized? Yes, but be sure to wash and rinse them well, and keep warm, before filling them with food.

You will always need to wash your jars before use. Once done, you place them jar-mouth-side down on a clean towel. This prevents spores in the air to get into them.

Note: I hand wash my jars from storage. They are washed initially in the dishwasher before going into storage. Always stored mouth-side down to prevent anything from getting in.

***

If you are making a jelly or jam with a processing time of less than 10 minutes, you need to sterilize your jars.

To avoid sterilizing, I process jams and jelly for 10 minutes.

Hammond and I went to Muncie, Indiana some years ago to visit Jarden (formerly Altrista) who produces Ball Jars. This is where I first saw jars being preheated. They heat jars to about 140 degrees to reduce thermal shock and jar breakage.

They take the jar, fill it, remove bubbles, clean the jar edge and place a flat followed by the ring.

Always read the label on how to prepare the flats. Over time the instructions have changed. If you don't and use the wrong method, you risk having a bad seal.

***

I do avoid placing hot onto cold or cold into hot; contents or surface.

When I have heavily canned, I may lose a jar a year to thermal shock.

If I am fresh packing tomatoes into a jar, I don't bother with pre-warming the jar. It will cool down quickly from the contents. I won't put the jar in water hotter than 140 degrees.

If I am putting in very hot sauce, I am more inclined to preheat the jar. I will place it into a canner heated to 140 degrees. I do this one jar at a time, not all jars pulled or replaced all at once.

I hope this all makes sense.

Regards,
Cathy2

Thanks very much, Cathy! That mostly makes sense. I gather that if I washed and hot-dried the lids in the dishwasher right before I was ready to can, kept the dishwasher unopened until the last minute so they stayed warm and unexposed to spores in the air, and then filled them and hot-water processed them for at least 10 minutes, I could skip a separate intermediate sterilization-by-boiling step. Hope I understood that correctly.

Katie wrote:I gather that if I washed and hot-dried the lids in the dishwasher right before I was ready to can, kept the dishwasher unopened until the last minute so they stayed warm and unexposed to spores in the air, and then filled them and hot-water processed them for at least 10 minutes

Lids or rings? I think you mean the rings. The flats don't need to be in the dishwasher.

Katie wrote:I could skip a separate intermediate sterilization-by-boiling step.

This is not intended for sterilization. It is intended for reduction of thermal shock. You don't want a temperature higher than 140 degrees.

Regards,
CAthy2

So I guess that means I did not understand after all, which does not surprise me. I will read your instructions and the site's instructions again more carefully when I'm getting ready to launch a canning project.

Small- batching and being okay with it.

From husking to jars out of the Water Bath Canner was apx 3 hours today.

Mirai corn processed for chow chow from Paul Virant's Preservation Kitchen.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/qfpczVgVEp7QTG9k1]

I did a small batch of grape jam and was so disappointed that one of my jars broke in the water bath - the whole bottom just fractured off. I only ended up with 6 jars, so it was quite a loss.

leek wrote:I did a small batch of grape jam and was so disappointed that one of my jars broke in the water bath - the whole bottom just fractured off. I only ended up with 6 jars, so it was quite a loss.

I avoid making jams and jellies, which require a short processing time of less than 10 minutes. If a jar is processed for 10 minutes, you don't need to sterilize.

In the past, most jellies and jams were processed for six minutes, which requires the jars be sterilized just before filling.

Ball has a revised method to avoid thermal shock: preheating jars in the canner, then filling.

I will admit I don't do this. Occasionally, I lose a jar, though fortunately it does not happen often.

I feel your pain. There is a lot of work going into that jar.

Regards,
Cathy2

The recipe I had said to process for 10 minutes and to sterilize the jars. Everything was hot. I just wanted to complain! I have more grapes, picked after that batch, that I froze. I will try again later with them.

On a different topic:
I always use two- piece lids. Are there one-piece lids that are safe for home canners to use?

Hi,

I had no time available to can anything this summer.

I thought at the very least I needed to make some raspberry jam. About as quickly as I thought about this, I found a sale a few weeks ago at Shop and Save for Driscoll raspberries at 69 cents for a six-ounce package. I bought 36 cartons of which 25 or so went to jam.

When I was finished making the jam, I decided to cook fresh cranberries in the same pot without cleaning. We've been enjoying raspberry-cranberry sauce ever since. It sure beat tossing whatever was left down the sink ... as if I would really do that!

Regards,
Cathy2

My canning for the year was not terribly extensive, but I did get some pickled green tomatoes (left two columns), green tomato giardiniera (this isn't properly canned, just stored in the fridge--there's another pint and a half of this), and green tomato relish/piccalilli with the last batch of tomatoes I picked a few weeks ago before I went to uproot/clean up the garden.

Binko,

They look gorgeous!

I expect they taste great, too!

Regards,
Cathy2

Just grape jam from our concord vine. I made it into "grape butter" with spices to change things up from all the plain jam I had made before. My very favorite I ever made was brandied spiced peach butter so I'm hoping for a good peach harvest to do that again next year.

Hi,

Just saw this Ball tested recipe for making Banana Ketchup. Here is the list of ingredients:

2 cups mashed ripe bananas (1.5 lbs peeled)
1 large onion chopped (about 2 cups)
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp. grated fresh ginger
1-2 bird's eye chilis, chopped (to taste)
1 cup water, divided
3/4 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. allspice
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
2 Tbsp. bottled lemon juice

It really more accessible to make than one would otherwise imagine.

Regards,
Cathy2