Water bath or pressure? · Headspace · Jars & lids · Processing times · Tomatoes · The 1999 tally · Bread & butter pickles · Strawberry jam · Things I will not do

I have been putting up food every summer since 1968. My mother did it, her mother did it, and some of what they did I no longer do, because the people who test these things for a living have learned a few things since then. This page is what I actually do, in my kitchen, at about 200 feet above sea level. It is not the last word. The last word is the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning and your county extension office, and if anything on this page disagrees with them, they are right and I am wrong.

The pantry is full as of this week. I counted. The tally is below.

This is the one thing to get right. Everything else is detail.

High-acid foods (pH 4.6 or lower) can be processed in a boiling water bath, which is just a big pot with a rack, deep enough to cover the jars by an inch or two of boiling water. That covers:

• Jams, jellies, preserves and marmalades
• Fruit and fruit sauces, including applesauce
• Pickles and relishes (the vinegar makes them acid)
• Tomatoes and tomato sauce, but only with acid added. See tomatoes.

Low-acid foods must go in a pressure canner. Boiling water is 212°F and that is not hot enough to kill the spores that cause botulism in a low-acid food. A pressure canner at 10 pounds gets you to 240°F, which is. That covers:

• Plain vegetables: green beans, corn, carrots, beets, peas, potatoes
• Meats, poultry, fish, stock
• Soups, and mixed vegetables where anything low-acid is in the pot

A pressure canner is not a pressure cooker. The canner is the big one that holds seven quarts and has a gauge. Mine is a weighted-gauge model. If yours has a dial gauge, have it tested every year before the season starts; the extension office does it for nothing.

With a pressure canner: put two or three inches of water in the bottom, load the jars, lock the lid, let steam vent for a full 10 minutes before you put the weight on, then bring it up to pressure and start timing. At my elevation (under 1,000 feet) the weighted gauge runs at 10 pounds. Above 1,000 feet it is 15 pounds. A dial gauge runs at 11 pounds up to 2,000 feet and goes up from there; the guide has the table. When the time is up, turn off the burner and let the canner come down to zero on its own. Do not run water on it and do not pry the weight off. Wait two more minutes, then open the lid away from your face.

Headspace is the gap between the top of the food and the rim of the jar. Too little and food boils out and fouls the seal. Too much and the jar may not seal, or the food on top discolors.

Measure it. I keep a plastic ruler in the drawer with the jar lifter and it is not for anything else. After filling, run a plastic knife or chopstick down the inside of the jar to let out air bubbles, then check the headspace again and top up if it dropped.

Never reuse a flat lid. The sealing compound is good for one processing, that is all. The screw bands are reusable as long as they are not rusted or bent. The jars are reusable for years if the rims are not chipped; run a finger around the rim of every jar and throw out any that catch.

Use real canning jars (Ball, Kerr, whatever the store has). Mayonnaise jars and the like are thinner glass and break in the canner, and the rims don't match the lids.

Wash jars in hot soapy water and keep them hot until you fill them. If the processing time is under 10 minutes, the jars have to be sterilized first (boil them 10 minutes). Everything I do on this page is 10 minutes or more, so hot clean jars are enough.

Lids: the current directions from the manufacturers say to keep the flat lids in hot water, not boiling. Wipe the jar rim with a clean damp cloth before you set the lid on, put the band on fingertip tight (snug, no muscle), and into the canner it goes.

After processing, set the jars on a towel out of drafts and leave them alone for 12 to 24 hours. Don't press the lids. Then check: a sealed lid is curved down in the middle and does not move when you press it. Take the bands off, wipe the jars, label them with what and when, and put them somewhere cool and dark. Any jar that did not seal goes in the refrigerator and gets eaten this week.

I am not going to retype the whole table. It is in the USDA guide, in the Ball Blue Book, and in the sheet that comes in a box of pectin. Use the current one. Times were revised in the late 1980s and again in 1994 and some of them got longer. The recipe on the card in my mother's handwriting is a family heirloom, not a processing time.

Some points that apply to everything:

• Timing starts when the water is at a full boil with the jars in (water bath) or when the gauge reaches pressure (pressure canner). Not before.
• Pints and quarts have different times. Half-pints use the pint time.
• Hot pack and raw pack have different times. The guide says which.
• Altitude. Water boils at a lower temperature the higher you are. Water bath times get longer above 1,000 feet and pressure goes up. If you live in Bend or Denver, look at the altitude table, every time.
• If you lose pressure during a pressure-canner run, bring it back up and start the time over from the beginning. Yes, from the beginning.

Two examples, so you have an idea of scale, at my elevation (0 to 1,000 feet):

• Crushed tomatoes, hot pack, with acid added: water bath, 35 minutes for pints, 45 minutes for quarts.
• Green beans, hot pack: pressure canner, 20 minutes for pints, 25 minutes for quarts, at 10 pounds (weighted gauge).

Tomatoes are the ones people argue with me about. "My grandmother canned tomatoes in a water bath with nothing added for fifty years." Perhaps she did. Modern tomato varieties are lower in acid than the ones she grew, and some tomatoes on a given day are right on the borderline, so the guidelines now say to add acid to every jar of tomatoes or tomato sauce that will be water-bath processed:

• Bottled lemon juice: 1 tablespoon per pint, 2 tablespoons per quart. (Bottled, because its acidity is standardized. Fresh lemons vary.)
• Or citric acid: 1/4 teaspoon per pint, 1/2 teaspoon per quart.

Put the acid in the empty jar before you fill it, then you won't forget. You cannot taste it. If you think you can, a teaspoon of sugar per quart covers it.

Use tomatoes that are ripe but firm, from healthy vines. Don't can tomatoes from frost-killed or dead vines; the acid drops. Peel them: dip in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds, then into cold water, and the skins slip right off.

For crushed tomatoes: quarter them, put a few in the pot, crush and heat them to boiling, then keep adding the rest without crushing (they cook down on their own). Boil 5 minutes, fill hot jars, 1/2 inch headspace, and process (see times above). I did 42 quarts this way in August, in six batches, over three days, with the windows open.

Counted on the pantry shelves, Sunday, September 19, 1999. Green beans and corn were pressure canned; everything else went in the water bath.

Two jars of tomatoes and one of beans did not seal and were eaten. The apples are still coming in, so that number will go up. Last year's total was 171 jars; I have written down every year's count since 1979 in a notebook that lives on top of the refrigerator.

Makes about 7 pints. This is the standard proportion you will find in the Blue Book and on the extension sheets; I have not changed it, because a pickle recipe's vinegar-to-vegetable ratio is what keeps it safe. Change the spices if you like. Don't cut the vinegar.

1. Combine cucumbers, onions and salt in a big bowl. Cover with a layer of ice and let stand 1-1/2 hours. This is what makes them crisp.
2. Drain, rinse, drain again. Get the jars hot and the water bath heating.
3. Combine the brine ingredients in a big pot and bring to a boil. Add the vegetables and bring it back to a boil.
4. Pack hot into hot pint jars, cover with the hot brine, 1/2 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles, wipe rims, lids on, bands fingertip tight.
5. Process pints 10 minutes in a boiling water bath (0 to 1,000 feet; add time for altitude).

Let them sit 4 to 6 weeks before you open one. They taste raw before that. Use only cucumbers grown for pickling; salad cucumbers are waxed and go limp.

Makes about 8 half-pints. This is the proportion on the pectin box. It looks like a great deal of sugar because it is; with regular pectin, the sugar is part of what makes it set and what keeps it. If you want less sugar, buy the pectin that is made for less sugar and follow that box. Don't just cut the sugar in this one, it won't set.

5 cups crushed strawberries (about 2 quarts of berries; crush them a layer at a time with a potato masher, don't puree)
1 box (1-3/4 oz) powdered fruit pectin
7 cups sugar, measured out into a bowl ahead of time
1/2 teaspoon butter (optional, cuts the foam)

1. Put the crushed berries in a tall, heavy pot (it will foam up to three times its size). Stir in the pectin and the butter if using.
2. Bring to a full rolling boil, the kind you cannot stir down, over high heat, stirring constantly.
3. Add all the sugar at once. Stir. Bring back to a full rolling boil and boil exactly 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.
4. Skim off foam with a metal spoon.
5. Ladle into hot half-pint jars, 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe rims, lids, bands.
6. Process 10 minutes in a boiling water bath (0 to 1,000 feet).

It may take up to two weeks to set fully. If a batch stays runny it makes a fine syrup for pancakes and nobody needs to know.

• Open-kettle canning (ladling hot food into jars and letting the lid seal itself with no processing). It seals. That is not the same as safe.
• Oven canning. Jars break; the food doesn't get hot enough anyway.
• Dishwasher canning. No.
• Turning jars upside down to seal them instead of processing.
• Paraffin on jelly. My mother did it. Mold grows under it. Process the jars.
• Water-bathing green beans "for three hours." Three hours at 212°F is still 212°F. Pressure canner.
• Adding flour, cornstarch, rice or pasta to anything going in a jar. They thicken and keep the heat from getting to the middle.
• Making up my own recipes for pressure canning. Tested recipes only. I make up plenty at supper time.

And if a jar comes off the shelf with a bulging lid, a leak, spurting liquid, mold, or an off smell, don't taste it to check. It goes out, jar and all, where the dog can't get it. Low-acid foods that look fine should still be boiled 10 minutes before you eat them, if you want to be belt-and-suspenders about it. I am.

Other kitchens worth a visit: Rosa's Kitchen Table · Sunday Gravy: An Italian-American Kitchen · Betty's Backyard Vegetable Patch (where the cucumbers come from, if you're Betty) · The Pie Lady · Hilltop Herb Farm

Questions are welcome. I answer them in the evenings once the canner is off. [email protected]