Conquering The Fear of Canning

Putting food by is an ancient tradition dating back to when the first cave man brought home a mastodon and the first woman needed to figure out how to store it so they could eat it later.  Or maybe it was that successful berry harvest that the women gathered that needed to last awhile.  Even Ball mason jars have been around more than a century.  With all this history behind us I’ve been continually surprised by how many women are truly intimidated by the food preservation process.

Our mothers got scared off.  It was definitely not in the canning factories interest to let us think we could safely put up food in our own kitchens (even though that’s exactly what our grandmothers and great grandmothers had all been doing).  Tales of food poisonings went around making women afraid of being responsible for killing their children.   If a jar lid is bulging or the color is off in the food, don’t eat it.  Our mothers turned away from putting their own food by, trusting the canning companies to do it right.

Unfortunately those canning companies upped the sugar and salt far higher than even our grandmothers used.  They also began lining the cans with a handy chemical,  BPA , that has since been shown to be problematic because it mimics human estrogen and is linked to breast cancer and early onset of puberty in women.

Yes, botulism is serious and can kill, but is rare. There are roughly 25 cases reported by the CDC a year in the US, most from improper home canning, but several from factory canning as well.  

You absolutely must use caution and care when canning. You must follow directions. You must not compromise on ingredients, especially the preservatives salt, sugar and or vinegar.  The good news is, the directions are not at all difficult to follow and are actually easy to understand. The ingredients are fresh from your garden and the preservatives are readily available and inexpensive. Also, you’re unlikely to use anywhere near the amounts of sugar or sodium found in commercial products, plus you won’t be adding any chemical preservatives that you can’t pronounce.

Anyone who has grown a garden or had a fruit tree or two, has at one time been overwhelmed by the abundance of summer.  What to do with it all?  There are a lot of preserving options including dehydrating, freezing, or canning (both with a water-bath canner or a pressure cooker canner). If you love jam on toast by all means can those berries, but if you’ve got a jar or two in your fridge that have been there most the year then this isn’t going to be a successful venture and will probably be a waste of time and money.  

My parents used to put up their strawberries into jam and I remember a lot of hassle they went through with melting paraffin. With canning jars now, no paraffin is needed. Simply clean the lids with soap an water, dry and pop onto your jar of hot jam, pickles or preserves.

I find the wide mouth jars far simpler to use because they’re easier to get the food into and out of compared to the regular jars.  Both Kerr and Ball mason jars are readily available at hardware stores and grocery stores. Diablo Foods usually has very reasonably priced jars thanks to local beekeeper, Steve Gentry, who buys all his jars for honey there.  You’ll have to ask someone for help there because they’re on the top shelf.  In Moraga at the Ace Hardware, the manager there has taken special care to stock all canning products including fancy jars for gifts.  You can get completely set up for canning there. Also, you might ask around, several people my parent’s age have boxes of canning jars in their garages that just need a good washing before being put to use again.

What do you need to have to get set up?  Starting canning sets should include a water bath canner with a rack, a pair of jar tongs, and a canning funnel. Depending what you’re canning you’ll need pectin (great price at Diablo Foods) and sugar, or salt (not iodized because it discolors the foods) and vinegar by the gallon.  Heinz vinegar runs about $4 a gallon just about everywhere.  Canning supplies can often be found at thrift stores as well. I’ve picked up canners for just $3.  When you start getting fancy, you’ll need a pressure cooker canner to handle any meats, beans, or low acid vegetables. Those run about $200.

Turning a bowl full of tomatoes from the garden into jars of pizza sauce for the pantry, or a pile of cucumbers into jars of crispy pickles can take just a couple of hours (including all clean up before and after).  Listening for the “pop” of the lids as the jars seal while cooling is an invigorating sound that let’s you know you’ve done it right.  You can do it.