In the recent years home canning has made a resurgence in popularity. Growing your own vegetables in the summer months is such a satisfying experience and being able to ‘put them up’ for use during the off season months makes for really good eating.

Home canning is not nearly as difficult as it seems. It is pretty straight forward once you know the basic canning instructions and follow them. Following the canning instructions is very important especially for food safety. You don’t want to crack open a jar of strawberry jam that has gone bad with Clostridium botulinum bacteria. That could kill you.

Canning tools

Water bath canner
It is a large metal pot usually porcelain coated on all sides. It will hold the canning jars as they are being processed. Get the one that has a wire basket with handles for holding the canning jars. The wire basket keeps the jars off of the bottom of the canner so that they don’t over heat and break during processing. The wire handles make it really easy to lift all of the jars out of the canner once processing is complete.

Canning funnel
A wide mouth funnel that makes it really easy to load small mouth canning jars without getting the food on the sides and lip of the jar.

Canning tongs / lifter
Used to lift and set the jars into the water bath. No need to burn your fingers.

Canning Lid Lifter
It is a wand with a small magnet on the end. Used to ‘grab’ a lid that is in the sterilizing hot water out and set it on the jar. A lot easier than trying to use regular tongs to grab a lid.

Paper towels
Have a roll or two handy during the canning process.

Canning Instructions

These instructions are for water bath canning which is only safe for canning high acid foods.

1. Sterilize the jars, lids and canning tools that will be coming in contact with the food. Don’t give the bad bacteria a chance to spoil your food!

2. Fill the water bath canner about halfway full with hot tap water. It will save you time in heating the canner to the right temperature. To prevent breaking the jars when loading them into the canner, preheat the water and the canning jars to 140 degrees F for raw packed and 180 degrees F for hot packed foods.

3. Load the jars with food leaving at least a one half inch head space. This head space allows the food room to expand and not cause the seal on the lid to fail.

4. Wipe the rim of each jar with a paper towel dipped in hot water. Put a lid on the jar and tighten it down with the band ring.

5. Load the filled jars into the canner rack. Lower the rack into the water. The water in the water bath canner must be at least one inch above the top of the jars. Add additional boiling water into to the canner if necessary.

6. Raise the heat to high until the water begins to boil vigorously. Lower the heat until the water is at a gentle boil. Set the timer for the required processing time. Put the canner lid on the canner.

7. Once the required processing time has elapsed, turn off the heat and remove the water bath canner lid.

8. Spread a towel out on the counter near the stove. Do not set the hot jars directly on a cool stone counter. The counter can withstand the heat, but the jars cannot withstand the huge temperature drop and will break. Use the jar lifter to lift the jars out of the canner.

9. Let the jars cool down slowly. Don’t try to tighten the ring bands because you risk breaking the lid seal. Check the seal on the jars after they have cooled. Press on the center of the lid. The lid should be sucked down and should not pop back up. Any jars were they have not sealed correctly will need to be refrigerated and used up in the next two weeks.

Pressure Canning

When canning low acid foods, vegetables, raw meat, soups and seafood, pressure canning is the only safe way to can the food. To kill of the Clostridium botulinum bacteria spores the canning jars must reach a temperature of 240 to 250 degrees F. You will need to use a pressure canner. The steps in canning are the same as above, except that you will be using the pressure canner instead of the water bath canner.