- Becky Gutzman: Good afternoon, everyone.
I'm really happy to be here
with you talking about preserving the harvest
because we're all gardeners.
I am a former UW-Extension employee.
I worked with the nutrition program
in Columbia and Dodge County.
And the last few years of my career,
I was also the interim food preservation specialist
for University of Wisconsin-Extension.
And I've been canning a long time; I love it.
So I'm really happy to share with you
how you can get from this, wonderful gardens
full of yummy produce all summer long, to this,
a kitchen or a cupboard full of tasty canned goods
that every time you open in the winter, you're gonna say,
"Oh, I'm really glad I grew that.
I'm really glad I canned this or froze it," so.
And there's a reason
that all those canned goods are sitting on my counter.
My canning cupboard is a clothes closet
in a small bedroom that I use as an office.
And I was in the process of trying to figure out
how to build some rollout shelving,
so I just kept leaving everything on the counter.
And before I put it away, I thought,
"Well, I think that'd make a pretty good picture."
I also didn't do anything that required the MixMaster
for about a month and a half.
[all laughing]
So whether you are going to be freezing
or dehydrating some things or canning,
my real goal is that you have really safe
and high-quality food.
So we're gonna look at all three of those methods a little bit,
and we'll talk in more detail
about some of the canning things that we need to know.
So whatever you're doing,
make sure you have your supplies ready
before you get started.
A couple years ago, during that little thing
we called the beginning of the pandemic,
everybody was stuck at home
and everybody decided to grow a garden.
And along about July, people started looking
and buying canning lids and jars.
But canning lids was the hardest part
because you could always find a relative
who had a box of canning jars stuck away somewhere,
but you couldn't find lids.
So I was online like everybody else, looking to find lids.
And Uline, of all places, had lids on their website.
They were out of the Ball lids, but they had a different brand.
I ordered them
and I mentioned to my son that I had ordered these,
and I said, "I hope they come soon."
He said, "Oh, you'll have 'em in 24 hours."
I said, "Ah."
Well, he was wrong; I had them in 23 hours.
[all laughing]
Don't wait 'til the last minute to get your canning supplies.
But then, make sure that they're in good shape.
Especially if you're getting canning jars
that someone else has used,
run your finger along the top of that jar.
You can look at it
and you might not see the little imperfections
that are in there, but if your finger can feel a little dip
or a divot in there, don't use it for canning.
That's enough to probably make that lid not seal.
So, that's frustration.
You do...
Ah, if I can get a hold of it here.
You do wanna use new lids every year.
And I'll tell you that over the years,
the sealing compound on the underside of these lids
has gotten thinner and thinner.
So it's more important than ever.
These are one-use lids; don't try to reuse them.
In fact, if you buy, whatever brand of lids you buy,
get 'em out and check them over.
I have found lids where the sealing compound
has actually peeled off or is just not there in chunks.
Well, that won't work.
So, it's, you know...
Get good quality lids, I guess.
But you can reuse those bands every year.
And so, I actually save them and have bags full of them.
I'm always looking for a craft project
to use the rings or the bands.
One thing I wanted to say,
and I can show you that right here.
You don't wanna store your canned goods with the ring on.
Now, I've got rings on this today
just to keep it safe in the car while bringing it down.
But once you're done canning,
take the rings off and wash the outside of your jar.
This was a batch of cowboy candy that I made,
which is awesome, but it's really sugary
and if you dribble any little bit of syrup
while you're filling the jars,
it's probably gonna stay a little bit on there,
and your ring might be on there so tight
months later, you won't get it off.
It can get rusty if there's moisture under there.
Sometimes it can actually form a little rust
and pop off a lid.
So once you're done canning,
take the rings off for storing them.
So, if you're going to be freezing items,
there's a lot of freezer bags out there,
but sometimes you have something that's soupier
and you might want a freezer container.
I think it's worth it
to invest in good quality freezer containers.
You can use cottage cheese containers
or sour cream containers,
but when foods are frozen, and if you didn't label them,
or you lose your label, it is really hard
to tell the difference between applesauce and turkey gravy.
[audience laughing]
So use good containers and label them.
And another container
that I wanna mention while I'm on this
is the new plastic freezer jars.
And these are great for jams and jellies.
I mean, you could put other things in them, I suppose.
I use 'em in the cupboard sometimes for dehydrated things,
but they're really nice, and it's a nice...
It's the same size as a regular jelly jar,
but don't overfill them.
You can, if it's overfilled,
it'll mound up and crack that lid.
So give it enough head space when you're using those.
And you could...
You could freeze jams and jellies in a glass jar.
But I am here to tell you that if you have a whole stack
of these in your freezer and you bump it and they fall over,
a frozen jar breaks a lot easier than a room temperature jar.
So I use plastic jars and containers in the freezer.
This is some apple pie jam that I made in the fall
when I was trying to use up the last of the apples.
You can make such wonderful things at home
that you'll never find in the store.
So another encouragement to try new things.
All right.
Clean your dehydrator if you are using that.
The problem with the dehydrator
is that once you've finished dehydrating your banana chips
or whatever, you peel those off, it looks pretty good, right?
Then you think, "Well, that's not even dirty."
It'll look dirty a month or two later
when the little bit of sugar syrup
that's left on there starts to yellow and decay.
So wash containers right away before you put them away.
All right, so a few more thoughts about freezing
because I do think when you're--
How many of you are just beginning
to get started in food preservation?
Freezing is a great way to start.
There's not as much equipment needed
and mm, maybe it's not as intimidating as canning.
So make sure that your home freezer
is really set to zero degrees.
It's worth it to get a thermometer and check that
because having it cold enough will assure good quality.
And then, we always wanna make sure
that we can freeze items really rapidly.
If you process a whole bunch of corn
and you pack it in big quart bags
and you have it all shoved together in a cookie sheet,
that won't take up as much room
in your freezer as having it all laid out flat.
But the inside stuff is not gonna freeze very rapidly.
When things freeze slowly, they form a lot more ice crystals
and they're just, it does more damage to the cells.
It's not as good of a product when you're done.
So we want things to freeze really quickly.
There are some things that we blanch,
and blanching really means that we're subjecting the item
to a blast of boiling water for a certain amount of time
and then plunging it into ice water
to cool it quickly so it stops cooking.
I have always used a blancher and just assumed that
that was sort of a thing everybody would have.
And I was teaching a class one time in freezing vegetables,
and here's how it works.
Well, I think I've got a picture coming up,
so I'll talk about that in just a moment here.
But not everything has to be blanched,
but however long you have the beans
or the peas in hot water, boiling water,
is how long they need to stay in ice water.
So blanching time equals cooling time.
And then, you wanna drain the water off
so that you're not putting a whole bunch
of extra water in the freezer with your vegetables
because then there'll just be
more ice crystals to damage them.
We talked a little bit about the plastic packages.
I just wanna remind you
that every sandwich bag is not a freezer bag.
So, [chuckles] if you take a freezer bag and a sandwich bag
and rub them between your fingers,
you can tell the difference
in that thickness of the plastic.
And while all plastic
will let a little air through eventually,
you'll get a lot of air into your sandwich bag
of veggies faster than a freezer bag.
So UW-Extension has a lot of wonderful publications,
and there's one on freezing fruits
and vegetables in this stack.
What I love about having these publications
is they not only give you all the instructions you need,
the times for blanching in this case,
but they also have good problem-solving sections.
One time, my daughter called me once
and wanted to know what happened with her pickles potentially.
And I said, "Well, did you look in the book?"
And she goes, "Well, no,
I just printed off the recipe I wanted."
So on the handout that you received,
there is a link to The Learning Store,
and that's where you'll find all those publications.
Okay, so here's what I wanted to tell you about blanching.
It's a large pot with a lid,
but it also has this inner pot that's full of holes.
When you put your vegetables in here,
you plunge it into the boiling water in the pot,
put the lid on, and start the timer.
So you don't wanna put a lot of vegetables in it once.
It has to come back to a boil really quickly.
And then time it, then pull it out, you can drain it.
And then dump it into a sink full of ice water.
So... [blancher clanks]
I was doing a class,
and so that's what I had the people doing.
And one lady said, "Oh, this is so much faster
than scooping them out with a spaghetti ladle."
Well, yes it would be.
And think of how much longer
the last vegetables were in that boiling water.
So we want to do things quickly.
So I'm gonna show you some other tools
as we go through this
because I think that's one of the ways
that you can make home food preservation less intimidating
is to have the right tools and the right techniques.
So it's boiling water that you're plunging it in.
You cannot blanch by microwaving the vegetables.
They just don't all get hot at the same time.
Blanching really requires
plunging those vegetables into boiling water.
There's a few exceptions though.
Onions, peppers, and raw tomatoes.
Those all are so much water to start with.
It's really hard to blanch them without cooking them.
So we don't have to blanch those three things.
So that's nice to know.
You can just chop them up,
put 'em on a cookie sheet, freeze them.
When they're frozen, put 'em into a bag,
and you're all set for the winter.
But the time does vary for all these things.
Think about how much more dense carrots are than green beans,
where there's actually a channel
through the middle of that green bean.
So every vegetable has a different blanching time.
I don't remember what they all are.
I look them up when I'm gonna blanch vegetables.
All right.
So we don't do a lot of food dehydrating in Wisconsin
unless you have a dehydrator
because it is really too humid in our summers
to effectively dehydrate foods
like they do in hotter, drier climates.
So you might dry some herbs by hanging them upside down.
You might try sun-drying fruits,
but it's just very difficult to do it.
You'll have a lot better product if you dehydrate it
with an electric dehydrator,
where you've got heat and air movement.
So you could use an oven to do that,
but that's gonna take a lot more electricity.
A dehydrator is designed for using less electricity,
but generating heat in a small space,
and then running air through it to move that air around.
So definitely a dehydrator is worth it
if you're interested in dehydrating.
So we don't have a resource book either
in our series here in Wisconsin, but the University of Georgia
hosts the National Center for Home Food Preservation.
That's what those five letters are at the end.
They have a great resource on dehydrating.
So look that up if you want more information.
So let's think more about canning.
And I'm gonna put this tool down, but before I do,
I wanna tell you a little bit more about it
as you're thinking about canning.
It's a magnet on a stick.
Now, a lot of you might have that out in your shop
for picking up screws that have fell on the floor.
This is, that will work too,
but this is really nice for grabbing a lid
because you really wanna keep everything clean.
If I that lid in clean water, I've now contaminated it
by picking it that way with my fingers.
So a magnet comes with a lot of canning supply kits.
And another tool
that you'll find really helpful is a jar lifter.
So a hinged tool here.
And another funny thing that I've actually seen happen,
someone was trying to pick up jars like this
and the jar kept spinning.
I said, "No, no, just turn that around
and you'll find how much better that grabs the jar."
So have your tools and know how to use 'em.
So, if you are thinking about canning things,
you really wanna start with a good resource,
a recipe that you know has been tested
and that you'll get a good, safe product from.
So just because something's in print
or online doesn't mean that it's really been research-tested
and it's safe for you and your family.
And then, use up-to-date recipes.
Lots of us have old family recipes that we love.
And things have changed over the years
in how we do canning, some of the processes that we use.
And sometimes those old, old recipes just aren't adaptable.
And once in a while,
there's something you can do to change and update it.
Make sure your equipment is in good working order,
and we're gonna talk more about canning kettles
and things in a little bit.
And then, get all your equipment ready
so you don't have the tomatoes cooking
and discover you have no lids.
Ah, so.
And, you know, for the most part,
I'm gonna say leave your creativity behind.
I came across a young lady once in a class who said,
well, her only experience canning was a terrible failure.
She went and picked strawberries
and she was going to make strawberry jam.
That was her idea.
So she washed the strawberries, took the stems off.
She dumped them in a pot,
and covered them with water and cooked them.
And she said it didn't do anything
except, like, turn into strawberryish water.
And I said, "Well, you were making jam?
What was your resource or your recipe?"
She, "Well, I don't know.
I just thought maybe that's how you do it."
That is not the way to start canning.
And I thought, "Oh, you picked all those berries,
and then were just not approaching it right."
So look for some good resources.
The University of Wisconsin series
on food safe preserving is wonderful.
Those are online at The Learning Store,
and you can print them off or print off just what you want,
but your local county extension office
may have them available in the office for you to purchase.
And then, the beauty is you get the whole book
with the problem-solving resources too.
That National Center for Home Food Preservation in Georgia
has a great book called So Easy to Preserve.
And if you wanna preserve something
that we don't grow a lot of around here,
and I'm thinking okra, we don't have any resources,
we don't have any guidelines for how to handle it
or freeze it or can it; Georgia does.
So you can look there as another resource.
And then, the Ball canning company
is still a pretty good resource and accessible.
The Ball Blue Book is available at any place
where there's canning supplies.
I have the big Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.
Whoa, wonderful recipes in there that I love trying.
So that's another good resource too.
All right, so a little bit more about those old recipes.
In 1994, there was some
pretty groundbreaking research on tomatoes.
When I was a kid, my dad always wanted us
to grow one yellow tomato plant
because he said they were lower in acid
and they didn't bother his stomach so much.
And I've heard that over the years.
But what they were looking at in this research is,
are tomatoes acidic enough
that we can can them like a fruit?
'Cause botanically, they are a fruit,
but we treat them like a vegetable in so many other ways.
And what they found out
is that the dryness of the season
or how much moisture there is, the amount of heat,
a lot of environmental factors affect the acidity
in any one variety of tomatoes, depending on the season.
And tomatoes are just on the borderline
between being acidic enough to handle as a fruit.
So in 1994, there were some major updates
to canning recommendations from the USDA,
a few more modifications in 2009.
So if you have a canning book that has a copyright
of before 1994, put it on your shelf of historical archives
and get some newer resources. [audience laughing]
And then, there's some other things
that we've probably learned,
think we've learned along the way.
So maybe just because your mother or grandmother did it,
you should really check it out and see if it's still accurate.
So we do wanna add acid to tomato products
so that we can can them like a fruit.
I'll talk more about that in a little bit.
We also are recommending that you avoid using alum.
That was commonly used to make pickles crisp and firm.
Well, alum is an aluminum byproduct,
and there's been some research
possibly connecting aluminum and Alzheimer's.
So leave it out.
We have newer ways to make good, crisp pickles,
and I'll show you that.
And then, make sure that you actually
are using a heat processing step as part of your canning.
My mother canned tomatoes when I was a kid
by cooking the tomatoes, boiling the jars,
putting the tomatoes in that hot jar,
putting a lid on it, boom, we were done.
It's called open kettle canning.
It's not approved, it's not safe.
We do need to heat that whole thing thoroughly afterwards.
So don't do it anymore, even if you know somebody who did.
All right.
And then, if you don't have a tested recipe,
but you really want to preserve something,
just prepare that recipe, and then store it frozen
or put it in the refrigerator and use it right away.
Okay.
So here's the information on acid for tomato products.
You can use two tablespoons of bottled lemon juice
for a quart, or one tablespoon for a pint.
And I don't think
that it makes it taste too acidic when you do that.
It's a pretty small amount,
but it makes it acidic enough to be safe.
The other thing you can do is use citric acid.
It comes from the Ball company.
They've been putting it out for a while.
I've been buying it longer than that
from my local Amish store.
And if you've ever had Sour Patch candies or sour gummies,
citric acid is what makes them sour and tart.
And you can even just try a little bit of it
right out of the container and get a little zip of tartness.
So, and you use a lot less of that.
When I am using these, I estimate how many jars
of my tomato product I'm going to be canning.
I get my jars ready
and I put the citric acid in first, so I know it's in there,
and then I add the tomatoes to it.
If I'm adding salt or sugar at that time,
I put those in first,
and then I put the tomato product in.
Hey, so there are a few changes that you can make.
Sometimes salt, for example.
Salt is for flavor.
It's really not in an amount to preserve the food at all.
So if you have tomato products or vegetables or meats
or quick-process pickles,
you can eliminate the salt or reduce it.
It'll still be safe.
You'll notice the difference in the taste.
But, you know, if you're a person
who's really modifying your diet to low salt,
you probably won't notice it as much as some others.
If you are canning fruits
and tomato products, quick-process pickles,
these are all gonna be canned in a hot water bath,
you can reduce the sugar,
but boy, you'll really notice the difference in this.
Sugar preserves color and texture.
So if you, for example, wanna can peaches in water,
they're not gonna be unsafe,
and you can train yourself to like them.
[audience laughing] But they're gonna be
really different than what you're used to, so.
But if you want to reduce sugar in jams and jellies,
you have a couple more options that you really should explore.
When you make a jam or jelly, you want it to be jelled.
You don't want it to be soup that you pour over.
Well, maybe sometimes you do.
When I was first married, my husband told me
that his mother made elderberry jelly
and he thought I should too.
And like a newlywed, I said, "Okay, let's try this."
And every year, it was soupy.
And I, "Wow, what am I doing wrong?"
Well, one year when I made it, the telephone rang,
and this is the telephone on the wall.
So I had to go over and answer it,
and by the time I got rid of the person
and got back to my jelly on the stove, I'm pretty sure
it had cooked several minutes longer than it should have.
Opened up the first jar of jelly that year
and my husband said, "What'd you do wrong to the jelly?
I can't pour it on my pancakes."
[audience laughing]
He was using it as syrup anyway, so I thought,
"Well, that's fine." [all laughing]
So there's not very much natural pectin in elderberries.
And so, by cooking it longer,
I gave that pectin more of a chance to set up and gel.
But that was sort of an accident.
If you wanna reduce the sugar in jams and jellies,
we have several choices in pectin products,
and I have a picture of them coming up,
but I have some of them on the table here too.
So we'll talk more about those different choices in pectin.
So if you're canning vegetables or meat products,
you can add small amounts
of herbs, garlic, things like that.
That's not going to hurt it at all, so do that.
If you're canning tomatoes,
you can substitute any kind of tomato,
cherry tomatoes, big tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, whatever.
Just make sure you're adding acid
so you get a safe product.
So, when you're doing salsa or pickles,
those all have an acid added to them.
It might be white vinegar or cider vinegar.
It might be lemon juice or lime juice.
That's what makes them salsa or pickles.
You cannot change the amounts
of the acidic ingredients in there
because that recipe is a chemical formulation
that's based on amounts of each of those products.
And it may not be safe if you reduce the acid ingredients.
So you could reduce the amount of peppers in a salsa recipe
or if you were making a pickled giardiniera,
a mixture of vegetables,
if you don't like Brussels sprouts,
you don't have to use them.
You can substitute something else.
But don't mess with the acidic ingredients.
Okay.
Salsa, you can always make it as hot as you like.
Just use whatever kind of peppers you want in there.
But the thing I wanna say about salsa is,
I know that you can buy salsa with corn
and black beans in it in the store.
Commercial companies have different equipment
than we have at home.
We don't have a way to safely can salsa
with corn or beans in it.
So don't do it.
So, I judged at a fair one year
where there was a beautiful jar of salsa
and it had beans in it, black beans in it,
and I disqualified it right away.
It was an open class
and the exhibitor was a little excited, we'll say.
[all laughing]
I said, "Well, you may eat that at home
"and think you're surviving,
but I can't allow it in a judging situation."
Okay.
But then there's a few things I'm gonna say don't change.
If you're making sauerkraut, it is the salt in there
that draws out the liquid and then makes that ferment.
So you absolutely need the salt in a genuine dill pickle
or in sauerkraut to make it ferment,
otherwise it simply won't be safe.
We've talked about pickles and salsa already.
There's a few things that we really can't can at home,
and pumpkin puree is one of them.
It's just too dense.
We just cannot guarantee that it gets hot enough
all the way through the middle, so you can can pumpkin cubes,
and then puree it later
when you wanna make something out of it.
Cabbage, summer squash like zucchini, and wild mushrooms,
there just aren't any tested recipes.
So can't do that at home.
Okay.
And then, sometimes you'll see a recipe...
Okay, carrots are normally pressure canned
'cause they're a vegetable,
but there's a wonderful recipe out there for carrot cake jam
and they're not substituting the carrots for something else.
That recipe has been designed
with enough acidic foods in there
that the shredded carrots are okay in a situation like that.
And if you're wondering, it's a mashed pear base
that gives it the acidity in there.
But pears are really mild in flavor.
So it's shredded carrots and all the usual suspects
in a carrot cake: nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves.
It's a wonderful jam.
All right.
Now, we're gonna look at canners
and I am gonna talk about two or three different types.
So just try to keep them straight in your mind.
How many of you have used a boiling water bath canner?
It's been around for a long time.
It's the safest thing that most of us start with.
Frankly, I think people
are often intimidated by the pressure canner.
So we're gonna can everything we can in the boiling water bath
and I'm gonna freeze the rest, would be how we look at it.
So, the boiling water bath
is where we're canning naturally acidic foods like fruits,
and pickles and salsa where we've added acid to them.
If you haven't seen one,
this is a pretty good depiction here.
There's a rack in the bottom
to hold the jars off the bottom of the container.
I have heard people say that,
oh, they just put a towel in the bottom of it.
I've tried that.
As the water comes to a boil, the towel just raises right up.
I've never been able to stick jars in there
and keep that towel even on the bottom.
So a rack is what you need in there.
It says a tight-fitting lid,
but it's not like tight-fitting that seals out all the air.
It just needs a good lid on it, and they come with a lid.
But no matter how long
you process food in a boiling water bath canner,
the temperature never gets above 212 degrees.
After 212 degrees,
if you keep boiling it, the water will evaporate,
but it never gets hotter than 212 degrees.
Well, that's hot enough to kill any of the bacteria
that would be present in fruits, pickles, and salsa.
So it's a great way of canning those foods.
But if you wanna can meats or vegetables,
they need to be canned at a higher temperature.
And you just can't get a higher temperature
with a boiling water bath.
You have to use something else to get a higher temperature.
And if you remember back to high school science and physics,
if you put water under pressure,
then you can drive the temperature up,
and that's what the pressure canner does.
So, there's two different types.
One has a dial gauge, and you can see that
on the shadow picture in the background there.
It's like a little clock, and the hand
is going up past 5 degree or 5 pounds, 10 pounds, 15 pounds.
And that's how you would monitor
how many pounds of pressure you need
for the food that you're canning.
The others are called a weighted gauge canner.
And that little round silver circle
with three black dots on it, those are indicating
where the holes are in the side of that disc.
One is for 5 pounds, one is for 10, one is for 15.
And if you look at canning guidelines,
it'll give you the time and the pressure for each food
that needs to be pressure canned.
So it might be 20 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.
If you are using a dial gauge,
you're gonna have those products in the canner,
you're gonna seal it, you are gonna turn on the heat,
and you're gonna watch that dial gauge as it comes up.
And when it reaches the 10 pounds
or whatever your desired indicator is,
then you're gonna adjust the heat on the stove
to make sure it stays right at 10 pounds.
If you're using the pressure, the weighted gauge,
and how many of have used a weighted gauge?
A few of you have.
That's a very different process.
There's no gauge to tell you what pressure it's at.
You are listening for that gauge to rock,
and there's a little air jet on there, it sits on there,
and it rocks, and you have to learn to count
how many times it rocks in a minute,
and that's how you tell whether it's at five pounds
and whether it's at the right temperature.
So, I have used them in a class; I don't have one myself.
When I got ready to buy my pressure canner,
I thought, "Yeah, I'm kind of a distractible person.
"I'm gonna start talking to somebody,
"thinking about something else,
and I'm not gonna be counting those jiggles."
So I bought a dial gauge.
So the downside is with a dial gauge,
you should check that every year for accuracy.
There's a lot of steam that's coming up
through all the openings on a pressure canner.
And over time, that can distort the gauge,
so you can send it back to the company,
or most county extension offices are testing those for you,
and you have to make an appointment and take it in.
A weighted gauge never has to be tested
because there's nothing mechanical
to go wrong with that.
So there's a big plus.
So whichever one you choose to go with is great,
and you just have to learn to use it.
So, when you first get a pressure canner,
my advice is get it out, read the instruction booklet,
and, step by step, follow it
while you can a couple jars of water.
You're not gonna ruin any food.
It's gonna put you all the steps of how to fill the jars,
how to put 'em in, how to bring it up to temperature,
how to let it release.
And so, do read the instructions.
When you have reached the prescribed amount of time
on a pressure canner,
you're going to turn your stove off,
you're going to gently move that canner off the burner,
and you're gonna let the pressure release by itself.
You don't jerk off the petcock or anything else,
'cause there's still a ton of pressure in there.
So, if any of you are using pressure cookers at home now,
the Instant Pots and those kinds of things,
you've heard the terms natural release or instant release,
and you know the difference.
With an instant release,
there's a lot of steam coming out of there
and you gotta make sure you're covering it with towels
or not having it shoot up
against the underside of your kitchen cabinets.
So natural release
is what we're looking for here in the pressure canning.
So I had a woman one time who came to a class
and she really wanted to learn how to can vegetables.
That was her whole motivation for coming.
And we were doing a little series.
We started out with jams and jellies,
'cause to me, that's the gateway drug of canning.
And then, we canned fruits the next week.
Well, between the two weeks, her beans were ready
and so she thought, "Well, I'm just gonna do this."
She called a friend who had canned
and she talked her through it,
got the beans in the jars, got 'em in the canner.
And then, she was off the phone and the friend was gone.
And when they were done, she just took them off the stove
and immediately took the petcock off,
and she had green beans all over the ceiling.
The jars burst, the beans shot out.
There's just so much pressure trying to escape at once.
So it really does happen.
It's the kind of story that scares people off of canning.
But if she had read the directions
or had someone teach her how to do it correctly,
that wouldn't have happened.
So read the manual and ask for good instructions.
So taking care of either
of these types of pressure canners,
most of them have a rubber gasket in the lid.
There is one brand that's a steel to steel connection,
where the lid meets the pot,
but most of them have a rubber gasket in there.
So every time you're done canning, take that gasket out
and rinse it off and let it dry separately.
And then just, if you're storing your canner,
just toss it in the bottom of the canner.
You don't have to fit it back into the lid
'cause it needs a chance to relax in between uses.
You don't oil it, you don't grease it,
you don't put baby powder on it.
People are very creative, like, oh, don't do that.
So just put it in the canner
and store it until the next time.
So, when you're using a pressure canner,
you're canning food at between 240 and 250 degrees.
And that's why it's safe enough to do meats and vegetables.
Oh, and here's just a little bit more
about those two types of pressure canners.
On the left, you can see the dial gauge.
On the right, we can't really...
Oh yeah, there is the little rocking mechanism there.
But the picture on the lower right, that is,
I think they're called All American,
and that's the one that has a steel to steel connection,
and that's a big clamp that closes these up.
So, before I retired,
I was doing some pressure canner testing
for the Amish community in the counties where I live,
and they had heard that they needed to have them tested,
and so they had an Amish blood drive going on,
and I said, "Oh, that's a great place for me to be there."
And I took the portable testing device out there
and I tested all kinds of pressure canners that day.
I think some of them came over
with their ancestors a hundred years ago.
They were so old.
But if it's a weighted gauge, no problem.
It still works perfectly.
It's only the dial gauges.
And that lower left picture shows how we test those.
It's a very simple little machine with a bicycle pump.
And you can't see that, it's under the lid,
another pipe with a test gauge on it,
and then a tube running down to a little foot lever.
And so, you put that on there and you start pumping away
and you're watching the gauge on your lid,
and the gauge on the testing device.
And if they go up to the same number
and come back down together, it's fine.
If your gauge is one pound off, it's okay to use it.
If it's two pounds off either way,
we're gonna recommend that you get a new gauge.
And they're available from the companies.
So, that's a closer look
at what that 5, 10, 15-pound rocking gauge looks like
for the weighted gauge.
So, just a little review then on which canner
you're going to use, which method of canning.
If it's high acid, which means the pH is below 4.6,
you can do that in a boiling water bath canner.
Fruits, pickles, salsa, that's fine.
Low acid means that it's above 4.6.
That's meats and vegetables.
There, you need a pressure canner.
So, do you know what the acidity of tomatoes is?
Right around 4.6.
It's right on the bubble.
So that's why we add acid to the tomatoes.
So, in the last several years, there's been a new tool
that's available to us, and I love it.
So I brought it along to show you.
But think about that boiling water bath canner; they're big.
You have to have enough water in there
to cover your jars by an inch or so.
And then, once it's, you've got your heating time up,
you have to get that big pot of hot water
eventually to the sink to empty it out.
It is...
It's awkward to have all that hot water there,
and it takes time to bring all that water to a boil.
So, the atmospheric steam canner came on the market
as a way to avoid some of those what-if problems.
You can see a couple good pictures of it right there.
And when they came out, they had not been tested
and approved by the USDA,
but that's often how things happen.
Companies put things on the market,
and then somebody tests them
to see if their claims are really accurate.
So what we wanted to look at,
and the University of Wisconsin was awarded the grant from USDA
to do the research on these steam canners.
They were trying to find out how does it work
and how does it compare to a boiling water bath canner?
'Cause the company was saying, you use the same canning times
and just can like you would a boiling water bath.
And so, is it safe for us to use?
So, as you look at that picture,
you can see a little hole on the lid
right above those jars of peaches.
That's important, because that's where the steam comes out,
and that's how we're gonna gauge
how long it's forming steam inside there.
So, let me show you a little better look at this.
So it looks like a big old cake carrier, doesn't it?
And when you have a boiling water bath canner,
you have a big pot with a lot of water in it and a lid.
This one's almost the opposite.
The lid is totally empty.
[lid clanks]
And then, we have a very shallow pan
that holds an inch or so of water.
Think about how much less time it'll take
to heat that inch of water.
That's where the real time-saving factor comes in
with these, and that's why I love it so much.
So you're going to put water
in the bottom just up to the rack.
You're gonna put your jars in there,
and then you're gonna put the lid on it.
You're gonna turn the heat up to high on your stove,
and then you'll be watching,
turn around this way. [lid clanks]
You'll be watching for steam to come out of that little hole
that you can see on the screen or that you see here.
This is one of the first models that came out,
and it has just one hole, and it's really low-tech.
There's nothing else there.
Some of the newer ones,
and I'm convinced the companies do it
because they can charge more money then.
Some of them have a temperature gauge on the top
as well as a hole on one side and a hole on the opposite side.
So the temperature gauge is a nice,
but totally not necessary factor.
You are going to go by the amount of steam
that's coming out of that little hole.
When the steam comes out and goes straight up,
you know that that dome is filled with steam.
It's time to start counting your processing time.
And you don't have to keep the stove
turned all the way up on the highest level.
You can back it off a little bit as long
as you got a good jet of steam coming up from that hole.
It's steaming and it's still filled with steam.
And in fact, the one drawback of these
is that you can only can for 45 minutes.
In that amount of time,
that inch or so of water will boil off.
Then you have no more steam.
So you couldn't do something
that required an hour and a half processing time.
But pickles, fruits, most tomato products
do not require anything more than 45 minutes.
So you'll be fine to can in there.
And let's see, anything else here?
Oh, yeah, I didn't talk about it before,
but if you live in a very high elevation area,
you do need to adjust your canning time
in a boiling water bath canner.
You do the same adjustment for this steam canner.
So, it works great; I love it.
I will admit that I have not used
my boiling water bath canner since I bought my steam canner.
It's just really that nice.
So it's a great tool.
Then, I promised to tell you
a little bit more about choices in pectin.
And the Ball...
I don't really intend to endorse any one company,
but the Ball company has really worked hard
on coming out with choices in pectin.
So, the box of pectin
that we always used to use called Sure-Jell,
that's equivalent to what they're calling classic pectin.
You can see that on the left in this photograph.
Then, they also make a specific pectin
for freezer jams and jellies and it's called freezer pectin,
and it works so much better than any other of the products
that I've used for freezer jam and jelly.
And then, there's also a low-sugar
or less-sugar-needed pectin.
That's the one on the right of those three containers.
And that one is for cooked jams and jellies,
but it uses much less sugar.
And I just think
that's something consumers have been wanting
and they've met that need.
We think it's a wonderful product in our family.
It jells really well
and it's not so overwhelmingly sweet
like some other jam and jelly products.
But if you really want to can jams
or jellies with no sugar added,
then the Pomona's Universal Pectin
that's on the right in that little box
is a great choice for you.
I've done classes where we've canned jams
and jellies using all of these products
and then compared them.
The Pomona's is maybe a teeny bit more work
in that there's two packets in there.
There's a pectin and a calcium packet.
You have to mix up a little calcium water first
and then you mix your pectin in.
It's like a minute more of work than using a one-dump step.
But it's great because you don't add any added sugar.
But I will say that most of the recipes
call for a cup of apple juice added.
Well, there's quite a bit of sugar in apple juice.
You need sugar to make most pectins work.
So why can't you use just any one of these?
And I will caution you
when you're going to the store to look for them,
read the label carefully.
They keep changing the colors
and the label on here, so don't go by, "Oh, I want the one
with the green cap that Becky mentioned."
No, you want the one that says classic pectin,
if you want the one that's gonna use
the full amount of sugar you're always used to.
Or you want the one that says freezer pectin
if you're doing freezer jams and jellies.
Or you want the reduced or low sugar.
It says less or no sugar needed pectin.
Remember, that's a cooked product.
So, when we did the taste testing of different products,
one lady was just adamant that her family
always was going to want the classic pectin jam and jelly.
That's just what they're used to.
And I thought, "Yep, I know families like that."
They just don't want any change, right?
Somebody else said they really liked the freezer jam
because it tasted more like fresh fruit.
Well, it should; it hasn't been cooked.
And they said it tastes more like fruit
and not so much like sugar.
And that's because there is really
a lot less sugar in that jam.
And then, the Pomona's pectin, we all agreed that
that was quite different to our taste buds.
Really not as sweet.
But, you know, I think if you were diabetic
and you really needed to adjust your diet,
I bet we could all get used to it.
So it's great that we have these choices.
So then the other item that is new is pickle crisp.
The big pickle companies have been using this for years
to make their pickles crisp, and now we can too.
It's calcium chloride.
It's little white crystals.
Comes in a little jar like this,
and you just mix it in with your pickles.
So, the way I would use this,
usually if I'm doing, like, sweet or dill spears,
I pack those in the jar first.
I have my hot brine.
Before I pour that hot brine over it,
then I put the pickle crisp on, so that then the hot brine
will wash that down in amongst all the pickles.
And it just really does make a big difference
in how crisp your pickles are.
When I first started using it,
my kids would come to raid my can cupboard
and they'd say,
"Were you using pickle crisp yet in this year?"
[audience laughing]
I guess that tells you
I have more than one year of pickles in the cupboard, so.
But it makes a big difference, and so take advantage of it.
So, don't harm your family
with some of these unauthorized methods.
We don't do boiling water bath of meats or vegetables.
It's just not safe.
I had a friend tell me one time that she cans venison.
She says, "I've never had a pressure canner.
"I just put it in the boiling water bath
"and I can it for four hours.
What could survive that?"
I said, "Well, anything that isn't killed at 212 degrees,
that's what," [laughing] so yeah, so don't do it.
Don't eliminate the canning step.
I already shared the open kettle method.
That's not approved.
But have you heard of dishwasher canning or oven canning?
I hope not; yeah, I see some heads nodding.
I was judging a young man at a fair one time
and I knew he had more than one exhibit in his bag,
but he brought up one at a time.
So the first one was peaches.
He really knew what he was doing.
He told me how he blanched those peaches
or scalded them to slip off the skins
and they were beautiful,
and I think peaches are a lot of work because of that step,
but he knew how he did it.
So that was great.
Then, he reaches down in the bag,
he brings up his next exhibit, and it was salsa.
And in my mind, I'm thinking, "Ah, salsa's easy
"because you just chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop,
mix it all together, heat it up, put it in the jar."
So, as an icebreaker question, I said,
"So which one of these is easier to do?"
And he says, "Oh," it's harder to do or easier.
Anyway, he said, "Salsa."
I said, "Really?"
He says, "Well, you just chop everything up,
"put it in the jars, and you stick it in the oven,
and bake it for an hour and a half."
Whoa.
I had never actually had anyone admit
that they did oven canning before.
So, my mind is racing.
I think, "Okay, I have to tell this young man
why this is not safe," and here's the explanation.
But as I'm starting to tell him,
I could see his family in the background
leaning in closer and closer to hear this answer.
So, I said, "Hey, is that your folks?
Come on over here, let's all learn together."
When you boil a pot of water, 212 degrees,
just like a canner, would you plunge your arm in there?
Oh, my goodness, no.
But if you heated up an oven to 350 degrees or 400,
I mean, you'd use pot holders to grab the pan,
but your arms are in the oven, you'd reach in and do that.
That dry heat is not nearly as damaging.
It's not as effective, we say, as moist heat.
So that's why we don't advocate oven canning.
That heat doesn't transfer through the jar
and into the product
like a jar that's surrounded by boiling water.
Well, his dad stood there like this
through most of the conversation,
so I'm kind of sure I didn't convince him,
but at least I gave him the facts.
I said, "It's really not a safe method."
And as they left, the last thing I heard was,
"Well, we've been doing it that way for years."
[audience laughing]
And my response to that question always is,
"Then you've been lucky so far."
So there really are good reasons to be safe with this.
So there is a story,
a true story of a woman out in Portland
who was trying to be very economical.
Somebody gave her a whole bunch of green beans
and so she thought, "You know what?
"I can't use these all right away; I'm gonna can these.
I remember my granny canning beans."
And so, she canned 'em in a boiling water bath canner,
and they sat on the shelf for a while.
Then, when she brought them up to use them,
she also remembered
that her granny dumped 'em in a pot on the stove
and boiled them for quite a while before they ate them.
So she opened her the jar and she sniffed 'em
and thought, "Hmm, I don't remember
"what they're supposed to smell like.
Well, let's taste one."
So she ate one bean,
proceeded to dump the rest in the pot on the stove,
and she boiled them for 10 minutes or however long she did,
and the family ate them.
She almost died.
She was in a coma for weeks from botulism poisoning
from eating one bean that had been canned incorrectly.
The rest of the family got sick, but not as sick as she did.
Because how long does it take to boil off the botulism spores?
None of us know.
And so, there really is good science
behind can things this way or can things this way.
So make sure you know the difference.
So correct temperatures are important
because that's going to lead you to decide whether I can do it
in a boiling water bath canner or a pressure canner.
And that red line there about the sealed jar.
If any one of you went home today,
you could have a good hot lid and a hot jar
and pour boiling water on it, put that lid on it,
and turn that lid, and just leave it set on your counter.
It's going to seal.
The temperature difference will make that happen.
A sealed jar just means you have a sealed jar.
The canning process really assures us
that the heat has gotten all the way through the product,
through the center of the jar.
It's raised it to the proper temperature
to kill any bacteria that might be there.
So there's a reason for it.
Here's a little map of Wisconsin that shows the elevation.
I live in Columbia County,
the county right north of Madison there,
and we have very few places in our county
where you have to adjust for elevation.
But this map is available online
at The Learning Store in our canning publications.
So you should know that.
And maybe you do know it already,
whether you live in a hilly area or not.
As you're looking at canning supplies,
thinking, "Where do I get them?"
Fleet Farm, Farm & Fleet, and Ace Hardware stores
generally have really good canning supply selections.
And if you can't find the equipment
and things that you need there, you know there's always online.
So here's a resource that you may run across.
And I'm a big recycler.
So when I first saw these, I thought, "What a great idea."
Reusable canning lids and rings.
They're made in Europe
and it's called reusablecanninglids.com.
Pretty easy.
But you remember the old-fashioned zinc lids
that had a rubber ring around them?
This is really a very similar idea.
[can clinks]
So, a rubber ring, a BPA-free plastic lid.
These are both reusable for about a dozen times.
Now, how are you gonna remember you've used it a dozen times?
You probably should put a little mark
with a Sharpie on there and mark it each time you use it.
But, oh, I know what I wanna say about lids.
That comes back to me now.
You're going to have a hot jar.
Now, these are,
you can't pick these up with that magnet on a stick,
so make sure you keep your fingers off of the rubber
and the thing.
But just put that on the jar...
...like this.
Put the ring on.
So when you're tightening these rings,
and hopefully this one goes on.
I used to think that
I had to crank it down as tight as I could.
Finally, somebody reminded me
that air has to get out somehow, you know,
and so we do need to leave it a little bit loose,
so tighten it until it's fingertip tight and then stop.
And the air will escape as it's being processed.
But then, this lid does not pop down like the metal ones,
you know, that pop that you hear when you know it's sealed.
This one doesn't change in appearance at all.
So to check to see if these are sealed,
wait 'til they're totally cool, take the ring off,
and then just gently lift up on that lid.
And if it comes off, whoops, it's not sealed.
But they're great.
And so, it is a way that you can avoid
having to buy all these lids every year.
The other thing I wanted to say,
and I have to add this in about the rings,
those canning lids.
Besides the fact that they're making the compound thinner
and thinner all the time,
that's why we don't boil them anymore.
We used to boil 'em and leave 'em in simmering water.
Don't do that; it's too hard on the sealing compound.
Then, they went to just put it in boiling water
and shut off the stove.
Now, it's just wash them and keep them on the counter.
I still put 'em in a little bit of warm water.
I think that softens them a little bit,
but don't boil them.
It's too hard on that sealing compound.
So, I hope that you will have fun doing more canning.
I love it.
This is my canning cupboard
at the end of the, maybe middle of the season.
I still have a lot to eat.
So, if you have questions afterwards,
I would be happy to answer them.
But thank you so much for coming today.
[audience applauding]