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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I opened one of my jars of boysenberry jam and found this: TBH, I can't tell from the picture. It might just be a bit of solids separating from liquids. OTOH, the cardinal rule of home canning is - If you're not sure DON'T EAT IT! It's only one jar of the batch, the rest might still be fine. Do you check the seal on each jar before you open it?
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Oct 18, 2018 23:13
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Very cool, thank you! Even if I never work with koji myself I'll be looking at the shelves differently the next time I'm in my favourite Asian grocery store.
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Jan 17, 2019 19:11
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My favourite (lazy) method: Wash fruit, pit, freeze in a single layer on a cookie sheet. When frozen package in a zip-loc bag and throw it in the freezer. Place a handful of frozen or microwaved cherries on cereal, pancakes, or in a bowl with heavy cream over top (my cholesterol is fine, thanks for asking). If you want to go the jam route you'll need pectin if you want jam instead of syrup. The University of Georgia National Center for Home Food Preservation has a lot of really good basic information on heating fruit or any other food and putting it in bottles without poisoning yourself. There's also freezer jams if you don't want to futz with canning jars. I use a variant of this recipe from Ball/Kerr for low sugar jams. I'm pretty sure this recipe is also on the insert found inside packages of Ball low sugar pectin. The raspberry jam it makes is insanely good. In our local grocery and hardware stores no sugar pectin is found with the canning supplies.
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Jun 30, 2019 08:09
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Rotten Red Rod posted:4 teaspoons dill (should I be using dill weed or dill seed?) Pretty sure that's dried dill foliage. I'm a traditionalist and only use fresh dill in pickles. Not sure how to convert from "grab a handful" to teaspoons. I think I might try that pickled onion recipe if my garden produces well - just had enough for cooking last year.
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Jul 5, 2019 22:13
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Rotten Red Rod posted:Yeah, but they don't exactly have that at most supermarkets. I figure I'll have to hit a farmer's market to find any fresh (or grow it myself). The supermarkets here sell fresh dill, which is good because the drat stuff keeps dying on me. I had some growing in the herb garden but I think the other Rotten Red Rod posted:Edit: I was lamenting I couldn't show off the onions since I'm posting from work, but I just remembered I have some in my lunch, so here you go; pickling porn! That looks delicious! I will definitely try pickling onions this summer, even if I have to buy them.
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Jul 5, 2019 23:11
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Crusty Nutsack posted:No, most pickles use dill seeds. Fronds (dried or fresh) won't hurt anything, of course, but you get much stronger flavor from the seeds. When you buy big bunches of fresh dill from the farmer's markets specifically for pickles, you get the stuff that's already bloomed and gone to seed. Those big dandelion-like tops are what you use for canning, not the delicate fronds. Interesting. That's not what the stores were selling here - I can confirm from yesterday's lunch that the dill in our pickles from last summer is just vegetation, no seed heads. I'll have to try the seed heads this year for comparison.
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Jul 6, 2019 17:22
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DreamingofRoses posted:Has anyone here tried the Tattlers reusable lids? If so, what do you think of them? Not yet, but I plan to give them a try. As long as they let you test each jar before opening the same way you do regular lids I don't see a problem. My mother (who grew up on a farm and suffered food poisoning from improperly canned food) taught me to tap the lid with a spoon listening for a "ping", then listen for the hiss of inrushing air as the lid is pried off. If the spoon tap makes a "thump", there's little or no vacuum under the lid (or, God forbid, a spurt of pressure), or the lid comes off with very little resistance out it goes, no questions or second-guessing. We can about 150 jars of whatnot a fall and most of the seal failures are spotted while the jars are cooling down. We have 1 or 2 jars a winter where the lid falls off when we go to use it but there are no obvious signs of spoilage. Doesn't matter, they get buried in the compost heap. AnonSpore posted:This is probably a really silly question, but if I've used a jar for something non-canning related (I filled them with stock and froze them for convenience) is it safe to use the lids for canning later on, or should I toss the lids just to be safe? I doubt anyone has looked at the issue close enough to give you a definitive answer. No manufacturer is going to stick their neck out and give the go-ahead for this and it's not something that people do often enough for a university extension to run a definitive study on. The answer's going to vary anyway from manufacturer to manufacturer depending on the characteristics of the type of rubber used and and whether it takes a set from just the pressure of a screw band and the cold in the freezer, potentially screwing up its ability to seal a second time. Way too complicated. Probably a better way to look at it is: what's a jar of product worth to you? Catch a bad seal in the cool-down phase and you're forced to use the product immediately (when your fridge is already full of fresh product) or go through the hassle of re-processing it with a new lid. If it fails during the winter you're out the time and money to produce a litre of product. $0.20cdn for a new lid is one less thing to potentially go wrong and even fresh-out-of-the-box lids sometimes fail. Having said that, I have a set of canning lids I re-use to vacuum seal jars of dehydrated fruit and dried beans. They're marked so I don't use them for anything else. If a seal fails ndb, the dried fruit is still safe to eat but might taste a bit stale.
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Jul 9, 2019 06:55
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If you're not sure, into the fridge with it. No point second-guessing your way into botulism.
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Jul 21, 2019 02:19
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AnonSpore posted:I'm quickly learning that's the default answer to every "is this okay" question. Thanks! It's something I have to remind myself of every canning season - "I think that dull sound is caused by product floating up against the lid, I didn't hear it seal but the lid looks slightly depressed, maybe..." Then I grab myself by the scruff of the neck and put the jar in the fridge.
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Jul 21, 2019 16:25
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What temperature are you dehydrating at? I've dehydrated serranos and jalepenos at 115 - 120 F and it wasn't a problem. Could be I just got lucky though.
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Aug 3, 2019 07:03
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Bird in a Blender posted:The brine had been sitting for probably 5 minutes before I started filling jars. I’ve used the jars a lot for various stuff over the years, so a tiny chip or crack is a possibility. Maybe I’ll stick to using new jars from now on. My wife had the bottom fall out of a jar of blackberries yesterday.  Given how clean the crack is I'm leaning towards the thermal shock explanation. The blackberries came straight out of the fridge and were cold packed into hot jars, but I'm sure you could also get a stress crack started by pouring hot water into cold jars when you're cleaning/sterilizing them. The only new jars we've ever bought were a half dozen 2 litre jars last year for feeding bees and pickling. The rest have been inherited from older family members and I suspect some of the jars might go back to the 1950s - 1960s. Out of a couple of hundred jars we lose the bottom out of one every couple of years or so.
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Aug 6, 2019 19:07
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NuclearEagleFox!!! posted:When water bath canning, should the jars be submerged during either boiling step? Most recipes say to "cover in 1-2 inches of boiling water" before the food is added and after you put on the lids. Does this mean only put 1-2 inches of water in the pot or to actually fill the pot until the water line is 1-2 inches above the tops of the jars? For boiling water bath, 1-2 inches above the top of the jars. You want to avoid uneven heating of the product. Pressure canning is a different beast, in that case you only use 2-3 inches around the base of the jars. Once your jars are in and you're ready to go you have to bring the canner up to boiling and let it vent for ten minutes. A mixture of air and steam won't reach as high a temperature for a given pressure as pure steam, so the air has to go. At 10 psi steam alone is around 240 degrees F. This is probably why you want your jars covered in a boiling water bath - boiling water alone is a lot more predictable than a mixture of water, steam, and air.
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Aug 8, 2019 21:25
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I was doing some research trying to figure out what the problem is with canning wild mushrooms (official advice is DON'T) and I came across this little gem from the University of Alaska: Canning Walrus in Pint Jars I wonder how many pallets of pints it takes to can a walrus.
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Aug 12, 2019 19:27
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HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:Best way to preserve safe to eat wild mushrooms is dried or frozen. Frozen to me would make them limp and slimy, so I dry mine. I've got a batch in the dehydrator now to see how they fare. Looks promising so far. They're not actually wild, they're Stropharia (Garden Giant/Winecap) mushrooms I cultivated in woodchips. I had a comment in the gardening thread that the problem is unknown microorganisms riding in on wild mushrooms vs. cultivated mushrooms growing on sterilized media. The university extension sites I use for canning advice just refer to only canning meadow mushrooms, nothing about whether your meadow mushrooms/Agaricus need to be cultivated in a controlled environment. I'm curious now. I'm going to keep reading while the dehydrator runs.
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Aug 13, 2019 00:35
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These pictures are making me sad. My (very small) hot pepper crop failed last summer. Really disappointing since one of the plants was one I stumbled upon in a garden shop labeled as a sriracha pepper. I was really curious about what it might turn out to be. Ah well, I'll try again this spring and this time (Gaia willing) there will be flaming butthole fermentation happening. Also managed to screw up my fall daikon radishes. Fortunately the kimchi was still delicious even after some substitution. Not sure how you can fail at growing daikons. They're really dead-nuts simple.
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Jan 30, 2020 05:00
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:That reminds me -- any recommendations for pressure canners? Basically all I see online is conflicting opinions. I'd love to be able to can my own beef stew and chili and have easy homemade meals for when I'm feeling lazy. If you want to get serious and can afford it, an All American. Build like tanks, parts readily available, reliable as hell, and once you know how to set your stove they hold pressure very precisely. No lid gasket is a nice extra.
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May 8, 2020 00:47
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Thanks for the recommendations; that's the second I've seen for the American. Like you said, it's pricey, but if it lasts for a decade or more then it could well be worth it. Ours came into the family in the 1980s when it was purchased second hand. Only thing it's ever needed was the gauge replaced. TooMuchAbstraction posted:My impression of what you can preserve in pressure canners is basically, no dairy or fatty food, no grains, no squash, pretty much everything else is fair game though it might end up mushy. Is that accurate? Obviously stick to the FDA-approved recipes as much as possible. Pretty much. Pumpkins and winter squash are fine as long as they're not pureed or mashed. We pressure can our Small Sugar pumpkin crop for pies and dog food (she gets a tablespoon each meal for digestive issues). Winter squash keeps insanely well sitting in boxes in the back of a store room so we've never tried canning them. We stick closely to canning recommendations from the USDA and university extension departments. The exception has been the Garden Giant mushrooms we canned last year. Since I had cultivated the spawn I figured they should be considered domestic rather than wild even though they aren't Agaricus. So far I'm still alive and they're delicious.
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May 9, 2020 07:09
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:My go-to uses for loose jams like that are mixed into plain yogurt, and as a topping on pancakes / French toast, instead of using syrup. Absolutely this. Also smoothies/turbocharged milkshakes, or a topping for porridge or cereal.
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Jul 1, 2020 18:16
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Flaggy posted:I am looking to can some spaghetti sauce / pizza sauce, is it ok to can it with basil and olive oil in it? Also, does anyone have a good recipe for canned spaghetti sauce? This is my go-to recipe for spaghetti sauce. It includes a 1/4 cup of oil in a 9 pint recipe. While I'm fairly anal about following canning recipes I do adjust seasonings and basil is one of the things I include. TooMuchAbstraction posted:Made apricot jam today, and didn't get the foaming under control. When I pulled the jars out of the hot water bath I could see/hear air escaping, and the jars were "full" of jam and foam (i.e. no section of air at the top of the jar). I'm guessing that the foam somehow prevented air from escaping until I disturbed the jars. They're all vacuum-sealed now, but I'm not sure that I trust that seal. Jars often (usually?) continue to boil and vent after you pull them out of the boiling water. It can take 5-10 minutes and sometimes longer before they cool down enough to pull a vacuum and seal with that satisfying "ping" of a job well done. If your lids ping when you tap them with a spoon and don't come off with a bit of finger pressure they should be fine. There's some concern that excess foaming creates too much headspace that will spoil more readily over time. Not sure that anyone has actually observed it. Might just be something to worry about when cleaning out your grandmother's twenty year old canning hoard. We use a little butter to keep foaming down. Good results so far, and easier than skimming. Taiwanese Cabbage came ready last week, so it's Kimchi Time! Somehow the daikon crop failed. The seeds either didn't germinate or germinated and immediately formed a pencil-thin woody root and bolted. I had to buy daikon from the store. I'm so ashamed. Probably screwed up the ferment as well. Instead of pre-fermenting the cabbage in brine before adding the other ingredients I used the same technique I use for sauerkraut - kneading the cabbage in salt until it forms its own brine. The pre-ferment went well but the rest of the ingredients seem to be taking a while to get going again. Ah well, there are some Early Jersey volunteer cabbages by the fence forming heads so I can try again in a couple of weeks if this doesn't work. 
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Jul 18, 2020 16:11
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Puppy Doll posted:I've just made my first ever marmalade, with meyer lemons! I don't think I sliced the rind thin enough, though, and am now second-guessing myself after reading you shouldn't can on glass-top stoves. Is it alright if the water still came to a rolling boil? My understanding is that the problem with canning on glass-tops is an increased risk of cracking the top due to the weight of a large canner and uneven heating underneath it. If the glass-top is induction it simply won't work with aluminum canners. Not sure about granite-ware. Probably get a lot of literal crack-pinging going on as the enamel pops off. As long as your jars were under a rolling boil for the required amount of time whatever was heating them shouldn't matter.
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Jul 20, 2020 18:27
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That's been my experience as well. Maybe a few ads/notices in Craigslist and social media that you're looking for jars? People would rather give them to someone who will use than send them to "recycling" knowing they're just going to be turned back to sand. The thrift stores here always have jars at a fraction of the new price. Selection might be a bit thin during canning season. The only time I've bought new was when I needed some 2 litre jars for feeding my bees. You don't see those very often on the second hand market. They make excellent kimchi jars when the bees aren't using them. e: GnarlyCharlie4u posted:e; nevermind facebook was a terrible idea. People want more than what the grocery store charges. what?  Must be some sort of artisinal vintage hipster thing going on. Hexigrammus fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Jul 23, 2020 |
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Jul 23, 2020 15:55
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Wide Mouth lids have just had a price jump - up to $5 cdn a dozen now. I've been switching over to standard anyway because a dollar store in town usually has standard Ball lids for $2 a dozen. Unfortunately some things just work better in Wide Mouth jars. I might have to take a closer look at Tattler lids.
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Jul 23, 2020 18:52
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Not sure who recommended the large heavy duty pots at Costco last year - they rock! I hope the volume scale on the inside lasts. Makes life a lot simpler not having to guess how many jars you need to prepare for your apple juice. One of the dollar stores near us has been carrying standard mason Bernardin lids for less than half the price of anyone else. The boxes look like normal Bernardin boxes except for the dollar store price pre-printed in one corner. Out of several dozens we've had three defective lids, two that weren't enamaled completely and one with this weird rolled edge. Still a good deal, but we have to examine every lid now before it goes in the hot water bath. It would suck to seal a jar of pickles with an unprotected lid.  The Walrus posted:Filling up your oven with sauce filled pots to help reduce and add umami roasted flavour is such a good tip I highly highly recommend it That's an interesting idea, arriving just as our tomatoes are finally coming ripe. I really liked the tomatillos we roasted before freezing a couple of years ago.
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Sep 10, 2020 23:27
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Anjow posted:I've had good results canning this tomato sauce using Mason jars which I boiled for half an hour once they were filled. It's the only thing I've ever done like that. Would this Bolognese sauce work? Or does the meat content make it behave differently? Any recipe more complicated than "just tomatoes, salt, and lemon juice" needs a pressure canner, not a boiling water bath. You're risking botulism, especially with meat. You can get away with boiling water baths, sometimes for years, until you don't. You need to follow tested recipes, ones that have been balanced for pH.
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Jan 15, 2021 17:06
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Generally after the freezer is the microwave though. Plastic doesn’t do well in the microwave and we made a decision to get away from it when we went to have kids. I might start doing that too - we'd like reduce our plastic use as much as possible. It would be a good use for our extra wide mouth jars. We use the standards first because the lids are significantly cheaper. I imagine a freezer only lid identified with a felt pen could be re-used for a long time. Just need to find a felt pen whose ink will survive the dishwasher and we're good to go.
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Jan 20, 2021 16:13
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effika posted:Lab Sharpies work better than regular sharpies, but the physical scraping by the dish detergent still wears it away with time. Wish I'd known about those when I was actually working in a lab, they would have been handy.
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Jan 21, 2021 03:34
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The only canning lids we have in the shops here are Bernardin, and only in Gem and standard Mason with occasional shortages of those as well. It's probably been close to a year since I've seen Wide Mouth. Fortunately I stocked up on Standards over the last three years as the Dollar Store gets cheap lots in. This situation is doing nothing to disabuse me of my doomer prepper fantasies. In desperation I ordered a couple of sets of Tattler re-usable lids to test out before canning season gets serious. So far, so good, they've been sealing better than regular metal lids. Only complaint is that you can't just write on the lids you have to apply separate labels. Oh, and apparently you have to be diligent about following instructions if you want them to seal. We had a good year for cherries - the June heat wave kept the birds hiding in the woods and they didn't start hitting the trees until we'd already started harvesting. We ended up with 48 litres + several bags frozen and a couple of cannisters of dried cherries. We're ready for Armageddon now. As long as we have cherries I can face my maker. 
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Aug 7, 2021 16:16
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Canadian Tire had half a case of wide mouth mason lids yesterday. Nothing else on the shelves, no Gems or standards, and "Limit 4 per customer" signs on every bay. Still though, haven't seen WMM in any store here for close to a year. Bought four boxes, went to another store, came back and bought another four. I think I might be the Canadian version of a sociopath.
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Aug 14, 2021 20:44
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City of Glompton posted:i canned some peach halves for the first time today, and when i was getting ready to remove the last two jars from the waterbath, both of them had some air bubbles blub blub blub beside them, making me think that rings were too loose and water got in? if that is what happened, how bad is that? the jars did seal. i'm assuming that the water would just dilute the syrup? That's just the juice inside the jars continuing to boil. The effect is even more pronounced with pressure canners - the jars are sitting on the counter cheerfully bubbling away 10 minutes after they've been pulled out of the canner.
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Sep 14, 2021 22:47
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A bear moved into the neighbourhood and has been harvesting unpicked fruit trees so we stopped procrastinating and picked our winter apples. Not great varieties but we're set for soft mulled cider and juice for canning other fruit next summer. 48 litres and only one lid didn't seal.   We've been using reusable Tattler lids on wide mouth mason jars for the last couple of summers. So far the failure rate isn't any worse than conventional metal lids so we'll probably start switching standard masons over to the plastic lids. Other than needing to carefully follow instructions the only problem we've run into is a few jars that have a threaded neck that's slightly shorter than most. Not much, but just enough to prevent them from torquing down properly. They're pretty obvious when you're doing the initial tightening once you know what to look for. Short threaded neck on the left under a metal lid. 
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Nov 9, 2022 17:00
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My wife was watching me this weekend make kefir while she was making yogurt: "Uhh, you're not measuring anything?" "Nope. Dump a bunch of milk into the fermentation jar, throw in the kefir grains, cap it off and put it in a dark cupboard for a day or two. This stuff is barely domesticated."
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Apr 5, 2023 03:30
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Oh man, I want one of those. Hoping for a major cabbage harvest this year.
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Jun 20, 2023 18:11
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