Simplified Home Canning

Simplified home canning

Joseph Parish

In the last few articles we have discussed the bare basics of food preservation and it is now time to engage in some serious canning processes. Let’s pretend that we are now standing in the kitchen and glancing at some pretty good-looking vegetables that have been previously picked from our garden. It would be a serious mistake to let all this good food go to waste so our goal will be to can each and every one of them.

Our initial task will be to check our list and ensure that the food we want to can is one which is acceptable to that sort of food preservation. In this hypothetical situation we will can freshly picked tomatoes. Although we know that we are able to successfully can this product we will check with a Google search to ensure that it is able to be done as planned. If we pay close attention when performing this step we will also pick up a few vital tips on how to do this selected vegetable.

Since our tomatoes possess a high acidic content we can safely water bath them without fear of becoming ill. I remember as a youngster my parents canning tomatoes each and every year. It was like a ritual in our home. My mother would frequently open a quart Mason jar in the middle of winter to prepare some home-made tomato sauce. That pasta never tasted better.

To begin our session we take approximately 20 lbs of fresh tomatoes from our garden. This may seem like a lot but do not be fooled as twenty pounds of tomatoes will only yield 7 quarts. In addition, it will take about seven good size tomatoes to fill a one quart jar. I will not gp into the details of the particular recipe at this time as every family has their own “Top secret Recipe”. What I will concern myself with is the procedure that should be followed.

Our first task should be to assemble all our necessary tools to accomplish the job. We have the tomatoes so now we need some lemon juice, plain water, your water bath canner, a medium size pot to scald your tomatoes in, a medium size pot to heat up water in, a small pot for sanitizing the lids, canning jars of the desired size, associated rings and lids, a jar grabber, lid lifter, jar funnel and an assortment of ladles and large spoons.