Putting Food By - Janet Greene [24]
Wide-mouth funnel for filling jars.
Jar-lifter.
Food mill, for puréeing (or a blender or food processor).
Sieve or strainer.
Colander, for draining.
Large measuring cups, and measuring spoons.
Muslin bag, for straining juices.
Plenty of clean, dry pot holders, dish cloths, and towels.
Long-handled fork.
Household scales.
Large trays.
If you’re looking for a new cookstove and like the idea of a double-oven range whose upper oven partly overhangs the cooking-top, check the clearance above the burners before you buy. Some models don’t have room for a really big double boiler—much less a canner tall enough to process quart jars on the back or front burners.
THE BOILING-WATER BATH
The Boiling–Water Bath has limitations: it is suitable only for canning strong-acid foods—vinegared things, and fruits, which include tomatoes—and for “finishing” pickles, relishes, etc., and cooked sweet fruit garnishes like jams on through butters to conserves. With such foods, the B–W Bath does these things if it is used correctly:
• In raw or blanched (just partly precooked) strong-acid foods, it destroys yeast and molds and the bacteria that cannot live at the temperatures reached in the middle of the containers of food. Thus it deals with the food, as well as all inner parts of the containers that could have got contaminated by air-borne spoilers while waiting to be filled and capped.
• Drives out the air naturally present in the tissues of the foods and in the canning liquid (air bubbles trapped in the container as it was filled are removed before capping). Air can prevent a perfect seal and permit spoilage.
• Creates a vacuum that enables the jars to seal themselves. (As we’ll see, cans are sealed by hand after the air in the food’s tissues and in the added liquid is exhausted.)
The B–W Bath Canner
It is round, usually made of heavy enameled ware (also called “granite” ware or stainless steel).
It must have a cover.
It has a rack to hold containers off the bottom of the kettle, thus letting boiling water circulate under them as they process. PFB prefers a simple rack in place, because of cranky experiences with the folding-basket racks that allow filled jars to bump each other.
There are many B–W Bath canners offered for sale, and it should be easy to get one that’s right—but often it isn’t.
It’s Got to Be Deep Enough
The most popular sizes are billed as 21-quart and 33-quart, and PFB uses both of them. These capacities actually mean loose contents; which is fair enough, since the labels also say, of the respective sizes, “7-jar rack” and “9-jar rack.”
But this 7-jar/9-jar bit is not fair, because the reasonable inference is that they hold 7 pints or quarts, or 9 pints or quarts, and even the 33-quart one is not deep enough to process quart jars correctly—meaning, for our money, safely. Before you shop for canners, whether at a store or online, be sure that you know the height of your jars, and then check it against the depth of the canner.
Here’s the arithmetic. Starting at the bottom of the 33-quart canner, you should have ¾ to 1 inch between the holding rack and the bottom of the kettle—call it 1 inch for simplicity. Then you must have between 1 and 2 inches of boiling water covering the tops of your containers: 2 is better, so call it 2. Now you have 3 inches accounted for.
Then you must have a minimum of 1 more inch of “boiling room” between the bubbling surface of the water and the rim of the kettle. If you don’t, the briskly boiling water will keep slopping out onto your stove-top and drenching the well of your heating element (making a mess even if it doesn’t extinguish a gas flame, and offering a temptation to reduce your boil to a polite, and inadequate, simmer). Be cagey and remember that the close-fitting cover on your canner will increase its tendency to slop over: allow 1½ inches for headroom to boil in. Now you have 4½ inches—and your containers haven’t even gone in yet.
The cutaway drawing shows the room needed above jar tops for correct processing