Putting Food By - Janet Greene [44]
Work with only one canner batch at a time. Wash the fruit thoroughly in fresh drinking water, but don’t let it soak. Lift it from the water to allow sediment to settle at the bottom of the wash water. Be extra gentle with berries. Remove stems, hulls, pits, skins, cores as described in instructions for individual fruits. Cut away all soft or bruised spots and any places where skin is broken: such blemishes can spoil your batch.
To Prevent Canned Fruit from Discoloring
Cut apples, apricots, nectarines, peaches, and pears discolor in air. Either coat the cut pieces well as you go along with a solution of 1 teaspoon crystalline ascorbic acid (Vitamin C, the best anti-oxidant) to each 1 cup water; OR drop the pieces in a solution of 2 tablespoons salt and 2 tablespoons vinegar for each 1 gallon of cold water—but not for longer than 20 minutes, lest nutrients leach out too much—then rinse and drain the pieces well before packing Raw or Hot. Optional: to prevent their darkening while in the containers, add ¼ teaspoon Vitamin C to each 1 quart during packing—IF they haven’t been treated with ascorbic acid as they were being prepared. (See more anti-oxidant treatments in Chapter 5.)
And remember: fruit canned with too much headroom or too little liquid will tend to darken at the top of the container.
Packing, Processing, and All the Rest
We refer you to the blow-by-blow General Steps in Canning in the previous chapter instead of offering a quick paraphrase here. Everything in that detailed account applies to packing, processing, checking, and storing jars or cans of fruit.
Each step is essential to successful canning, but if we had to assign a No. 1 priority as most critical for food safety (assuming that the containers are sound and the food is appetizing), it would be adequate processing—meaning full heat for the full time in a Pressure Canner for low-acid foods, or in a B–W Bath for strong-acid ones.
CANNED FRUIT TROUBLES AND WHAT TO DO
The only time you can tinker SAFELY with a container of canned food is during the 24 hours after it comes from the canner and before it is stored away. And then only if you find a faulty seal during this lull. Repack and reprocess the fruit from scratch according to the original instructions, cutting no corners. There of course will be a loss in quality, especially in texture, from doing it over; and if there’s only one poor seal it’s probably simpler to eat the fruit right away or refrigerate it for a day or so, then serve it.
Examples: failing to exhaust the contents of a can to a minimum of 170 F/77 C, or leaving insufficient headroom in jars (the latter can cause bits of food to be forced out during the processing period, with resulting poor seals). Heat the food—exhausting if in cans, or as Hot pack—in clean containers, with fresh, new lids/sealers, and reprocess for the full time. However, several poor seals warn you that something was dangerously wrong with your packing or processing, and the failure is likely to affect the whole batch.
Failing to keep at least 2 inches of boiling water over the tops of the containers, and not keeping the water in the canner at a full boil from beginning to end of the processing period—both are fairly common causes of loss of liquid in the jars, and poor seals. Repack in clean containers with fresh, new lids or sealers, and reprocess for the full time.
But, if after the containers have been stored away, you find any of the following, DESTROY THE CONTENTS SO THAT THEY CANNOT BE EATEN BY PEOPLE OR ANIMALS. Then give a 15-minute soak for containers and closures in a 1:9 household bleach solution, discarding all closures except sound all-glass lids for bail-type jars, and discard all cans, metal lids, or rubber rings. If sound, the jars may be used again.
• Broken seals, bulging lids on cans.
• Seepage around the seal, even though it seems firmly seated.
• Mold, even a fleck, in the contents or around the seal or on the underside of the lid.
• Gassiness (small bubbles) in the contents.
• Spurting liquid,