Putting Food By - Janet Greene [63]
Hot pack only, in jars. Fill clean, hot jars with the very hot juice, leaving ½ inch of headroom; adjust lids. Process in a Boiling–Water Bath—35 minutes for either pints or quarts. Remove jars, complete seals if using bailed jars.
• Adjustment for my altitude_________________.
Hot pack only, in R-enamel or white enamel cans. Fill to the top with boiling juice, leaving no headroom; seal (juice already 170 F/77 C or above doesn’t need further exhausting). Process in a B–W Bath (212 F/100 C) for 45 minutes for either No. 303 or No. 401 cans. Remove cans; cool quickly.
• Adjustment for my altitude_________________.
9
Canning Vegetables
Anyone who has the enterprise to can vegetables at home surely has the good sense to want to can them safely. Because all fresh natural (as opposed to pickled) vegetables are low-acid, they MUST be processed in a regular Pressure Canner. And no shortcuts, no skimping.
The outbreaks of food-borne botulism have fallen off from their peak in the mid-1970s, when hundreds of thousands of Americans were discovering canning, but still at least 90 percent of the traceable sources of this dreaded type of poisoning are laid to home-canned low-acid food. And inadequate processing is the cause named in virtually every case investigated by public-health teams.
The spores of C. botulinum—and it’s the spores that make the toxin, remember—can survive 5 hours or more of boiling at 212 F/100 C, even though the vegetative form of the bacterium is much more fragile. Therefore anything less than adequate Pressure-processing is a monstrous gamble. People who count on getting away with processing natural vegetables in a Boiling–Water Bath are playing for stakes too high.
CONVERSIONS FOR CANNING VEGETABLES
Do look at the conversions for metrics, with their workable roundings-off, and for altitude—both in Chapter 3—and apply them.
YIELDS IN CANNED VEGETABLES
Since the legal weight of a bushel of vegetables differs among states, the weights given below are average; the yields are approximate.
Equipment for Canning Vegetables
All the utensils and standard kitchen furnishings that you used for fruits will do, with two exceptions:
(1) Use only a standard Pressure Canner for processing. In Chapter 6, “Canning Methods,” we went on record as not liking pressure cookers much for canning: here we say a flat “don’t” when the food is low-acid and higher altitude is a factor. These pots simply are too small to trust for psig’s and times needed to make food safe. THEY CAN RUN DRY.
(2) You will need a blanching or steaming basket or some other means of holding prepared vegetables loosely in boiling water for the partial precooking in Hot pack. Blanching may be done in a microwave oven or in steam, but it is handier to precook in boiling water, which you can then use as the canning liquid—thereby saving nutrients.
Canned-Vegetable Troubles and What to Do
If you find in your vegetables any of the following, destroy the contents so that they cannot be eaten by people or animals. Wash containers and closures vigorously as described in Chapter 6. Throw away the cans, lids, sealing discs, and rubber rings; if sound, the jars may be used again.
• Broken seal.
• Bulging cans.
• Seepage around the seal.
• Mold, even a speck, in the contents or around the seal or on the underside of the lid.
• Gassiness (small bubbles) in the contents.
• Spurting liquid, pressure from inside the container as it is opened.