Putting Food By - Janet Greene [81]
Modern straight-sided ½-pint and pint canning jars in perfect condition, their two-piece screwband lids ditto. Do not use old-fashioned bailed jars for canning fish or shellfish.
Inexpensive styrofoam chest(s) in which to hold fish on ice.
Hose or sprayer connected to your sink’s drinking-water tap, for washing fish or shellfish.
Fish-scaler.
Small wire brush for scrubbing shells, etc.
Big crocks or enameled or stainless steel vessels for soaking fish in salted water to remove blood from the tissues (dishpans will do).
Large enameled or stainless steel kettle for boiling shellfish, treating crabmeat, etc., to a mild salt/acid “blanch,” or steaming open clams (your B–W Bath kettle is fine).
Special blunt knife for opening clams (if you shuck them raw).
Wire basket or rack for steaming.
Shallow pans with perforated bottoms that will fit inside your Pressure Canner (for the so-called “tuna pack”).
General Handling—Plus Reasons Why
From the sources mentioned earlier, and others, we have compiled the following stipulations, which must be followed by everyone who undertakes to can fish or shellfish at home.
All seafood must be processed in a regular Pressure Canner for the full long time required, and at the pressure given (which of course is corrected for altitudes higher than 1000 feet). If the pressure drops below the recommended level at any time during the processing period, for safety’s sake you must raise the pressure to the correct number of pounds, and start retiming as if you were starting the entire processing period from scratch.
Reason: the average natural acidity of seafood is so low that it flirts with Neutral on the pH scale (see Chapter 2). Therefore, constant pressure for the full time is needed if enough heat is to penetrate the dense pack, thus destroying dangerous bacteria.
Use only modern jars, manufactured for home-canning under pressure, that have two-piece screwband lids. And use only ½-pint or pint jars (preferably straight-sided ones so the contents can slip out easily).
Reasons: for seafood—or all home-canned products—it doesn’t make sense to use makeshifts, or old-style jars and closures, or any other containers that have not been tested under the conditions required for safety by independent food scientists, and OK’d. As for the two-piece screwband lids, the flat metal discs indicate, by having snapped down to be concave, that you have obtained a proper seal. And finally, adequate processing cannot be assured for jars larger than 1 pint—or larger than ½-pint for certain fish or shellfish.
(We recommend against cans for home-processing of seafood: (1) the correct sizes—like the commercial ones—are different from the cans used for other foods in this book; and (2) especially with the meat of lobsters and crabs, parchment-paper liners are usually needed to make an attractive product.)
All home-canned fish must be exhausted to a minimum of 170 F/77 C at the center of the packed jar before it is Pressure-processed.
Reason: before actual processing begins, we must drive air from the tissues of raw fish as well as from the pack to help ensure the seal and to prevent unwanted shrinkage of the food during processing. Fish in the so-called “tuna pack”—i.e., fully precooked—are cooled completely before packing; these packs also must be exhausted. (The completely precooked, and picked, meat of lobsters, crab, shrimp, and clams is not exhausted when packed in small jars.)
Exhausting jars of fish is done best in the Pressure Canner at Zero pounds. Place filled jars on the rack in the bottom of the canner and pour hot water around them until it comes halfway up their sides. Lay the cover on and leave the vent open. Turn the heat up high, and when you hear the water boiling hard inside the canner and steam flows strongly in a steady stream from the vent—indicating that the temperature has reached 212 F/100 C inside (see Correcting for Altitude, in Chapter 3,