Canning & Food Preservation

Was my first time canning beans, had a bit of syphoning but otherwise went well!

And this time I'm pretty sure they all sealed! Well this batch. The first batch only had one seal. I'm not sure why they like to siphon. The second batch was also regular mouth instead of wide, so maybe that helped?? Regardless, delicious and even unsealed jars are getting eaten soon!

I have gone a little silly making lots of stocks. This batch was 7 pints, but there's three quarts left in the fridge to reheat and can tomorrow!

The Asian Supermarket has a huge selection of bones. I was expecting to only find oxtails but they had neck and feet as well! And duck feet so my next thing will be duck feet stock! Exciting!

I think 4 of the 5 pint jars have sealed. I'm mentally willing the last to seal lol.

I didn't have quite enough blood oranges so one small regular orange went in there too lol

Really unctuous! Fancy! Exciting!

Pressure canned chili! So far none have popped but mother says that takes longer than water bath canned, so I'll be hopeful! The first batch is out, the second batch is in but not yet canning, just the first steps of venting. This was using FauxPseudo's recipe!

Candied jalapeños my beloved, as family and friends love them so they're good gifts! Also the first use of the electric canner! It worked like a dream. Warmed the jars, went smoothly into fill, heat, cook, and then cool! And so much less steam in the kitchen overall! Amazing.

The big gift this year! Exciting! I've never pressure canned, and this thing is so fancy! It had a jar warming part of the cycle, it has cycles, and it can do water bath canning as well!! I'm excited to try using it after the holidays!

Ten jars this time! All sealed as well, which is nice. For some reason, most years one jar of apple butter just refuses to seal.

Our apple trees were crazy fruitful this year so I decided to try my hand at some apple butter. I'll for sure be making more soon, it's delicious.

I canned more sauce today.

I even set out the lemon juice, but forgot to put it in. I'm blaming it on the wine.

Boiling water bath works well with the tattlers.

My wife bought a rotisserie chicken, so we made stock with the carcass. Its just so good to get 5 liters of stock from what would be garbage. Tattler lids worked well today, only one didn't seal. I don't normally do that well. Easier to get them to seal in a water bath.

60 lbs of tomatoes yielded:

• 10 x 500 mL of sauce
• 19 x 500 mL of crushed tomatoes
• 5 x 500 mL (ish) of crushed tomatoes in freezer bags.

That's all for 2025 ☺️

Bonus photos of the deer watching us toil:

Salsa recipe from Ball canning, called Fresh Salsa. I had never peeled a tomato before. It wasn't as difficult as I feared. Also managed to have enough garden tomatoes I didn't need the backup store tomatoes!

cross-posted from: https://crazypeople.online/post/6674394

Cross posting because someone was asking about preserving meals, and dehydrating is an option that people might not always think about! I'll add more context in a comment.

It's chilli: pinto beans, tvp, mixed veg, tomato sauce, jalapeno, and seasoning. I think the seasonings were salt, celery seeds, veg bullion, chilli powder, cayenne, and cinnamon. I made it in an electric pressure cooker.

I dehydrated it for about 24 hours before I broke it up and stored it in an air tight container.

I don't really cook huge meals so I don't own many large pots. I've currently got that pot in the photo going (with the lid off) as well as the electric pressure cooker (on sauté, lid off) with about half the volume of the epc in the fridge waiting for some of this to reduce.

I do the actual water bath canning in large enamel pots in a propane burner outside. I pressure can indoors (one layer only, in a pressure canner made for glass top/induction) so neither of those are really suitable for sauce making.

Do folks just live with doing things in batches? Should I just accept I could use another large pot I only use once a year?

This is about half of the 60 lbs we are preserving this year. I'm going to blanch and dice some tomatoes using a smaller pot and put those in the fridge to do the cooking step tomorrow for crushed tomatoes while the sauce is in the water bath canner.

I'm also thinking of getting an electric roaster which I can leave on the counter top. I bought a slow cooker at the thrift shop a few years ago but didn't realize they didn't get hot enough to reduce sauce in 🤦‍♀️

I try not to own too much stuff, but I do have the room (in the basement lol).

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/32222343

I finally got around to jamming and canning the black raspberries that grow near me.

I'm eating the skim off, which is probably bad but it's very veery tasty. 5 seem to have popped, I'm hoping the 6th will soon!

Twelve more candied jalapeños are done and sealed. I'm still trying to figure out what else to make. I'm looking at some strawberry lemonade concentrate but I'm unsure how much concentrate to liquid once done. Guess I'll just add water to taste! Apple butter and cranberry things will be in the fall!

Five jars total this year! I hate coring them, silly strawberries! Tastes delicious though. Two jars have popped, so hopefully the rest will as well!

Twelve jars total this year! Only took about two hours including prep of the jalapeños. Many of them are already claimed by family, hopefully I get at least a can for myself XD

Cherries, strawberries, Bananas, apples. So good.

Hi there! Hopefully this is the right place. I tried searching for what this might be and I came up with a lot of different answers.

This is a store bought can of plain tomato sauce, we were making soup. We noticed this white paste on the side of the can, when I poked it it was soft, almost like a thin fat?

Smelled fine, and the sauce looked fine otherwise. But we got nervous and threw it away, afraid of botulism or other nasties. Plus we wanted to finish cooking.

Does anyone know what this is? Some sources said it might be calcium nitrate, but they also say it would be hard and wouldn't break up in your fingers if rolled. This was a paste.

Anyway, just wondering for next time, figured you guys would know. Thanks!