As this was my first water-bath canning attempt, I was pretty nervous about keeping everything sterile lest something went wrong, but it all turned out.
The steps are pretty easy:
1. Prepare what you want to can
2. Boil water in the canning pot
3. transfer your food to warm mason jars
4. boil filled mason jars for the specified amount of time (by recipe)
5. Remove from the canner and let cool for 12-24 hours
6. Test the seals
The first thing I tried was apple sauce. I found a tasty recipe, and then canned two jars. That was super easy, and the apple sauce I made tasted much better than the applesauce I've bought in the past. Although the recipe was great, next time I would use even less sugar and cinnamon because the sweetness was a little overpowering.
Next I made a big huge batch of salsa. I love salsa, and I usually make my own anyway, so it made sense for salsa to be my next attempt. The salsa I normally make is fresh with lots and lots of bell peppers, tomatoes, and onions. Because of the type of canning I'm doing, my recipe is not safe to can. So I looked through the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving magazine (which I totally recommend!) for a salsa recipe. There were many, but I picked, "spicy tomato salsa" found on p. 82. I just had some, and it is delicious. Spicy, but delicious. If you like Tostitos Chunky Salsa, but wouldn't mind if it was quite a bit hotter, than you would like this.
If this recipe doesn't sound good to you, you can easily find another one on-line. Many colleges put out water-bath canning safe salsa recipes (example).In the end, I'm super happy I learned to do this. It's not hard (although it does make for a hot kitchen), and it's a great way to keep food that you have no immediate use for from going to waste.
Up next: the peaches I bought at the farmer's market yesterday.
3 comments:
are you going to make peach preserves? I am going to attempt jalepeno jelly this weekend. Ill let you know how it goes.
My dad never puts sugar in his applesauce. While there is a little something special, it isn't sugar...
katie - I was planning to just can peach slices, but I'm going over to a family thing tonight and am bringing the peaches...not sure I'll have enough left to can!
Danielle - no sugar? yeah, I only put 1/4 a cup in (10 apples) and it was too much, so maybe next time I'll leave it out altogether, although I would think I would need something to cut the cinnamon (which I'm not willing to leave out). I'll have to play around with it.
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