Food Safety Feature Articles
Prevent problems with your home-canned foods
Tammy Roberts, MS, RD, LD, Nutrition and Health Education Specialist, Barton County University of Missouri Extension
With the rise in cost of food at the grocery store people are looking for ways to conserve their food dollars. Many of those people have decided to make bigger gardens and start canning their produce, but there is nothing more disappointing than to find problems with your food when you want to use them. Here are a few tips to help prevent small problems with your home-canned foods:
- Follow instructions for preparation of the lid
flats. Most of the new flats do not require that you
boil them before putting them on the jars. You do
need to warm them in hot water but not boil. Boiling
these flats can cause the jar not to seal.
- Tighten bands only to thumb tightness. Making
bands too tight can cause the flats to buckle and
not seal. Not having extremely tight bands may mean
that the rings will be loose when you take the jars
out of the canner. The jars and lids are extremely
hot at that point. Tightening the ring can cause the
sealing compound to be pushed aside so that metal is
touching glass making it impossible for the jar to
seal.
- Once jars are removed from the canner, allow
them to set for 12-24 hours. Moving the jars can
cause the jars not to seal.
- Sometimes liquid is lost in the jars during the canning process. When this happens, the food is still safe but will deteriorate quickly so should be used as soon as possible. Some causes for loss of liquid are: A. Packing the jars too full or not leaving enough headspace. B. Pressure fluctuating too much from turning the temperature up and down too much or if the canner is not vented properly. The canner should be vented for 10 minutes before putting the weight on to allow pressure to build. C. Lowering pressure too suddenly. This happens when you try to speed up the cooling process of the canner at the end of the processing time by running water over it.
Canning garden produce takes a lot of time and effort. Hopefully, these tips will help assure that your produce will be ready and when you need it.
Last update:
Friday, August 22, 2008
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