Tips on canning your Summer Harvest
Regina Murphy
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Marcia Hermesch is a music teacher at West Elementary in Wamego. She has been canning since 4-H days since her mid-teens, and has grown her own garden for at least 10 years.
Last year, she put up close to 40 quarts of green beans, and had so many tomatoes she had to freeze them when she ran out of jars.
Marcia is a member of the Eagle Creek Extension unit in Lyon County and a regular competitor in the Lyon County Fair (last year she landed three sweepstakes and a passel of blue ribbons). Her husband Doug and their sons Ben, 9, and Sam, 6, all help with planting and picking, and the boys get to push the buttons on the food processor!
“I learned how to can through one of the best canners in Lyon County, and that’s Ruth Hammond, When I was a teenager she’d have us over at her house at six a.m. picking vegetables, and we had a good time canning.” Marcia says when she cans, she always thinks of Ruth and asks herself: “What would Ruth do?”
Marcia recommends her Canning Bible: “The Ball Blue Book.” She’s seen it at Bluestem Farm and Ranch, and it can be ordered on-line. She says it’s very precise.
Marcia cans all kinds of things: grape jelly, various vegetables, pickles (dill and sweet), relishes and even salsa. Occasionally, she does fruits like peaches, apples or blueberries, which are sealed in a syrup. The Hermesches eat them straight out of the jar, on ice cream, or use them as pie filling.
Marcia says, “The whole purpose is to save a little money, and to know where the food you’re feeding your family came from. I know what’s in it, and how it was processed.”
Generally, you need something to can, something to put it in, and something to process it with. For example: Tomatoes, a quart jar and a large pot of boiling water with a rack in the bottom.
Once you’ve collected enough fruit or vegetables to fill a jar (or twelve) you’re ready. Wash everything really well, and check for bruises or bug holes. Depending on the item you can cut those out.
You can use a pressure canner for low acid foods (green beans, asparagus, potatoes, carrots) or a water bath for higher acid foods (like tomatoes). Marcia says it’s best to peel things like tomatoes, peaches, apples and apricots, but skins stay on for the most part.
Jars can break. You really don’t want all your hard work to be thrown out due to a fracture, so check your jars thoroughly for cracks, and use jars approved for canning (not recycled mayonnaise or pasta sauce jars, etc.) If a jar does break, Marcia says to throw it and it’s contents away - you don’t want to risk ingesting a glass shard.
What size jar should you use? It depends on what you’re putting in it and how many people you cook for. If there’s just one or two of you, a quart jar is going to hold a couple of meals’ worth of food, so pints might be easier. Things like jellies are better at half pints or pints, but not quarts. You’d have to dice green beans for a half pint, but they’re usually a perfect fit in a pint, and so on.
Sterilize your jars, lids and rings. Marcia keeps a pot of water boiling on the stove so that it’s always ready to use. Most vegetables, after they are packed into the jar, are covered with boiling water before sealing.
She also has a jar lifter with rubber grips, and says that’s the safest way to ease hot jars in and out of their water bath. You can use the rack that comes with the canning pot, but its primary purpose is to elevate the jars. If you happen to drop the rack, you risk losing more than one jar, too. If you don’t have a canning pot, you can make do with a stock pot. You need to be able to cover the jars with an inch of boiling water without the pot boiling over.
Marcia says be sure to process for the recommended time - it’s important! If the lid doesn’t seal after 12 hours, you can reprocess to try to get a seal (use a new lid) or just put the jar in the refrigerator and eat as soon as possible. It’s so much fun to listen to the lids pop as they seal over the course of an afternoon!
Canning calls for something called “headspace”. Headspace is the amount of room between the liquid level and the top of the jar. Too much or too little head space can cause a jar not to seal properly. The recipe or canning package should give you an idea of how much room to leave.
Marcia says to always remove any air bubbles in your jars by running a knife or skewer along the inside before sealing. If you don’t, that air will float to the top and affect the headspace. Also, wipe the rim of the jar clean before you put the lid in place. If there’s stuff on there it probably won’t seal.
Finally, Marcia has some advice for checking the shelf life of your canned goods. The color should still be good, there should not be any mold and the canning liquid should not be cloudy. Also, if the lid doesn’t pop when you open the jar it probably has a broken seal and should be discarded.
Wow! Thanks to Marcia Hermesch for all the great advice. Once you get the hang of it, canning is an easy and inexpensive way to preserve food for use all winter.
Marcia sent me this recipe from the Ball Blue Book. It makes about eight half-pints.
SWEET PICKLE RELISH
1 quart chopped cucumbers (more
or less)
2 cups chopped onions
1 cup chopped sweet green pepper
1 cup chopped sweet red pepper
1/4 cup salt
3 1/2 cups sugar
1 Tbsp. celery seed
1 Tbsp. mustard seed
2 cups cider vinegar
Combine cucumbers, onions, and peppers in a large bowl; sprinkle with salt and cover with cold water. Let stand 2 hours.
Drain, rinse and drain thoroughly. Combine sugar, spices and vinegar in a large saucepot. Bring to a boil. Add drained vegetables; simmer 10 minutes. Pack hot relish into hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace. Wipe the rim clean and position the lid. Screw on the ring. Process 10 minutes in a boiling water canner.
Marcia says this next recipe is one of her favorite things to do with her canned veggies. It’s one she inherited from her mother, who would often augment it with browned hamburger.
MARCIA’S VEGETABLE SOUP
In a large pot, add:
2 cups chicken stock
1 pint canned tomatoes (do not
drain)
1 pint canned carrots (drain)
1 pint canned green beans ( drain)
Salt and pepper to taste
Add whatever you have growing in the garden or in your fridge in half-cup quantities: onion, okra, peas, celery, potatoes, cabbage, corn, etc.
Simmer on the stove top for about 30 minutes. Marcia adds either a half-cup of instant rice or one cup of egg noodles and simmer for another 10 minutes.
Marcia suggests you make your own stock by boiling a couple of pieces of chicken for an hour. Then, tear the meat off the bone and add it to the soup. If it is too thick, just add some water. Put it in a crockpot to eat on all day.
When it comes to canning, Marcia says “Try it! It’s fun, it’s healthy, it’s good for your body and to get out in a garden and work, or to spend your money locally at the Farmer’s Market. It just makes you feel good about yourself, that you put the work into it.” Amen!
Let’s get canning!