Rules:

First time canner and I'm following the fresh vegetable salsa recipe from Ball complete book for preserving and wondering whether it will be safe to reduce the amount of hot peppers as i prefer mild. will this affect the safety of the salsa once canned? it asks for 8 jalapeno and i want to reduce that to 4. The bell peppers in the ingredients is in cups so its impossible to interchange that without changing the amount. Thank you

I'm pretty new to canning, and I'm canning applesauce for the first time. I was using the applesauce recipe from the ball canning book, but I lost track of how many pounds of apples I was using. The ball book says lemon juice must be added for safe canning (4tb/12lbs apples), but the applesauce recipe here: https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_02/applesauce.html doesn't say anything about needing to add lemon juice. Can I just go ahead and water bath can without? (I didn't add anything to the applesauce except apples). Thanks!

https://www.bernardin.ca/recipes/en/carrot-cake-jam.htm?Lang=EN-US

I made a post yesterday that I made carrot cake jam. They've set and sealed and I'm about to take the rings off and store them but I thought folks might like a look at how beautiful they are - the natural light really shows off the colour.

Safe Websites

• Healthy Canning

• NCHFP

• Ball

• Bernardin

University Extensions

• Wisconsin

• Utah

• Pennsylvania

There are many more than the ones listed, you can find them by searching for “canning university extension”

Most canning recipes do not list all of the steps required for processing, they will just say how long to process. It is extremely important that you are familiar with the steps before you begin canning.

Water Bath Canning Steps

Steam Canning Steps

Pressure Canning Steps

Remember that there is a minimum jar load when pressure canning!

So I made a jelly according to Bernardin's dry pectin recipe. I did not bother with a water bath on the one jar I'm eating immediately. I put it into a sterilized jar and immediately into the fridge. The rest I put in a water bath. They are the same batch from the same pot but only the one that went immediately into the fridge set properly. The one that was canned and sealed has a thin layer of unset jelly around the inside of the glass, maybe 2 or 3 mm thick. Thebrest is set. Is it possible that the heat made the pectin near the much hotter glass not set?

I did a bunch of canning of salsa and grape jam (no pectin) yesterday, following Ball recipes. It's 12+ hours since canning and I removed the rings to check the seals. I noticed that on some, not all, of my jars had water droplets on the underside of the lid. The jars are sealed.

Where did this water come from? Are my salsa and jam safe to eat still? Should I put these jars in the fridge or are they safe to stay on the room temperature shelf?

Followed the sure jell recipe, all went well, but I was expecting the pepper pieces to be evenly distributed through the jelly, not clumped at the top. What to do differently next time?

Hello. I'm new to this whole canning/pickling thing. So, about 6 months ago I had made a brine made of apple cider vinegar, distilled white vinegar, water, salt, and sugar. It's been sitting on the kitchen table for the entire 6 months, unopened. Also, as you can see in the picture this is not a jar but rather a reused juice bottle. The top is sealed but again it's not a traditional jar. Is it still good to use?

I grew up in the 1990s, eating freezer jam canned in the late 1970s by great-grandma, in glass jelly jars. The jam was never freezer burnt and tasted fresh. The difference was the jam had about a 1/4 inch layer of wax on top which seems to have prevented typical freezer degradation.

I understand wax is unsafe for shelf stable canning.

But I’m unable to find anything referencing this freezer jam technique.

Thoughts?

Hello, today I tried canning pickles and green beans.

Here is the recipe I used, thoughts?

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brine/

4 cups water

6 cups pickle vinegar

2 teaspoons peppercorn

3 teaspoons salt

3 teaspoons sugar

cans/

7-10 cloves garlic

3-5 big cuts of dill

2 cans with 3 small onion

Beans have half a red finger pepper in each can

Note: I cut the pickles into spears and I also like them sort of on the softer side.

I also have no idea whether to put these in the fridge after cooling. in a cool dark place , in the sun ect...

​

https://natashaskitchen.com/marinated-bell-peppers-recipe/

Someone in the comments at the page bottom said there's not enough acid in it. Thoughts??

I like green beans my husband doesn’t. I decided to can my own in half pints jars. The small can price at the store is ridiculous. Anyway, I followed the Ball instructions for raw packing and pressured canned for pint size jar time. I had some tonight for the first time and they were really soft like they were overcooked. They were like that straight out of the jar, not heated yet. Is it because of the pint canning time? I know there is no half pint canning time. Is there anything I can do to avoid this?

Hi everyone, I am new to canning and a bit scared because I can be a bit absent minded sometimes and I don't want to get botilism or something, so I was wondering if testing the PH of the jars before putting them in the canner and before eating them to make sure it is the same could help make sure I don't mess up somehow.

I might be overthinking this, but here's what went down: four days ago, I attempted my first water bath canned recipe ever. I made grape jam from an untested recipe off Serious Eats. (I hadn't found this subreddit yet!) I boiled the canned jam for 10 minutes per the recipe.

It didn't set, so I put it in the fridge to see whether that would help. It didn't. It's still in the fridge with the rings on finger tight. (Again, hadn't found this sub yet -- please be gentle.)

Now that I've found this sub and learned A TON in a short period of time, I'm worried about taking the cans out of the fridge and taking off the rings for future storage. Will pulling them out and removing the lids give me false seal issues since they've been in the cold for so long? I'm concerned about the temp change. I'd still like to share my grape syrup with my friends and neighbors if it's safe. Is it safe?

Thank you!

ETA: This is the recipe, which I followed. I guess a better framing of my question is: will taking the cans out and removing the lids have a negative impact on the seal? It sounds like there are a couple votes for "call it fridge jam/syrup and remove all doubts." Which is legit, and I appreciate the advice!

Howdy y’all, this is a safety question. I left a jar of unopened Amish Chow Chow in my wife’s car for about a week. Being as it’s unopened, I would think it’s safe to eat, but I’m unsure so I’m posting to the hive.

Hey all, I made a mistake lol. I decided to try vacuum sealing my peaches last night. My plan was to watch them for a week or so to make sure it worked fine, but when I got up this morning I decided that maybe I should actually Google it to see if it was safe. Sounds like it’s not. So I’m going to do a water bath, but I’m wondering if anyone can give me info about the flat tops. Do I need to use new ones? Or can I just add a ring and do the bath like the jars are now?

For the flat tops, I put them in simmering water for 1 min and then put them on the jars and vacuum sealed them. They are all still sealed and have not been touched since. Thanks for any info in advance!

This is my 3rd batch of peaches, and they look like this after they have been opened and refrigerated. The rest are sealed and look great. I used much less Fruit Fresh Preserver than I normally do, so I’m hoping that is the case here. What do you think?

I’m fairly new to canning and got into it when someone explained how technical it all is, using tested recipes, how Ph is involved, and pressure canning etc. which also got me wondering how they made tested recipes. Soooo I loosely followed a tested hot sauce recipe (also should mention I have no intention of eating it if my theory isn’t right) I took out a few bell peppers, added more vinegar, and added few more hot peppers. I roasted them over a fire, and checked that the Ph was below 4.0 (it was 3.5), and boiled it before canning. So my question is, if I pop those cans open in a year and the ph is still below 4.0, is it safe to eat?

Hi all! I started water bath canning last year and opened up my last can of apple butter from 2022 - all of the cans in this batch had sealed and been fine to eat. This one has been sitting the longest. When I opened it this morning, it had a good seal and had been stored without the ring or with anything on top of the can so a false seal is pretty unlikely. It smelled good as well, but the very top layer of the apple butter is just a little darker than the rest of what’s in the can. Is it okay or should it be thrown out?

Thanks in advance!

Edited to add: I can’t find the exact recipe I used, but I am 99% sure it didn’t have any citrus/acid.

Canned for the first time last night! I made the Ball apple pie filling, it looks good so I’m excited to check the seals tonight.

My question is- I still have a ton of apples, does anyone have a different tested recipe they’ve used for apple pie filling? I definitely want to can the rest of the apples but would love to do a different variation of the filling to see which one we end up liking better, but I’m not sure what’s trusted outside of Ball. Thanks!!

I've been freezing my tomatoes as the ripen so I can cook down the sauce and can them all at once, but they take up a lot of space in the freezer. Could I slip the skins and run my tomatoes through the food mill and freeze them like that? Then when I have plenty of milled tomato juices, cook those down and can them? Has anyone tried this and does it work well?