What are you canning now?

[digitS']

Pressure canning, and I have used it as a pressure cooker only once, I believe. Already, it's over 5 years old! Using the smaller slow cooker for that process so this combo machine just sits and sits. No instructions came with it regarding canning.

The elevation here is right at 2,000 feet.

There is a rack in the bottom, seems kind of high. Only the large mouth Kerr pints fit, the other pints I have are too tall and touch the lid when it's closed. It says "6 quart" capacity but that is total, of course, and only holds 4 pint jars.

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

Water boils at a lower temperature as you go up in altitude so you need more pressure for canning. There are two different ways to control pressure, some use a dial, some use a weighted rocker. Recipes are written for sea level up to 1000 feet, where you use 10 pounds pressure. At 2000 feet if you use a dial you need 12 pounds of pressure. If you use a rocker weight you need a 15 pound weight. The processing time remains the same.

This is the rack I use in my pressure canner. It's just enough to get the jars off the bottom of the canner.

 

[YourRabbitGirl]

Some pics of canning this season.....

The green in the jar is from a thick slice of green tomato.

Cleaned and waiting jars.....

Slumgulleon, cooking down....

Hot pepper butter, cooking down in the crockpot.

Found a website for a recipe, https://www.food.com/recipe/hot-pepper-butter-mustard-for-canning-137562
But looking at yours That looks pretty good actually.

 

[digitS']

I've not quite moved into the pressure canning world yet. I was following this (perhaps out of date) advice and waiting until I had reason to go for the larger pressure cooker: https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/nchfp/factsheets/pressurecookers.html

Yes, I'd better play it safe. I don't think that I will find any more up-to-date advice, Hat. I remember a Co-opEx agent telling me that the service began giving authoritative food preservation advice during the Depression because back-to-the-land people were killing themselves.

If one thinks that this self-sufficiency movement began with the hippies or preppers, it might be surprising to have a time machine and go back to 1930.

Near where I once lived in the sticks during the 70's was a very old boxcar sitting on the ground. This was fairly near a railroad. Growing beside it were gooseberry and currant bushes. That was it ... probably an outhouse had been close by, woodshed. Just a temporary home in the middle of nowhere, abandoned for 30 years.

My mother's family followed something of a similar route. The grandparents were off to city life with their marriage but reversed course, with a flock of kids, to a farm about 1930. By 1940, they tried a second venturing into city life.

Steve

 

[Plainhat]

If one thinks that this self-sufficiency movement began with the hippies or preppers, it might be surprising to have a time machine and go back to 1930.

My Mom used to talk about her mother butchering chickens (1920s-30s) where she grew up in Florida, I know some of our neighbors in rural MI in the late 50's were mostly off-grid, and when, in the 70's, my brother brought to our suburban NJ home, a copy of the Whole Earth catalog (and a very random rooster), it didn't seem all that foreign to me. I'm not sure that the desire for self-sufficiency ever really went away. Perhaps for many of us Boomers, it is a odd sort of nostalgia for something just on the periphery of our memories and for millennials it is something kind of new and different. For me it was always my life-long dream and now, at retirement, I finally hope to taste just a bit of it! Counting the months to...

Harriet

 

[flowerbug]

when i was growing up some times during duck hunting season i'd be sitting in the garage with a half dozen other people all cleaning ducks one after another for hours at a time. i haven't done it since.

just some fishing and cleaning of fish. that has been enough for me so far. i'm now in my fifties. not sure what i'll do, but i can say for the short term that i see no reason that i want to hunt anything here for food. if times get bad, then yes, i'd do it. i have the traps and the knives for it (and no shortage of critters).

 

[YourRabbitGirl]

Some pics of canning this season.....

The green in the jar is from a thick slice of green tomato.

Cleaned and waiting jars.....

Slumgulleon, cooking down....

Hot pepper butter, cooking down in the crockpot.

Already canned corn, I'm just waiting for the turnips to ripen so I may can them for some vegetable sautee!! 2 more months and its good.

 

[majorcatfish]

Already canned corn, I'm just waiting for the turnips to ripen so I may can them for some vegetable sautee!! 2 more months and its good.

canning corn? where do you live?

 

[YourRabbitGirl]

That hot pepper butter sounds good.
We put 40 quarts of corn in freezer. (I have had bad luck with canning in the past?) Thank goodness I have very large upright freezer.

Do you put anything else in that hot pepper butter? I have an old recipe from my sister who said she doesn't like it. I hope I can still improve my recipe?

 

[YourRabbitGirl]

Some pics of canning this season.....

The green in the jar is from a thick slice of green tomato.

Cleaned and waiting jars.....

Slumgulleon, cooking down....

Hot pepper butter, cooking down in the crockpot.

some fruits and berries are relatively high in acidity, so they're my candidates for canning. Decide among them based on texture and sturdiness. Large fruits such as apples, pears, peaches, plums, and nectarines all can well. So do sturdy berries, such as strawberries and blueberries. Do you guys have any of these?