Gnarlodious wrote:
On Jul 3, 1:28�pm, wrote:
They make an excellent
drink as I usually put some
currants with them.
Good idea. Currants contain a lot of pectin so if your pectin develops
you may find your juice turning viscous.

I thought I needed a
pressure cooker.
You may only need a pressure cooker at higher elevations.

many broken quart jars, probably I
had the heat too long.
More likely that the lids were screwed on too tight and they exploded
from internal pressure. In the pressure cooker, lids are actually a
one-way valve. Pressure is relieved as the steam blows off and the
cooker depressurizes. When the lids are too tight, pressure equalizes
too slowly in the jars, which after all are built for a vacuum and not
internal pressure. When the jars are out on the counter cooling the
vacuum in the jar pulls the seal tight so no bacteria gets in.

The acid in the food will allow storage of those jars at room
temperature.
I don't believe that is reliably true. Fruit and tomatoes are
extremely variable in their acid content, and that amount does not
guarantee antibacterial action. hence we pour hot wax over the jam and
may not even need a sealed lid.

What you are really doing is pouring sterile food into hot sterile
jars and sealing them up. A dishwasher machine is helpful for
delivering sterile jars right on time and nicely hot. Sloppy technique
or bacteria-laden air can give you a failure percentage, as I recall
less than 1%, with inoculated jars exploding from fermentation after
several months. Botulism is nearly uneard of with home canning, that
was a lie to get depression-era mothers to buy factory canned food.

I open it with using a can opener
so that I can reuse the very same
lid in the future.
Good idea, but watch the resilient seal and don't abuse it. Mostly
people screw it down too tight and the seal gets smashed making
subsequent sealing unreliable. In addition, never reuse lids that have
the coating scratched off the inside. They corrode pretty badly and
spoil your food.

to see if there are worms
and to remove the pit.
Got a problem with protein? Like my mother used to say, "If it's good
enough for a worm it's good enough for me". I guess the moral of the
story is, better an occasional worm than chemicals.

I average about 6 quarts a night on a big canning night, and about 3
on a slow night.

whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies
Hehe, everything is identical in structure, only the magnitude has
changed.

-- Gnarlie
http://Gnarlodious.com/Concept

Some good comments there.

My spiel was not to be used by others as a recipe, for I boil my
canning probably for a different
span than some others boil theirs before they pack into the jars. Each
person, I suspect finds
the length of time of boiling that is comfortable for them. For me, I
want to try to get the best zone
of boiling time-- if I boil too long, well I lose the nutrient value
of the food, and if I boil too short, there
maybe the danger of bacteria and spoilage. So I like to save as much
nutrient value as possible
but not so that bacteria grow and lose the entire jar content.

Now I did experience losses of some vegetables such as tomato
succatash (spelling) where I had
a good amount of squash included with tomatos and the bacteria had not
been killed by the boiling
and come to find out one day, a pecular odor and looking at the canns
see a few whose lid is about
to explode off.

After that experience, I occasionally run into the can storage room
and "ping the top lid" to hear
that ringing sound, not the dull sound. If I hear a dull sound, means
the lid is compromised. Compromised
by either bacteria pressure growing inside or compromised by a failure
of sealing.

But a good seal, and the jars can seem to last forever, as some
applesauce I had eaten were 4 years
old.

I believe the terms "cold packing" and hot-packing are used where hot-
packing means pressure
cooking. I suppose a pressure cooker is essential for canning things
like meats and non acid foods
like spinach or potatoes.

Now the coating on the lids is a very much big problem and I often
reuse the lids for about 4 times,
or 4 years in a row before those lids corrode to much black and then
replace the lid with a new one.
The corrosion of the lid is the most vulnerable item in the canning.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies