i am completely new to canning, and am wondering what can or can’t be canned an the longevity of the items canned.
for example, if we canned some cut up apples in sugar water, could we do so without using preservatives and how long could they sit on the shelf and still be edible?
are there special processes neccessary to store other types of food?
i know i can research these on google, just thought there might be an authority here that would be a more righteous source
thanks
justin
As a general rule, fruit can be canned using a simple boiling water bath. Vegetables and meat must be cannned using a pressure canner.
The fruit is refferred to as being “acidic” which brings up two exceptions to the general rule. Pickled stuff and tomatoes. Because they are also acidic they can be canned in just boiling water.
You will have to look up the proper procedures because they are more than I would like to go into here. Each type of food has it’s own timing and/or pressure. The companies that make the jars and lids have very easy to follow instruction books with all the information about the variables such as the elevation where you live and timing and pressure, etc.
We have canned lots of different things over the years and we continue to do it even though we have a freezer now. We got a huge haul of bananas once from a dumpster and made banana goop and canned that. It was awesome for pies and banana bread and desserty things. That was before we got a freezer.
We make a big pot of soup with the carcass every time we have a turkey. Then we can what we dont eat right away. I also cut up and boil the bones from deer that we eat and can that. When we want soup we just open a quart or two of that marrow broth add veggies and it’s almost like instant soup.
That broth must be pressure canned though.
We don’t keep anything more than three years.
Follow the instructions in the books for your own safety.
hi victor
thanks for the info.
is 3 years a standard guideline or your own? will different items spoil at different times after being canned? fruit/meat/vegetables?
thank you again
justin
Well I guess it’s just our own guideline. One reason is we rarely ever have anything that sticks around longer than that.
We write the year on the lid of each jar. At this point I don’t think we have anything older than 2005 in the pantry and very few of those.
What we have in there right now is turkey, venison and salmon head broths, peaches, apricots, pears, assorted berry jams (huckleberry, saskatoon, raspberry, thimbleberry, plum), tomato sauce, my wifes saskatoon & plum steak sauce, a few relishes and some pickled things.
If we end up with a lot of something we usually give it away. My wife makes a few dozen jars of jam and steak sauce specifically for give away.
Honestly I really don’t know how long things will last canned. That would be something to look up. We don’t do a lot of long term stockpiling. Just a years worth, then share the rest.
heehee, yeah, i just can’t imagine my wife’s jams lasting more than a year and a half… 
and, based on the last few years, even that is wildly unlikely…
I’ve been doing fermented pickling lately. It’s very simple and you can experiment with just about anything. Right now I’m pickling cucumbers and something that would be the equivalent of pickled ratatouille.
Really all you gotta do is throw everything you want to pickle into jars along with the spices you want to use. Add some grape leaves or fruit peels to help the fermentation process along. Immerse it all in salt water and let it sit for a few weeks. You can pickle in just about any kind of jar, although large ones are preferable. I use a couple of gallon glass jars.
You have to keep everything fully immersed in the brine, otherwise the stuff floating on top will go rancid. You could either use those jars with the clamp down lids and a rubber seal, but make sure any gas that wants to escape can escape. You could also just leave the jar open and use a rock to weigh everything down. Tie a cloth over the top to keep dust and other crap out.
It can take anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks depending on what you’re pickling. Keep an eye on things and even taste every once in a while. Cucumbers are usually an olive-gray color when they’re done and take about 2 weeks. Anything else I have no experience with yet, so I can’t say.
I’ve been told by someone I’ve met that you don’t even have to use salt. She even let me try some pickled daikon she made in this way without salt. It was pretty good. Although all the information online that I found calls for salt to keep unwanted bacteria down.
It’s really great to experiment with, so recipes aren’t really necessary. Just throw whatever you can think of together, especially different kinds of herbs and spices, and see how it turns out.
edit
You’ll want to cut up the vegetables so the brine can better soak into them. Large chunks are ok. Some things you may want to pickle whole (eg small pickling cucumbers), just poke holes into the ends of those.
We have been canning lots of food since moving out to the porcupine palace. For teh past few years we have canned hundreds of jars of wild fruits, greens, pickles, and meats. We use the 15-20 boil method for high acid foods like fruits. For greens and meats we use a pressure canner.
A few things we have found:
I lived in a village years ago where they ate cans of fish and cans of fish oil that were around since the early 70s. I think that shelf life with caning has more to do with nutrients than with safety as long as the cans are sealed and no anaerobic critters are living in them.
Good luck.
My parents have canned ever since I can remember, and I am going to have them teach me a thing or two this next season! I learn a lot better when taught by a person rather than by a book… learn by experience, I guess. They also grow a lot of what they can and next year I am going in head first with the garden and canning, and dehydrating, all the things my parents do that I now want to do!
Ah, I have some canning pictures of some of my fruit canning experiences I’ll work on posting soon. Peace later!
We plan to have a workshop/discussion on food preservation at the skill share on the last week of Fed. We’ll be sharing experiences canning various foods as well as other preservation methods. If anyone wants to chime in let us know. Also if anyone has favorite books or other resources on the topic please let us know.
I always pressure can, and I use the guidelines on this website - http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/ for timing.
If your stuff is going to be frozen at some point, be sure to leave an inch and a half or so of space for it to expand as it freezes.
I’m confused … why are people learning to preserve food via canning, as it’s a more or less “modern” technology? If civilization collapses, that skill won’t be useful (unless you have a really substantial supply of cans and a way to seal them that doesn’t use electricity). Why not dehydrate fruits and veggies, or add them to dried meat (a la pemmican with berries)?
Or (maybe I just answered my own question), are you all using glass jars that you can reuse again and again and which don’t require any machines to seal them?
Ack, please help and explain how you would continue to do what you do in the event that you can no longer go to a store and purchase canning supplies.
Yes, definitely talking about canning in the glass jar sense. Of course you still run into problems cause I’m pretty sure that even though you can use the lid bands over and over again, you still need to have new sealing lids every time. However for now, saving your food by canning is still an option, and one that sure beats shopping at the grocery store.
yeah, we didn’t can those peaches or plums though this year, we gave em to the ground and animals and wandering travelers (those we didn’t eat) Though I’m sure next year I’ma be looking into doing that.
[quote=“SilverArrow, post:12, topic:467”]I’m confused … why are people learning to preserve food via canning, as it’s a more or less “modern” technology? If civilization collapses, that skill won’t be useful (unless you have a really substantial supply of cans and a way to seal them that doesn’t use electricity). Why not dehydrate fruits and veggies, or add them to dried meat (a la pemmican with berries)?
Or (maybe I just answered my own question), are you all using glass jars that you can reuse again and again and which don’t require any machines to seal them?
Ack, please help and explain how you would continue to do what you do in the event that you can no longer go to a store and purchase canning supplies.[/quote]
That is also why I am more interested in drying fruits/veggies/meat, however canning still works for now and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg for lots of people (and having a supply of canned fruit and other foods in the middle of winter is comforting, no doubt) and it’s more “earth-friendly” than a refrigerator or freezer.
For the desert tho, drying foods seems to work the best for all locally available food and the fruits of the desert (such as dates, figs, etc) are easily dried and preserved. Meat is easily made into biltong and fruit that doesn’t keep so well is best utilized in season anyways (like citrus and pomegranates and so on).
Silver Arrow,
For me, I really haven’t chosen to live the way I do in order to get ready to survive the collapse of civilization. In fact as years go by it kind of becomes neither here nor there for me.
So learning to can and using it to put away food has been very useful for my family. It has allowed us to really take advantage of opportunities that come up to get a bunch of something that we really like or want and get it put away for later, and to get local food when it is in season and cheap like tomatoes and make our years worth of tomato sauce. It makes it possible to put away food for later without having electricity and a freezer.
Not all things are very good to dry. Bones for instance. We save the bones from animals we eat, we cut them open, make marrow broth and can it. If you tried to save that food without canning or freezing the marrow would go rancid. We have also dried lots of different foods, from fruit and veggies to meat and fish.
Another bit of information. Any jar that has a lid that pops down when sealed can be reused for canning. My wife makes salsa and other things and uses jars and lids that originally came with store bought food in them. Jam and jelly jars, salsa, pickles, and other food that comes in glass jars usually have lids wiith rubber seals that are popped down when sealed then pop up when the seal is broken. These can all be reused at least once and often many times.
[quote=“Fenriswolfr, post:14, topic:467”]yeah, we didn’t can those peaches or plums though this year, we gave em to the ground and animals and wandering travelers (those we didn’t eat) Though I’m sure next year I’ma be looking into doing that.[/quote]Woah, you eat wandering travelers? That is sooo metal, rock on bro! ;D
I use the ones with zinc lids or glass lids with the balewire and the rubber rings (as well as loads of the other ones). The rubber rings are reusable and in theory, could be made pretty low tech. Even with the other ones, unless the lids are obviously fubar, I’ll reuse them. As for jars, unless it’s high pressure canning, I’ll use any jar as long as it’ll take a canning lid.
Side note: Wax sealer jars. Easy to make (they’re earthware). Little metal lid and wax to seal it and there you go. Low tech food preservation for things that can’t be dried.