Canning?...who does it anymore?

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support :

yogitunes

Well-known member
Platinum Member
Joined
Apr 21, 2009
Messages
13,520
Location
New Jersey
Had a technician to the house the other day and he seen all the canning jars of food on the shelves in the basement, and thought they we left by the last owner, I'm the original owner, but suprised him that I did the actual canning, he didn't think anyone did this any more...

But my actual question to you guys and gals is do you CAN?
or freeze and do preserves?

This is just something thats been passed down in my family for generations, and it's fun to do with a gang of family and friends, and make great gifts, a little messy at times but the end result is satisfying...

I do: sweet and dill pickles, peaches, green beans, applesauce, spaghetti/pizza/sloppyjoe sauce, and preserves by normal canning methods..

freezing: many vegetables from the garden or produce stands as available, strawberries, cantelope/honeydew/melon, peas, and corn off the cob....

and we experimented with many other recipes with freezing and canning methods...in between, just to see what happens...

Just wondered if you do CAN and what you CAN?

one last tip of the day: freeze the wrappers from stick butter
and save to use for when a recipe calls for you to "grease" a pan, pull one out, wipe pan, and throw away, no mess!
 
Yep, I still can. It's almost that time of the season to get crakin!

I usually can apricots and cherries. If I'm feeling REALLY energetic, I make and can jam.
 
Friend of mine grew up on a farm in Tennessee. His momma sends me all sorts of "canned" goodies in that she knows I feed him and watch over him now that he is living in the big, bad city.

All I have to do is return the jars.
DELICIOUS!
 
I love canning
I can the following:
sour cherry jelly
black raspberry jam
sometimes plum jam, if I can get purple plums cheap
green beans and wax beans
applesauce
tomatoes
With the exception of beans which I do in the pressure cooker an dthe apple sauce I process in a water bath, th ejams and jellies and tomatoes I use the the inversion method, in which I cook the jams or tomatoes down and pour into hot prepared jars and seal with prepared lids and rings and then flip upside down on a towel and cover them over with another towel and it forma a seal. This meathod according to the newer canning books is not considered safe but we have never had a problem doing this.

For freezing I freeze some green beans, then everything else I usuallty prepare and freeze with my fresh produce or what I get from local farms.
I freeze:
approx 3 - 4 dozen stuffed green peppers
cabbage rolls
12 apple pies
4-5 peach pies
6 black raspberry pies
2-3 sour cherry pies
and I freeze whole tomatoes in quart bags to be pulled out to use for vertain recipes
also take a few bushels of tomatoes and put through the squeezo strainer and cook down and make spaghetti sauce and freeze in quart jars.
I also freeze some small containers of black raspberries to be used for fried pies.

I am also one of those people who likes to churn their own butter, which I do from time to time
 
I can every summer. After being forced to help my Mom can when I was a kid, I swore I would never do it as an adult. I started canning about 10 years ago. It's comforting to pick a jar off the pantry shelf, knowing you made it yourself.

I have friends with several sizable gardens, so we usually can at my house, as I have a well-equipped kitchen and two canners.

These are the regulars:

Strawberry Jam
Blueberry Jam
Mixed Fruit Chutney
Tomato Sauce
Salsa
Dill Pickles
Bread 'n' Butter Pickles
Pickled Vegetables (great for antipasto platters)
 
I like to can food. I got carried away with this years garden so I'll be doing a lot of it this summer.
Tomatoes,fennel,squash,green beans,eggplant,sweet red peppers,banana peppers, cantalope, then the hot peppers---habeneros,cayenne, and jalepenos.

I miss my fig trees back in Atlanta. I loved to can them.
 
Don't we all?

~I am also one of those people who likes to churn their own butter, which I do from time to time.

*eyes roll* LOL

Only did that once-- in the first week of kindergarten. Remember it like it was yesterday.
 
Christopher...

I will dig out my Ball canning book tomorrow and post it on here....this is one of the easiest and fastest canning things to do, so simple and fast, you can get carried away with it, I do this recipe every other year, because I make about 10 cases of quart jars when I get started.

and churn butter...I haven't done that since I was a kid, also I still have the ice cream machine with the hand crank, this brings back great memories, I may have to pull that out and whip up some ice cream.....yummy!
 
I make my own kimchee. Kimchee is basically spicy chunky sauerkraut.

Also, in the past 10 years, have made jam, and canned peaches from the garden. I routinely freeze extra produce from the garden (green beans and hot peppers, mostly, but in the past froze a fair amount of tomatoes as well). Still have frozen peach halves from five or more years ago. They're vacuum packed so still good.

Canning, I found, is very labor intensive, at least in a home kitchen - especially the jams and jellies.
 
Remember helping my mom can tomatoes during the summer visits to her house-despite the hot kitchen,hard work,and long time it took-the canning was kinda fun.Remember her getting the Kerr or Ball canning bottles and lids-and that GIANT pan used to heat the jars in to get the caps to seal.also sterilized the bottles in that giant pan-it took up two burners on the stove.My job was to blanch and skin the tomotoes-she packed them into the jars.My Mom or others I know haven't canned in years.My Mom and stepfather used to grow really large tomatoe gardens.also another one of my jobs was to bust and roto till the soil before planting-its was hot and hard work behind that tiller-and the feild was LARGE!
 
Kimchee

Sudsmaster, how do you make your Kimchee? I love fermented cabbage products (kimchee and sauerkraut), but I'm quite intimidated by attempting to make it and I'm afraid I might poison myself (I sure wouldn't give it to anyone else until I knew i had it down).
 
rats, squirrels, bird, roaches stray cats, ants .....etc.

Kimchee.

My neighbors, who appear to be Korean, leave that stuff around to "cure"/ "dry" right on a piece of plywood in their garage or out on the "quad" between the aparmtment buildngs. Interestingly no animal will touch it and they don't appear to recognize it as food.
 
Canning

My family did it A LOT when I was young, but stopped once everyone gave up gardening...We typically did it in groups - Mom, Aunts, Great Aunts, Grandparents - Men usually prepping food and women cooking and canning. Then came the big family dinner...

In the day, my family canned almost as much stuff as Xraytech. You could always grab a couple of jars and some stuff from the freezer and make a meal at anytime. AND none of the stuff came pre-prepared from a grocery....

Xraytech - I am envious of your energy! AND the butter...We never churned butter, but being of Northern Italian heritage we used much more butter rather than oil as would central and Southern Italians...
 
I do...

I can tomatoes and red sauce.

I grew up with the sights and smells of canning tomatoes, beets, green and yellow string beans, beet relish, pickles, elderberry jelly.

Corn, strawberries were frozen.

I have limited storage, so that is why I only do the tomatoes.

Joe
 
We're still canning here in Minnesota!! :-)

Pickles, tomatoes, beets, beans, strawberry, rhubarb and ground cherry preserves; all stored under the basement stairs.

We freeze all fruit, corn (on and off the cob), squash, pumpkin.

We use a large enamelware canner, pressure canner and those Food Saver bags for the freezer.

Nothing like good stuff from your own garden in the dead of a Minnesota winter!!

:-)
 
Yes we still can here in Arkansas

We can tomatoes (whole, sauce, juice and rotel type by adding chopped hot peppers, green beans, squash for squash caserolle, apple pie filling, peach pie filling and dill, sweet and bread and butter pickles the bread and butter we make regular and then some zesty ones by adding a hot pepper to the jar. We freeze the rest. Usually make sauerkrat every other year. Have a large stainless steel pot, two pressure canners both 7 quart size. For pickle brining and sauerkrat we use my great grandmothers 8 gallon crock that is over 100 years old and has been passed down generation to generation. One person can do the canning but with both my wife and I working together goes much smoother and easier.

Nothing more relaxing to us after a hard day at work to go to the garden and harvest it. With beans we harvest and sit on the patio and snap them to get ready to can. Our grandkids all like to help snap them. We also have a french cutter we use.
 
old country boy still cans

Here in N. C. I still can a ton of stuff, I learned how as a kid,my grandmother lived with us and I helped her, I still make pickles,jelly,can beans,corn,squash and always tomatoes. You wouldnt believe the difference in taste from storebought,I use an old Presto canner as well as a Maid of Honor..which is a Sears by Presto,I am always looking for old gaskets for my p-cookers,I have about 30 or so of them,I think this year Im going to make some apple butter,If you dont can..get a Ball or Kerr book ant try it ,it is fun
 
Kraut

We use the big crock to make ours but can use a food grade bucket or plastic trash can or put up in wide mouth quart jars.

Recipe to use

Cut the cabbage in half and take the core out. Shred with a knife in thin slices. For every 5 pounds of cabbage add 3 tablespoons of canning salt. Mix well and then put in one of the above and tightly pack down (we use a metal potato masher along with a wooden tamper from our cone sieve) pack it tight until liquid starts to flow. We normally do about 50 to 80 pounds of cabbage. To shred ours we now use our electric slicer. Two people can do it but 3 or more are better as your hands and arms can get sore.

Once all the cabbage is packed tightly in the crock or bucket or quart jars the liquid should cover the top.

On a crock or bucket use a plate or glass pie pan that just pits the opening. Weigh this down with a brick wrapped in plastic bag or use a gallon or gallon and a half freezer bag filled with water and some canning salt. (the salt is just incase the bag leaks so won't dilute your salt for the fermentation) Cover with a clean white kitchen towel and set in an out of the way area. Each day check for scum on the top and take off with a plastic or stainless steel spoon and if liquid has gone down add more salt water. If the towel is damp rinse in hot water and place back on top. Depending on the room tempature it will take 4 to 6 weeks to ferment. You can tell by it not bubbling and also the smell which is not bad. At this point you can leave in the crock and pull out and use as needed always cook 15 minutes before eating, pack in freezer bags and freeze then cook the same as for fresh or take out and put in large pot and bring to a boil and pack in wide mouth quart jars and process for 20 minutes in a water bath with the lids and rings on.

For quart jars

pack the salted cabbage tightly in the jars until the liquid covers leaving about 1 inch of head space take two popcicle sticks or even better 2 wooden ice cream spoon and criscross over the top inside the jar. Cut out some cheese cloth squares to cover or a kithch towel cut up and cover and put a ring on to hold. Place in a plastic wash pan or in a large galss baking dish as these will start to overflow.

Look at daily and if you see some scum do as for the crock. These will be ready in about 3 to 4 weeks. Then you can process as above also.

Try some fresh and cooked it is great. Once you make this you will never buy canned or the fresh from the store again.
 
Being that I'm a city boy (without a garden)......

I don't do any canning. However I do remember being in the kitchen when my mother had made and canned a variety of fruit preserves.

I also remember my grandmother canning all sorts of fruits and vegetables, because she had a garden and fruit trees which produced an abundance of them. The one thing I remember most vividly was..... she had a (pineapple) guava tree that produced large amounts of fruit each year. Of course the end result was LOTS of gauva preserves in jars all over the back porch and garage and boy was it good!
 
I've never gotten into canning but my mom used to put up jams and also made killer dill pickles that everyone loved. My sister still makes them but I remember it being a big production. Mom used to put the cucumbers in the tub of the washing machine, fill it with water and scrub each one with a brush. That was about the only part I ever helped with.

I'd say it's been at least 10 years since my mom no longer had the ability to put together a batch of pickles. Even back then, it was difficult for her to find the nubby pickling cucumbers by the lug without having to do some traveling.

Ralph
 
Geoff-- I agree completely with you. It's comforting to pull a jar of something from the pantry during our frigid winter be reminded of the hot August day you spent 14 hours slaving away in a steamy-hot kitchen 'til your legs felt like they were going to fall off, LOL!

Aside: I see you're also a member of the Class of '77. We rock!!
 
Eugene ... the class of 1977 does rock; especially now that we're all turning 50 years old!! :-)

I also think we have a deep appreciation for our mothers and grandmothers who always made sure our larders were full of home canning for the winter months.

Mine sure took pride every time a jar of tomatoes or preserves were opened (still does at 87 yo).

A lot of work, but definitely rewarding in its own right. I try to take pride in it, too.

Another "art" of homemaking that is no longer relagated to "women's duties" only.

:-)
 
Well ... glad to see we're not the only ones!

With a name like dynaflo and an email of roadmaster, I would assume you are a Buick buff!

Do you have one of those gorgeous machines with the dynaflow, fluid-drive transmissions? :-)

My dad loved Buicks.
 
For me--

canning is too fiddly by myself. So, I haven't canned in years, but I have canned.

Last year I made some strawberry freezer jam with the Sure-Jell light (reduced sugar) pectin, and it turned out pretty well. I might do it again this year, even though I have a freezer the size of about two postage stamps.

I DO miss my homemade cornichon pickles, though. However, they are not feasible here, because I had to grow the cucumbers for them myself.......

Lawrence/Maytagbear

Class of '78 representin!
 
Dynaflow & Geoff---I wonder if some internal "Buick switch" engages when a man enters middle age. I'd never considered owning a Buick, but lately I've been looking around thinking, "Hey, those Buick LaCrosse's look DAMN fine!"

Lawrence---Class of '78? Close enough for rock 'n' roll!!
By the way, I think freezer jam tastes much fresher than "canned" jam, but it's more convenient, storage-wise, for me to can it. I've found using the Reduced Sugar (or whatever it's called) version of Sure-Jell gets you a little closer to the freshness of freezer jam, as there is a higher ratio of fruit-to-sugar. But freezer jam definitely takes the checkered flag.
 
Bread and Butter Pickles (Sweet)

5 quarts thinly sliced cucumbers
8 medium onions, sliced
2 sweet green peppers, chopped
2 sweet red peppers, chopped
1/2 cup canning salt
ICE CUBES
5 cups white vinegar, 5% acidity
5 cups sugar
2 tablespoons mustard seed
1 1/2 teaspoons turmeric
1 teaspoon celery seed
1/2 teaspoon cloves

Combine cucumbers, onions, green and red peppers, and salt; mix well. Cover with ICE CUBES and let stand 2 hours. Drain vegetables thoroughly.

Combine vinegar, sugar, and spices in a large saucepan; bring to a boil. Add drained vegetables and slowly bring to a boil; boil 5 minutes. Pack hot mixture into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Remove air bubbles with non-metalic spatula. Adjust caps.

Process in a boiling water bath canner. Start timing after water begins to boil....

pints=10 minutes quarts=15 minutes

this recipe yields 10 pints or 5 quarts....double or triple recipe for a bigger batch, if you have several canners
 
Back
Top