Canning & Food Preservation

Ten jars this time! All sealed as well, which is nice. For some reason, most years one jar of apple butter just refuses to seal.

Our apple trees were crazy fruitful this year so I decided to try my hand at some apple butter. I'll for sure be making more soon, it's delicious.

I canned more sauce today.

I even set out the lemon juice, but forgot to put it in. I'm blaming it on the wine.

Boiling water bath works well with the tattlers.

My wife bought a rotisserie chicken, so we made stock with the carcass. Its just so good to get 5 liters of stock from what would be garbage. Tattler lids worked well today, only one didn't seal. I don't normally do that well. Easier to get them to seal in a water bath.

60 lbs of tomatoes yielded:

• 10 x 500 mL of sauce
• 19 x 500 mL of crushed tomatoes
• 5 x 500 mL (ish) of crushed tomatoes in freezer bags.

That's all for 2025 ☺️

Bonus photos of the deer watching us toil:

Salsa recipe from Ball canning, called Fresh Salsa. I had never peeled a tomato before. It wasn't as difficult as I feared. Also managed to have enough garden tomatoes I didn't need the backup store tomatoes!

cross-posted from: https://crazypeople.online/post/6674394

Cross posting because someone was asking about preserving meals, and dehydrating is an option that people might not always think about! I'll add more context in a comment.

It's chilli: pinto beans, tvp, mixed veg, tomato sauce, jalapeno, and seasoning. I think the seasonings were salt, celery seeds, veg bullion, chilli powder, cayenne, and cinnamon. I made it in an electric pressure cooker.

I dehydrated it for about 24 hours before I broke it up and stored it in an air tight container.

I don't really cook huge meals so I don't own many large pots. I've currently got that pot in the photo going (with the lid off) as well as the electric pressure cooker (on sauté, lid off) with about half the volume of the epc in the fridge waiting for some of this to reduce.

I do the actual water bath canning in large enamel pots in a propane burner outside. I pressure can indoors (one layer only, in a pressure canner made for glass top/induction) so neither of those are really suitable for sauce making.

Do folks just live with doing things in batches? Should I just accept I could use another large pot I only use once a year?

This is about half of the 60 lbs we are preserving this year. I'm going to blanch and dice some tomatoes using a smaller pot and put those in the fridge to do the cooking step tomorrow for crushed tomatoes while the sauce is in the water bath canner.

I'm also thinking of getting an electric roaster which I can leave on the counter top. I bought a slow cooker at the thrift shop a few years ago but didn't realize they didn't get hot enough to reduce sauce in 🤦‍♀️

I try not to own too much stuff, but I do have the room (in the basement lol).

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/32222343

I finally got around to jamming and canning the black raspberries that grow near me.

I'm eating the skim off, which is probably bad but it's very veery tasty. 5 seem to have popped, I'm hoping the 6th will soon!

Twelve more candied jalapeños are done and sealed. I'm still trying to figure out what else to make. I'm looking at some strawberry lemonade concentrate but I'm unsure how much concentrate to liquid once done. Guess I'll just add water to taste! Apple butter and cranberry things will be in the fall!

Five jars total this year! I hate coring them, silly strawberries! Tastes delicious though. Two jars have popped, so hopefully the rest will as well!

Twelve jars total this year! Only took about two hours including prep of the jalapeños. Many of them are already claimed by family, hopefully I get at least a can for myself XD

Cherries, strawberries, Bananas, apples. So good.

Hi there! Hopefully this is the right place. I tried searching for what this might be and I came up with a lot of different answers.

This is a store bought can of plain tomato sauce, we were making soup. We noticed this white paste on the side of the can, when I poked it it was soft, almost like a thin fat?

Smelled fine, and the sauce looked fine otherwise. But we got nervous and threw it away, afraid of botulism or other nasties. Plus we wanted to finish cooking.

Does anyone know what this is? Some sources said it might be calcium nitrate, but they also say it would be hard and wouldn't break up in your fingers if rolled. This was a paste.

Anyway, just wondering for next time, figured you guys would know. Thanks!

Fruit leather is becoming a weekly occurrence, it seems. Cara Cara oranges, grapes, apples. (I take all the uneaten fruit from the last week or two and heat and blend it.)

See title.

So I wasn't in the mood to post this at the time but when my mother passed away this summer, she had just washed a bunch of jars and a pail of cucumbers. Dad asked me to do something with the cucumbers so they didn't go to waste. I don't know for sure what she was planning but, pickles seemed like a safe guess so I pickled them. I didn't even want to look at them until this week when I finally labeled them and put them on the shelves with the rest of the canned goods. Frustratingly, they turned out really good but because I was in a bit of fog at the time, I don't even remember what recipes I used.

Made a bigger batch than usual this time, 24 jars total. Besides pickles (which I've made lots of), I also tried garlic, radishes, bell pepper and cabbage for this round.

I love the colour of the red cabbage especially. Can't wait to try them in a few weeks

Made some peach fruit leather. Just blended peaches. I've never had fruit leather break like that. What happened? How can I fix it?

Had to use up some kitchen leftovers today. Super pleased with how it turned out!

In the making:

Edit: Here’s the recipe. I couldn’t find a recipe that didn’t use already-made dill pickles, so I combined several recipes instead. I used the National Center for Home Food Preservation’s vinegar solution ratios for sweet pickles to make sure the pH was safe. Then I used a combo of spices from a sweet dill recipe and a sweet horseradish recipe.

My dill plants didn’t do well this year, so I used dried. It’s important to note, I’ve never made this recipe before and since I just canned yesterday I don’t know yet whether it’s good.

Makes 4-5 pint jars

• 4 lbs cucumbers
• 1.5 cups apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup white vinegar
• 3.25 cups granulated sugar
• 0.25 cup canning salt
• In each clean, sterilized jar add:
• 0.75 tsp mustard seed
• 1 Tbsp dill weed
• 1.5 tsp prepared horseradish Cut off a little of the blossom end. Slice and put in hot vinegar solution. When cucumbers are heated through, pack in jars. Add vinegar solution, leaving a 1/2” headspace. Water bath can for 10 minutes.

Strawberry honey butter! My first attempt at this recipe from the Ball canning website. It's delicious, think it'll go great on waffles and ice cream! It's a bit runny, but that's fine!

Made the yearly candied jalapeños! Well, half of them as the place I get the jalapeños from only barely had 4lbs, let alone 8lbs.