Until then, I’m still available on occasion on the Home Canning Yahoo group … and if you have private questions about anything I’ve posted about here. Just drop me a note at lane@afoodjourneytogo.com

My blog’s been dead for months, hacked by some unknown internet scamp with nothing better to do … but apparently they’ve decided to leave me alone … since, when I went to the blog this morning to look something up … I tried to log in again … and it let me!! WooWOO!!

I sat down to rectify that situation … and discovered something interesting: I’m so long-winded … that I can create a post (this one, full of links) that’s soooooo large that even WordPress can’t handle it ….*chuckles*

Instead, I split my list into two pieces … BWB and Pressure canner … and made them into two permanent pages on my blog … ones that appear at the top of every page. In other words, when you’re planning a day of canning … check in the appropriate list to see if there’s something else you want to make at the same time … that can go right into the same canner as your other project

You’ll find the BWB list here, and the pressure canner list here. Enjoy!

Why, it’s Pandan-flavor Cereal Snack!

I know, the name doesn’t help much … does it?

Let’s break it down, shall we? First, Pandan (aka: screwpine) is an herb/flavorant that’s as popular in certain Asian cuisines as vanilla is in American cuisine. I went looking for a way to describe the taste, hoping someone else had come up with a better way to explain it other than my own “it kinda tastes herbal and coconutty at the same time” description … but apparently most other people seem to have the same problem I do. Like so many other unusual and exotic things I (and others) have tried, when someone says “soOOooo … what does pandan taste like” … we just pretty much have to say “um? … well … it tastes like pandan”

Beyond the pandan flavor, the “Cereal Snack” is basically made up of puffed grains of rice and sesame seeds, held together by a slightly sweet/slightly sticky sugary substance. In other words, they’re kinda like the Asian version of Rice Krispy Treats. They’re crispy and chewy and sweet and pandanny … all at the same time! I’m totally addicted to them … but–unfortunately, like so many other international foods–I’ve only found them in one store. Worse news, it’s a small Asian grocery in Chattanooga, TN … close to 3,000 miles away from where I live

So I’ll get them when I can, but I highly recommend that you try the Pandan-flavor Cereal Bars if you find them near you! You may love them as much as I do!

It brought back memories of my earlier post entitled “What can you do when you have open spaces in your pressure canner?” … and got me thinking … there’s no way to sort the NCHFP recipes, so there’s no way to do a quick look to see what you could potentially add to your canner when you’ve got a few holes unfilled.

An old boss of mine wrote me a letter of recommendation many years ago, and I’ve always loved one of his comments. He said: “Lane has the innate ability to spot the problem in any sort of system: computer, operational, structural, more … but she never walks into my office to tell me about a problem … without already having a solution in-hand to fix it.”

Voila, your solution! Now when you have three or four slots left in a canner, here’s a listing of the NCHFP-approved canning recipes … broken out by type of canner … and length of processing time. Find your time, and see what else you can include in that same batch when you have space left!

——

And now, the same thing for Pressure Canners:

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Bookmark the list! Never leave a space in a canner again!

The next question is … can you process something for longer than required … just so you can fill a canner?

The answer to that is YES! It’s a really bad idea to process a food for less time than the NCHFP recommends … and your food will suffer from some nutritional degradation the longer you process it … but you’re not going to create problems with food safety if you process a jar of food longer than required. I wouldn’t suggest adding more than 5 additional minutes to a pressure canner load, or 10 minutes to a BWB load … but sometimes that little bit of flexibility can help you fill a canner. We don’t want to waste energy … but just remember, you should ONLY add more time than the NCHFP suggests … NEVER, EVER use less.

…… unless, of course, you’re canning your first three pints of jam/jelly … and you never plan to can more than three jars of jam/jelly at a time from here on.

If you’d ever like to can anything beyond that … then don’t buy the Canning Discovery Kit … because it’s a waste of money.

Here’s the straight story. If you’re looking to buy an inexpensive starter kit that will cover you for ANYTHING you want to can (from the allowed foods list, that is) for the rest of your life … then buy:

• one 16-quart pressure canner: your choice of dial or weight gauge … one that can double as a BWB canner … $65 at WalMart.
• one jar lifter: $5.03 at Amazon … but I’ve bought them for a LOT less, including $.69 at thrift stores.
• “Mason” type jars (that fit the two-part canning lids) with two-piece canning lids: a case will cost you $8-15/depending on size and where you buy them.

Voila! In addition to ‘food’ and ‘time’ …. that’s all you need to can pretty much ANYTHING you’d like to learn how to can

If I had an extra few dollars in my pocket, I’d also add:

• one canning jar funnel: the metal ones are more expensive. I’ve bought plastic ones for $3.00 or less.

… because funnels like that can help you keep the lips of your jars cleaner as you fill them … and cleaner lips mean less to clean before you put your lids on.

With that minimum amount of equipment … you’ll have the ability to can
to your heart’s content … boiling water bath canning AND pressure canning … now, and 50 years from now

Case in point … guess what I found sitting outside of a thrift store here in Chattanooga?

Yes, Dear Readers … that’s a real coffin!

I didn’t ask them what they wanted for it … but my friends and I had a blast talking about what we could do with it … including using it as a prop for some midnight photographs ‘-)

Instead, I’m back at my sister’s now … sleeping in the pack bed with her and her dogs, and being much more relaxed than all that. And, of course, I’m lucky because my flights were just delayed … but I have a home to go home to. None of my friends or family were hurt in all that bad weather. And I had the money to pay for hotels, unlike the people I saw sleeping on the floors at the airport.

I’ve got a ton of restaurant reviews from this trip that I need to get busy on. Now that whatever was hosing my blog has righted itself, I can start cranking them out.

So … she’s baaacccckkk!

What do I mean by that? Okay, here’s what it says in the All American Pressure Canner manuals about starting up a canner: Pour 1-1/2 inches of water into the pot … Place lid on cooker [sic], place pressure cooker over heat source on high heat and allow steam to escape from the Vent Pipe for 7 minutes before placing the selective Pressure Regulator Weight on Vent Pipe.

Then here’s what the Presto manual says: Place 3 quarts of boiling water, canning rack, and jars in canner … Using a relatively high heat setting, heat the pressure canner until a steady flow of steam can be seen, heard, or felt coming from the vent pipe. Exhaust air from the canner for 10 minutes by allowing steam to flow from the vent pipe. Reduce heat, if necessary, to maintain a steady, moderate flow of steam.

So … what’s the problem with this advice?

Well, first off … it’s vague … but the biggest problem is … if you’re canning boiling hot food in pre-heated jars, then there’s not a single thing wrong with that advice. Use it, and your jars will come out perfect every time.

The problem is … a lot of the things we set out to can aren’t necessarily going into the jar boiling hot. We raw-pack all sorts of foods as a matter of course these days, and–more and more, just like other canners–I’m doing more in the way of “cooked in the jar” sorts of foods myself … convenience foods created by combining raw and cooked foods, many that go into the jar at various temperatures. And when you’re starting out with less than boiling hot food instead … all that boiling hot water and start it out on HIGH stuff is really bad advice.

Why? you ask. Because–if you put cold food in jars … put them into a canner with 1.5 inches of boiling hot water … turn the heat on HIGH … that water can boil around those jars a lot faster than the food in the jars will heat up. This is especially prevalent at the higher elevations (where water boils at lower temperatures) but it can happen at dead sea level, too. In fact–in some cases–you can get 10 minutes worth of “steam” out of the top of the vent pipe (more on that in a second) … then seal the pot … yet, the food in the middle of your jars may STILL not be up to full temperature at that point. And if you seal the pot before the food in the jars is up to the same temperature as the water/pot … then you run the risk of broken jars … or–at least–of jars venting food right along with the steam, which could cause seal failures … both immediately … and later, too, after those jars have sat on your shelf a couple of months, and the microscopic food particles stuck between the rubber gasket and the glass lip of your canning jar start to rot.

So, how do you prevent all this uneven heating from ruining your canning batch?

The trick to even heating in your pressure canner is two-fold: one, start everything at approximately the same temperature … and two, TAKE YOUR TIME! When most people describe their seal failures/blown jars full of food to me, the #1 reason I’ve seen for failure is that they either tried to rush or shortcut the canning process … or, unfortunately, they tried to follow that boiling hot water/start it on HIGH advice from the canner manuals. It’s frustrating to keep ending up with broken jars, or jars that lose a large percentage of their contents in the canner … only to have the seal–that you thought was okay, despite the blow-out–come back and fail six months later … in the back of your cabinet … where your nose finds it before your eyes do

On the flip side of that experience, I’ve just spent the last few days canning a bunch of meals for my husband, in preparation to go on the road again soon (more later ) … so–since Wednesday–I’ve canned the following items, all of them “cooked in the jar” and created by combining different temperatures of food together, to create a jar that’s no where near full of boiling hot food when it goes in the canner. I made:

• 16 pints of ham and bean soup,
• 16 pints of sausage stew,
• 30 pints of beef vegetable soup, and
• 14 pints of hot wings.

How many of those 76 jars failed to seal?

Zero

I didn’t lose a single jar … because I’ve figured out how to start everything at the same temperature … and how to take my time

Here’s the sequence I use. I won’t claim it has a 100% success rate, but it’s currently sitting at a solid 99.5% rate for me:

1. fill your canner to the proper depth (3 quarts, up to the line, whatever your canner recommends) with water that’s approx. the same temperature of the food you’re going to can. This means if you’re canning cold, raw-packed food, you start with cold water. If you’re canning a mix of raw-pack and hot-pack foods, you should start with warm water. And, as the canner manufacturers recommend, if you’re canning boiling hot food, then start with boiling hot water.
2. load the pot with properly-prepared jars of food, whatever that means for your recipe.
3. put the top on your pot, but do NOT put the weight on the vent stem yet.
4. if you started with something other than boiling hot food poured into hot jars, then start your pot on medium or medium-high. If you start with boiling hot food, boiling hot jars, and boiling hot water … then you should start the canner on HIGH … and skip straight to #6 when it boils inside the canner.
5. once you turn the heat on under your pot … you need to wait–sometimes 20-30 minutes (or more) depending on how hot/cold it was to start with–until the steam is beginning to rush out of the vent pipe in a solid stream …
6. … then–once it hits that boiling point–THEN turn your pot on HIGH … and let it boil HARD like that for another 3-4 minutes more, just to be sure … BEFORE you start your 10-minute timer. Don’t start it until being on HIGH has the steam running like gangbusters. How do you know it’s time to start the timer? The steam should be coming out of the vent pipe at this point so HOT/FAST that you can’t hold your hand over the top of it (within 1-2″) for any length of time … and it should have been running at MAX like that for at least 3-4 minutes BEFORE you start your 10-minute vent timer, just so you can be sure you’re getting a solid “Old Faithful” kinda steam jet FIRST, before you set that 10 minute timer to vent your canner. And–yes–I know that AA suggests seven minutes. I don’t have one … so I can’t speak for how fast/evenly it heats up … but when I eventually get one, I’ll probably still vent it 10 minutes … just to be extra sure. Like I said: take your time.
7. once that 10-minute timer goes off, put the weight on the top of the vent stem–set to either 5, 10, or 15PSI … or the one-part weight on a dial canner–and leave the pot on HIGH until either the weight starts to jiggle, or the pressure on that gauge reaches the level you need.
8. once the weight starts to jiggle/your gauge reaches the proper pressure, start your ‘canning cycle duration’ timer (based on your elevation, and the recommendations on the type of food from the NCHFP) and then turn the heat down slowly, to the point that the burner heat maintains the appropriate jiggle, based on your canner manufacturer, or the dial maintains the appropriate pressure, based on the NCHFP recommendations. REMEMBER, if you turn the heat down too fast … and either the jiggle stops, or the pressure drops below the recommended level … EVEN FOR A MINUTE! …then you’re going to have to bring the pot back up to temperature … and then start that timer over from the very beginning again … else, you can’t be guaranteed that your food’s safe … since it takes a certain level of heat held for a certain DURATION to be safe. And if you miss that duration by as little as one minute … you need to start that timer allllll over again to be safe.

Make sense?

Finally, the #1 problem with the vague language in most canner manuals is that they can’t show you what I can show you here with video. So, if you’ve ever wondered what a canner looks like when it’s ready for you to start the timer … and to vent your canner for 10 minutes … then this is it. I put an old cork board behind the column of steam to help you see it better … but what I really want you to do is turn on your speakers … and listen to this column of steam while you look at it. This is what you’re shooting for:

If it doesn’t look like that … then you’re not ready to start your timer for the vent cycle yet.

When it comes to adjusting this category for elevation … this is the easiest category of all. All fruit spreads (with the exception of chutneys, which I covered in a separate category) should be processed according to the following chart:

So–as far as fruit spreads go–it’s as simple as 5, 10, 15

As far as creating your own fruit spread goes, that’s far more art than I can go into in one small blog post. However, suffice it to say that … if you find a fruit spread recipe that will gel–one with acid, pectin, and sugar on-board–then it’s probably one that will work for you if you process it in a BWB canner for the appropriate number of minutes listed above, based on your elevation. At some point in the future, I’ll go deeper into the trials and tribulations of creating your own fruit spreads …. but–for now–stick with good recipes … and remember to ALWAYS sterilize/seal your jars in a BWB to protect yourself and your goodies from those pesky canning cooties