AMISH CANNING AND PRESERVING COOKBOOK: The Complete Delicious Water Bath Canning and Preserving Recipes

By Josephine Fisher

Canning sounds complicated, but it isn't; it's just another way of cooking your food, but instead of cooking each meal as you need to eat it, you simply cook foods you can store for the long term.

Why would you want to do that?

For several reasons. First, it's a great way to ensure you have food available in

• Language: English
• Publisher: Josephine Fisher
• Release date: Jul 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088243008

Book preview

Introduction

Canning sounds complicated, but it isn’t; it’s just another way of cooking your food, but instead of cooking each meal as you need to eat it, you simply cook foods you can store for the long term.

Why would you want to do that?

For several reasons. First, it’s a great way to ensure you have food available in an emergency, such as long-term power blackouts. Second, it’s a great way of ensuring that you have food to hand when you don’t feel like cooking a meal from scratch or don’t have the time. And third, it lets you preserve foods when they are at their best flavor, especially if you grow your own fruit and vegetables or get great seasonal deals at farmer’s markets or grocery stores. Imagine having homemade jams and jellies for breakfast, crunchy pickles, sauces, relishes, and even meat and fish, all prepared and stored by you.

Canning is one of the most common techniques for preserving fresh food in jars and killing bacteria and microorganisms using heat. That heat also stops certain enzymes that can make the food go bad, ensuring you can store your food for months.

When you heat the jars, the air is pushed out of the jar; as the jars cool, the lids seal, creating a vacuum that helps preserve the food. Because there is no air in the jars, yeast, microbes, and mold cannot form, thus ensuring the food doesn’t go bad.

Many people are turning back to techniques like canning to make life easier for themselves. We all have too many demands on our time these days, which sometimes results in us eating a less-than-stellar diet. By taking a little time to prepare and preserve your own food, you release some of the pressure on you, aiding in a more relaxing and joyous lifestyle.

Canning is an age-old technique used by our predecessors, people who were confident in their abilities to provide for their families. They have passed their knowledge on down the line, providing us with everything we need to do the same. Where things differ now is that we have more freedom to choose what we preserve; we aren’t just confined to what we can grow in our gardens anymore. Instead, we can buy most things year-round, buying when the price is right and preserving for when things get too expensive or aren’t available in the stores.

Canning as a food preservation technique began more than 200 years ago when people had to preserve what they grew to last them through the winter and through times when no harvest was available. These days, we have grocery stores on almost every corner packed with canned foods that we can eat any time we want. Because of that, canning slowly fell out of use, replaced by the convenience of heading to a store whenever we want food, but recent times have seen an increase in the number of people going back to the old ways. Of course, this brings with it a need for safer, more modern guidelines, and we’ll go over those in the first part of this book.

If you are new to canning, you’ll find plenty of recipes for all kinds of food in this book. None of these recipes are complicated, using commonly available foods and providing you with all the information you need to can and preserve safely to your heart’s content.

It’s safe to say that there’s something for everyone here. These foods are healthy and provide you with the basis for many great meals. As your pantry fills up with jars of delicious food, you’ll feel a sense of pride in your accomplishments, and it will fuel your efforts to keep on canning. You’ll also enjoy your meals more, knowing you have the freshest, best-tasting foods on hand whenever you want them.

Let’s not waste any more time; dive into this guide on canning and preserving your own food.

Chapter 1

Canning Tools and Supplies

Like with anything, there are certain tools and supplies you will need to be successful at canning:

Jars and Lids

If this is your first time canning, you’ll need to start from scratch and buy new jars. Make sure there are no chips or cracks, even minor ones, as they will prevent a tight seal from forming. When you buy brand-new canning jars, you usually get lids and rings or screw bands with them. You can reuse the jars and rings, but the lids must be replaced every time.

Jar Lifter

A jar lifter is not essential, but it does help you lift the jars from the boiling water bath. They are not expensive, but you can use strong tongs if you prefer.

Canning Rack

Canning racks stop your jars from going right to the bottom of the canner. Most canners use an aluminum rack, but while they are okay, they do rust over time. An aluminum rack will be fine for beginners, but if you really get into canning and intend to do a lot, you should purchase a stainless steel one.

Pots and Pans

Most food will need to be cooked in some way before you can it, so you will need a large heavy-based pot. You can make small batches of jellies, jams, pickles, and sauces in a five-quart pan, but you also need a larger one, eight-quart or bigger, or a Dutch oven. Larger pots reduce the chances of your food boiling over and ensure that everything is cooked thoroughly, making your canned food even safer. Go for stainless steel, ceramic, or enamel rather than cast iron or aluminum, both of which react with acidic chemicals, giving the food a metallic taste.

Towels

You will need a thick towel on your kitchen counter to place the jars on. This will stop the jars from moving when you fill them and also stops the hot jars from burning the counter when they are processed. You will also need clean tea towels; when your jars are processed, you need to wipe them down with a clean towel dipped in white vinegar or water before you put the lids on. Vinegar is best used when you are working with fatty foods.

Measuring Cups and Spoons

You must follow the recipe measurements exactly to ensure your canned products turn out as they should. That means you need measuring cups to measure vegetables, fruit, vinegar, juice, water, and any other liquid needed in the recipe. Glass ones are better than plastic because the latter can absorb strong scents, such as chili peppers and onions. You also need proper measuring spoons for smaller amounts of ingredients.

Food Scales

These are needed for recipes where the ingredient weights are listed. While most ingredients are in cups, some will be by weight or by the number of fruits, vegetables, etc., needed.

Funnel

You can fill your jars with the product without using a funnel, but it will make life easier for you; there’ll be less mess to clean up. Try to buy one designed to fit wide-mouth and standard jars.

Bubble Remover

A bubble-removing tool gets rid of the bubbles when your jars are full and is typically used when canning pickles and fruits. However, you can use any other suitable tool, such as a chopstick, so long as it is not metallic and reaches the bottom of the jar. However, bubble removers are not expensive and easier to use.

Magnetic Lid Lifter

You don’t need to sterilize the jar lids these days before you use them, but they must still be clean. Most canners choose to soak their lids and rings in boiling water, so a lid lifter makes it easy to get them out of the water when you need them. Sure, tongs will do the job, but a magnetic lid lifter makes things much easier.

Headspace Measurer

All canning recipes require you to leave a certain amount of space at the top of the jar when you fill it with the food. This tool is angled, helping you measure the correct headspace and adjust the jar contents as needed. You will typically find some information on the screw top rings – the top ring usually indicates ½-inch, and the bottom indicates ¼-inch. Alternatively, you can use a ruler.

Digital Thermometer

A digital thermometer, specifically a candy or deep-fry one, can help you make sure jams and jellies reach the gelling point – boiling temperature is always 8 degrees over this temperature. You can also use a cooled plate and a teaspoon, but these methods are not as precise as a proper thermometer.

Camp Stove

This is a requirement if your conventional stove is glass topped, as these are