Canning or Preserving
Canning posts should all start off by mentioning Botulism. If Botulism is a new term to you, I suggest reading about it a little before attempting to can (or jar) anything. I did not and I thought that I was going to either kill my family with spoiled food, or have to throw it all out. So much hard work literally down the drain because I used a hot water bath for my squash soup instead of pressure canning it, like your supposed to. It ends up that I can use what I have because I caught it in time. I can just recook my soup really good and start over.
I don’t say this all to scare anyone. Just that if your going to try to preserve your produce by canning or jarring, do the research before you start. That way you’ll water bath what your supposed to, and pressure can what your supposed to. Learn from my mistakes.
It all has to do with acidity
Low acid foods basically preserve themselves. What I mean is when you put something in a vinegar bath, the vinegar does a lot of the work. It is so acidic that a lot of bacteria can not live in it. That is why pickled beets or eggs, for example, can be sealed using a hot water bath. But low acid food, like my squash soup, don’t have a high enough pH to do that. Therefore things like Clostridium botulinum, the bacteria that causes botulism can still survive. The fact that the hot water bath is at the boiling point of water is still not hot enough.
“Do not teach what you do not know” – Rumi
I was originally going to add a how-to portion to this post. Then I remembered the above quote and thought that I am really only leaning this myself. If I were going to add any instruction part here, it would only be regurgitated from some one else’s page. That’s not what I am trying to do with this site. So, I will just say that there re a lot of resources out there about canning, by people who really know what they are doing. We should all go to their sites and learn from them. My advice is to do that first. Before you spend a lot of time and effort for nothing. Ruining your produce in the process.
