My first adventure into Canning

This last Saturday, my friend Jenn (soon to be a linked to blogger) and I took our CSA bounty and canned it. This was the first time for both of us at canning. In my enthusiasm I had picked up several books on canning and pickling. We used Pickled: Vegetables, Fruits, Roots, More--Preserving a World of Tastes and Traditions as our guide this time. The CSA had delivered about 19 medium large beets and well over 30 beautiful carrots. So we selected two recipes one for Beet Pickles and one for Pickled Carrots.

Earlier in the day I had run out to get jars. I had remembered that a local 99 cents store had them. Indeed, they did. Not paying as much attention as I should, I purchased a partial case of jars small jars and one quart jar and one half gallon jar. The recipes both said they made 4 pints. When I got home I realized that the smaller jars were in fact a box of half pint jars put in an empty box for pint jars. As Jenn pointed out, I should be well acquainted with the pint - touché. We adjusted by making 8 half pints of carrots, and 3 quarts and 1 half pint. This involved a little scrounging around the apartment but luckily I had bought extra lids and had spare rings.

The book does a good job explaining the basics, how to sterilize the jars, etc and the instructions around the recipes are also sufficiently detailed. We started with the beets, I had selected the 15 smallest ones. All the beets we got were on the medium to large side and gave them a scrub with a firm brush - probably ended up being too firm. You're supposed to bring the beets to a boil and then shock them as a way to get them to peel nicely. Well, ours didn't want to give up their skins so we put them back on the boil for a bit. My two theory is that either I scuffed up the skins sufficiently that they became less tough and wouldn't hang together on the peel, or simply because we're dealing with veg from the root cellar they may just have been fussy. Either way, I lightly took the vegetable peeler to them and got them all peeled.

In the meantime Jenn had made a brine (I guess you'd call it that) of vinegar, water, sugar, cinnamon, clove and allspice. We gave our, probably overcooked for this step in the process, beets a 15 minute simmer in that in a cheap enamel (non-reactive) pan and then yanked our sterilized jars out of the oven and ladles the purple-y love in. All was going well until we got to putting the filled and sealed jars in the bath to process for 10-12 minutes (as instructed by the recipe). I hadn't put enough water in the massive canning bath pot. So the quart jars did not cover. Jenn had the bright idea of flipping them on their side and my contribution was to fire up a saucepan of water to hopefully get to 180 degrees (about where our water bath was) so I could add some to it without lowering the temperature of the bath. Jenn grabbed the kettle and we went to work. In about 5 minutes we got one large sauce pan full of water in the bath and were able to stand the jars upright. They immediately did what they were supposed to and burped out the air inside them (that's how you get the vacuum seal). We processed them for a bit longer recommended to make sure they had enough time to expel sufficient air. We pulled both of them out and a bit later heard that sweet "ping" sound as the lids sucked in.

Now, at this point we had enough beets left for a whole quart jar and no jars left sterilized. So, we brought the bath up to a boil and sterilized the 8 jars we intended to use for the carrots and the quart jar for the remaining beets. We had prepped the carrots by slicing them into spears while the beets processed. Each jar got a sprig of dill, a clove of garlic, a shard of a pepper and carrot spears. We then ladled the vinegar brine over the top and processed 7 jars at one go (see photo). This time we got it down and it all went as planned.

The highlight for the day was when the carbon monoxide detector in the next room went off. We'd had the stove and the oven going for several hours, and as it is winter here in New York, the windows weren't open beyond a crack from the recent cold spell. So we threw open the windows and doors and breathed a lot easier. The carbon monoxide detector stopped it's squawking. I'm really glad they are required, because it very well may have saved my life. I wouldn't have thought of a thing and given the windows and doors were shut it may have been hazardous in the apartment and just gone to sleep. Of course having looked up the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning (headache, sleepiness and naseau) I was a bit irrationally worried when I got sleepy around 11:30 PM that I was somehow succumbing. Lucky for all of us, I'm still here.

My biggest take aways are around the logistics around the whole thing. With any multi-step process where each step takes different amounts of time and space and resources your first stumble through is always troublesome. I learned that you don't really need to sterilize the rings and lids until you are about to use them. It's easier to sterilize more jars than you think you'll need at one go and just keep them in a 200 degree oven ready for action than trying to do multiple sterilizations. I also realized that while the canning process itself is a relatively more exact science getting the right amount of jar contents for X jars is something that just comes with practice and will really never work out perfectly.

I will say, having the right equipment was a big help.TheProgressive 5-Piece Canning Kit I had gotten was actually pretty thorough. Everything proved exceptionally useful. The one I wouldn't even begin to recommend to attempt canning without was the jar funnel. It was endlessly easier to ladle hot brined beets into the 5 inch wide funnel than making it into the 3 inch wide jar top without making a huge mess. It also helps you get the "headroom" right by seating into the jar about 3/8ths of an inch. This of course was followed second by the jar lifter thing-a-ma-jig. This made it really easy to pull hot jars out of the oven for filling and even easier to pull them in and out of the processing bath. The other stuff is just convenient, and ultimately I found a pair of long BBQ tongs the best tool for fishing sterilized jars out of the 20 quart processing pot.

Here is a few snaps from the whole process. Now that it's all said and done you have to wait 3 weeks before the beets and the carrots have fully developed their flavor. There is one other thing I pickled that day that I'll save for a future post.