Episode 1679: Seg 2 of S10E36 what do may be doing wrong when canning -The gardening with Joey and Holly Radio Show

0:00Welcome back to the Garden of the Joint Holly Radio Show. Happy to have you all. Thank you for taking a little time out of your day to join us on the program. If you want more information about those sponsors and all the companies you hear throughout the program, you can certainly find them at our parent website, the Wisconsin vegetable gardener dot com. Underneath the season 10 tab for all listings and the money tab for all the coupon code of abilities that we've negotiated with these companies to help you save money. Well, fall is a time where a lot of people are are canning, but you there's people do canning wrong. You do canning wrong. You can get sick or it can be worse. So we're going to go over some of the canning mistakes that you might be making and you honestly don't know you're making because it's something that you've always done and you continue to carry on those traits and those habits in which the previous generation has taught you. So let's start with one of them here. Holly is a multi award winnings Wisconsin state and state canner and it's take multiple

1:02classes with the current county that we live in. Master canner now master canners are are few and far between because of the safety and explain that why there's more there's fewer safety. Why there's fewer master canners and there would be master gardeners. Well, they want to nuts saturate the market. I guess saturate any sort of any particular area with too many master canners because canning is something that they want to safely have done and have somebody who is super knowledgeable in that safety practice. And also it does take a lot longer and a more intense practice to become a master canner. So they only allow so many per state. I believe it is. Kind of keep it safe for. Yeah, to keep it safer. So yeah, so one of the things that a lot of people are seeing on social media now is they've they've whatever canned they've water bathed whatever it is and then they take and flip the

2:03jar upside down and put it for it to seal. Now I don't know I'm not a physisologist or anything like that. But if you're trying to get something to seal putting more pressure on it doesn't make me think that that's going to work any better. It would actually do you make it worse? Why do why do people do this? It's an old thing because they used to use that paraffin wax and then I would supposedly help set the seal. You don't get in all the cracks. But anyway, I want to come back here and one let's kind of keep an order here. So when it comes to what you may be doing wrong during canning, first thing is not using the cracked ingredients. So you for example might think okay, this is to use bottle lemon juice. I have fresh lemon juice. Bottle lemon juice has a consistent acidity throughout the bottle. Fresh lemon juice is not guaranteed that consistency. So that's why we recommend it's required to use bottle lemon juice. And this would be the same for like lime juice or something.

3:07Whatever liquid you're adding you want it to be right in the bottle. So then even something like white vinegar or 5% acidity or higher, you might think why have this, I don't know, whatever vinegar or some other vinegar, rice vinegar for example. And you don't know what the percentage of acidity is and that's not safe either. So you want to make sure you're using the correct ingredients. Right. Correct. And people like we've made paraciter vinegar, you can make pineapple vinegar, you can make apple cider vinegar. The same thing you don't know unless you have the correct mechanical devices to check that acidity, you're just going on a guess. Right. Or even just like sugar you might think okay, this recipe calls for a cup of sugar and I only have a half a cup that should be fine. Right. It's good. I mean for some recipes that might be fine but not it's not guaranteed. And same thing with like pectin. So you want to make sure you have the correct recipes and enough of the recipes. And also it's kind of like you know you remember the cartoons that you watch like bugs

4:09bunny or they're in the laboratory and they're mixing stuff. That's kind of if you don't do it right. That's kind of what happens in the jar after you can or it may it may be so invisible that you'd still your tuned into the gardening with Joey and Holly radio show. Right. So hold on. Okay. Right. So anyway, you also want to make sure you're using the correct cooking time, processing time. So let XYZ soak in a salt brine for overnight eight hours, three hours, whatever you want to do that step. You don't want to skip that step. Oftentimes that step is to help make that's whatever it is. What the vegetable to become safe for canning is basically soaking it in a salt brine is making it more shelf stable or breaking down the enzymes of that certain vegetable so that it then can absorb the acid that you're putting it into. So you want to make sure that you are you're following those directions.

5:10So is it. Go ahead with the next one. I'll jump in. So you also want to use a safe canning recipe. You want to use something within the last 10 to 15 years. That's from a reputable canning website, whether that be ball canning, um, taste of home, better home and gardens, a master canner that you know who has a website like SB canning. She's a master canner out of Santa Barbara, California. How do you know if something is not safe by just going on somebody's website and going, oh, yeah. Yeah. If it's just like some stay home mom with a recipe, I mean, on our, on our parent website, we have recipes, but they are linked and shown the actual source of where they came from. And they're certified safe. Yeah. Food and jars is another one who has safe recipes. So just keep it in mind. You want to make sure you are using a safe safe recipe. If it calls for something like, um, you try to make pie pie filling and it says to use

6:10cornstarch, you need to use something called clear gel. So if that recipes, if you use pie filling to make use cornstarch, it looks disgusting. And it gets all clumpy and weird. Clear gels, what you need in that is typically only bought online. Fortunately, and it has an expiration date. Yeah. So if you think, oh, I'm just going to buy five pounds because I'll need it in a couple of years. It's just like pectin. It will go, most pectin has an expiration date. It will go bad. Now, I, you know, when you're doing with the canning stuff, you want it to be fresh and safe and in the time frame. And I understand that there's that mindset of just because it's inspired, doesn't mean it's bad. We're talking about canning, something that's going to sit on a shelf for 12 to 18 months potentially. Yeah. Go ahead. I got one. When people do not time the processing correctly. Right. And that's another thing is you want to make sure you are. If it says, if it says to cook it or can it for 10 minutes in the boiling, boiling water

7:12bath canter, and you're like, oh, I can leave it in for 20 is fine. A lot of times, that's for like cucumbers. And you're going to end up with mushy cucumbers. Well, when does that time start? Do you put, let's say you're putting it in? And it jars in as long as the water's boiling. But if the water's not boiling as soon as the water, the jars may sit in that water for 15 minutes. And when the water starts boiling, that's when the timer begins to get your 10 minute duration. That's what you're okay. Now, if you are making pickles, you want to make sure that water's boiling before we put those jars in there. Well, you want to make sure the jars are warm too. Right. They'll be my for if I was making like traditional cucumber pickles or when I have, I make sure that my canner is for sure boiling because you don't want to over process them because that's how you get mushy pickles. But as Joey had mentioned, you want to make sure your jars are warm. We learned this lesson with some beats. Was it beaten? Tomatoes, tomatoes. Tomatoes. And, uh, yeah. So that's how much energy is put into peeling tomatoes and chopping them and getting them in a court jar. So we did that and put it in the hot water bath canner.

8:13And then tomatoes started floating and then we was like, oh, let's put the other one. And the other blue out both bottom of the jars and lost two courts of tomatoes, which took quite a long time to peel and process. Absolutely. Yeah. So it was, it was, um, as I said, we didn't do that again, but also a fun little fun fact about canning beet juice stains linoleum. Yes. I think that beet juice stain is finally gone. Oh, okay. So yeah, fun fact beet juice does stain, it can stain counter tops too. So just keep that in mind and probably some things unless it's like a stainless steel sink. So the other thing is, is that not following the instructions, um, cutting corners, any sort of thing like that. So if you have a recipe that's new to you or you only make that recipe once a year, I highly recommend making sure you are reading that. I know like, I may have made something of years and years and years and years before, but things changed. I remember I used to do, I'll just do the same thing.

9:15It's okay. Well, that and like you might think, oh, I definitely have like you're at the store. I'm like, I'm pretty sure I have the bottle lemon juice. I have is okay. There's a famous line of King of Queens thinking isn't knowing. Right. Right. So it doesn't hurt to have fresh bottle lemon juice. I mean, it's like a dollar 50. Well, also, uh, gallon of vinegar. There's so many things you can do with vinegar besides can with it. Exactly. Exactly. It's not going to hurt to have a gallon of vinegar, sugar, salt, whatever it may be that you may need and you're going to use elsewhere in your kitchen. Typically, I don't personally use a lot of regular sugar, but I do keep it on hand because it's nice to use at times. So, um, so yeah, just keep that in mind. Preparing your jars, make sure you have enough lids for your jars. If you have a bunch of wide mouth jars ready and you don't have wide mouth lids, that's going to be frustrating for you. You don't want to have to either run to the store late or have to wait till the next day.

10:18Things like that. Or have to order it online and wait because the store doesn't have it because the time of year or they're sold out. Right. Right. Yeah. Anything like that. And then, you know, another cutting corner thing that people do is they might use a water bath method when they should be pressure canning and that is not smart either because pressure canning is there to take those vegetables that aren't being added to acid or if it's meat or something to bring it up to a higher pressure, a higher heat point versus a boiling wath, boiling, I can't say it. Boiling water process. Boiling water process. Yeah. So, hot water bath, whatever you want to call it. Another thing is you pull the jars out. You set them on like a dry rack or the table with the towel on it and then you touch the top and you give it what's called a false seal. Yeah. And see how. Yeah. Oh, it looks, oh, it's sealed. We're good. We're good. And you need to let those seal on their own naturally, which most of the time when you're

11:19canning, it happens pretty good. By the time you raise the rack out of the canning water bath canner, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, especially when it's cooler out. Yeah. Yeah. It really depends on two factors. The temperature in your kitchen and if you properly clean the, the ring, the glass portion that that rubber gasket is connected to you because if you did not clean that correctly and you got some uker jelly or whatever on there, it's not going to create a seal. You're going to have to reprocess that or you're going to have to consume that, put it in the refrigerator and make it be refrigerator jelly jam, pickles, peppers, whatever. One more mistake I want to talk about briefly here is or what you might be doing wrong is storing them with the rings on. I see people do this. I see people do this on like Instagram or Facebook or whatever. Oh, here's my canning items and then all the jars have the rings on and you might think oh, that looks better. That's smarter. That helps whatever.

12:19But what happens is, and this has happened to us, you can something. And there's a little science experiment that goes on in that jar. And yes, it's usually safe and fine. But then sometimes after about a year or more, something can happen, especially with like tomatoes, it's happened. Right. We had pasta sauce that we started smell something in the back. We had like four, we had like six deep and one of the jars because we didn't have the ring on it. It had popped and was get, it was all moldy. It was back, it had exploded. I mean, it hadn't exploded. It had just enough to pop that lid off and started, I don't know how long it sat in there and dried out and molded and all that. But if the ring was on there, it would have never been able to pop and don't know if we would be here or not if we would have consumed that because botulism can kill and it has and it's still relevant, even today, if done incorrectly. Well, what you don't want to do is bring that dirt into your home, into your shed, into

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