A friend of mine sees where I can many of my vegetables for later use and decided it would be a good thing to get into canning things to store to use at his leisure. He called me the other day asking if I'd ever had this problem with canning. He said he canned a large batch of soup he made and even though they sealed initially, all the seals were raised and some almost pushing out from the screw on rim. I knew exactly what he did wrong and told him I was surprised some of the jars didn't blow apart overnight from the pressure building up in them.
Needless to say, I told him to not even think of doing anything else with that soup other than throw it out and start over and to next time use a pressure cooker to keep it safe to eat. He has assumed a simple boiling water bath is all that was needed. I explained to him that everything I put up in jars is in a vinegar brine of some sort and that is why I can get by just using a hot water bath on the stovetop. So, with a $200 gift certificate he got for Christmas, he bought a new pressure cooker and a few utensils used in the canning process and a new appreciation for the proper canning steps to insure you don't poison yourself.
I learned from somewhere that canning successfully required salt and an acid. I remember asking about fig making fig jam and the chef said it did not contain enough acid to preserve properly unless some lemon or lime was added to provide the acid. And he said some recipes don't work without the salt. He said it would be safer to use a tried and true recipe and a pressure canner.
imafan26 wrote:I learned from somewhere that canning successfully required salt and an acid. I remember asking about fig making fig jam and the chef said it did not contain enough acid to preserve properly unless some lemon or lime was added to provide the acid. And he said some recipes don't work without the salt. He said it would be safer to use a tried and true recipe and a pressure canner.
I have a producing fig tree in my yard and every year I will put up several jars of preserves and one of the things I use when cooking down the figs is a few slices of lemon in the pot. I've never had a jar of these preserves go bad-----but then again, they are all used up within a years time and needing restocking when the new season hits.