ottawa foodies

Okay I am now getting ready to take the plunge and start canning. I have been saving a few mason jars and recipes and am dying to try curing my own olives - droool! I am now going hunting for a canning kettle. Can anyone recommend a brand or other features I should look for? I would like to visit CA Paradis to see what is available but does anyone have a favourite kitchen store they could recommend?...

are you planning on canning your olives? from what i read yesterday in the new york times, you don't can olives. perhaps there are other recipes though?

lee valley sells canning supplies. i would think it is cheaper than CA Paradis.

Before you can, read something!

This is very important because IMPROPERLY CANNED FOODS CAN KILL YOU!!!

Here is a good free book : www.uga.edu

The salient points : lots of foods require a pressure-canner. For those foods that do not require one, just any big pot will do. Keep in mind that jars have to be completely submersed in the water with 1" of water over the top of them, and you need to vigorously boil the water. So lots of headroom. You should never set jars on the bottom of the pot - Canadian Tire sells a canning rack insert for a pot to keep the jars off the bottom and to keep them from clunking against each other. There are no "features" other than "big pot". That is for non-pressure canning.

For pressure canners go to Preston Hardware. Bring a friend with smelling salts to revive you after you see the price tag.

Thanks for the tips especially about the olives. I will ditch that idea. Other than that I was planning on canning apple sauce and tomato sauce for starters then perhaps other vegetables. Zymurgist thanks for the link - lots of usefull information here.

I wouldn't worry about canning olives - the recipe that I have encourages you to do so, so I don't think it's a hard and fast rule to not do it.

I buy olives in a jar so they can be canned ;-)

My rule is always : when in doubt, pressure-canner

BTW, tomatoes can be canned without a pressure canner because of their acidity, but if you add anything else like green pepper, onions or whatever, you have to pressure can from what I've read.

Applesauce I don't recall. I know that high-sugar foods like jam do not require a pressure canner but I don't recall about apple sauce - if the sugar content is high enough.

Most other veggies to the best of my recollection require a pressure canner.

most of the stuff i have read about olives are from people who dry cure with salt. one good spot for first person experience is on chowhounds
www.chowhound.com

as for applesauce. i make it all the time, but never can it. i keep the apples in a cool, dry place and just make it as i need it. it lasts a few weeks. it is really easy and i don't use any sugar, just a bit of cinnamon. it is pure applesauce, nothing added, except a tiny bit of water. i don't peel or seed the apples either, just chop into halves or quarters.

For foods that REQUIRE a pressure canner, what did people do before this technology? Are there any alternatives to buying an expensive apperatus?

Well, as we all should know, it was Napoleon who motivated scientists to come up with the techniques the pasteur mastered and described for the first time, and before that quite frankly what they did was die a little more often than we do today from eating "older" food. I know people who e.g. have canned moose meat all their lives with a boiling canner, and are still around. But personally I would never can meat without a pressure canner.

Before this manner of food preservation they used things like salting, drying and so on to make the harvest last the whole year. Storing root vegetables has been around quite a while as well.

I have been involved in canning since I was a little kid and it's something I love to do. Last night I canned 13 jars of green tomatoes rovia (green tomato ketchup), from a very old Montreal recipe. A couple of my Francophone friends eat it with a spoon like a dessert; some practically weep when they taste it, as it reminds them of their grandmothers...

When you say "canning kettle" are you looking for something to cook the foods in, or a canner? For the former, I love the maslin pan that is (generally) available at Lee Valley. This really cuts down on the time needed to cook down relishes and jams.

For a hot water bath canner, look for one that is deep enough to allow you to completely submerge (and cover with water by a couple of inches) the largest sized jar you are planning to use. My old canner packed it in and the new one I bought unfortunately does not pass this simple test -- d'oh! It also has a VERY lame rack that allows the jars to tip. I am in the market for a better canner and if I find one I will let you know where. In the meantime, if anyone knows of any that are as good as the ones commonly availabe about 20 years ago, I'd love to hear about it.

I do not have a pressure canner but it's on the list.

BTW, the thing with the pressure canner is that while botulism itself is killed at the boiling point of water, it's spores are not killed until something like 220F. In high-acid foods like (undiluted) tomatoes, the acidity also works to denature the spores. Thus no need for a pressure canner. But low-acid foods (like just about everything) should be pressure-canned for maximum safety, because temperatures in a pressure-canner go over the level required to denature the botulism spores as well. The magic pH level according to "Putting Food By" is 4.6, and in fact with some new cultivars of tomatoes that were bred specifically to be less acidic, you probably should pressure-can as well because they may be above 4.6. Things like jams are special cases because they are next to 100% sugar - much like how honey doesn't go bad - things extremely high in sugar (next to 100%) are (seemingly ironically) preserved by the sugar concentration as well. So no need for a pressure canner for them.

Lots of people do can everything without a pressure-canner, and live to tell about it mind you. That's just not a risk I personally am willing to take. I always tell folks to read up about it first, then make that call themselves.

Interesting points. My mom never canned anything but did make alot of jams and used one of those boiling canners. She always seemed to make enough jam to last the winter and even as we got down to the last jar several months later it never tasted off - probably due to the sugar content as you suggested.

Flyfish I am in fact looking for an actual canner specifically a hot water bath one. zymurgist has been giving me alot to think about in terms of pressure canners. I am just leaning toward the hot water bath ones because I will probably be canning in smaller quantities and probably enough to last 3 or 4 months at a time. I am not interested in canning meats - I know it can be done but even though I am a carnivore I don't eat enough meat to justify canning it. Otherwise I would definitely get a pressure canner no question about it. The only thing I worry about is that my mom had a pressure cooker all her life and she burned herself quite badly when the pressure gage blew off. She loved her pressure cooker and still bought a new one when the old one died as did my sisters but I still have a fear of pressure cookers. My entire family has assured me the new ones are perfectly safe but I guess it's just something I never got over...

pasta lover, you can't taste any difference with botulism, that is what makes it so deadly.

pasta lover, you can't taste any difference with botulism, that is what makes it so deadly.

A few points to Pasta Lover :

- a pressure canner is required for a lot more than meat. As I mentioned, just about any vegetable you want to can like carrots, beans, peas, etc. require one for maximum safety. See here (www.ottawafoodies.com) for a picture of mine. You can see from looking that safety is a pretty huge feature over a regular pressure cooker. But yet, nonetheless, caution is always in order.

- books like "Putting Food By" as well as the free one I linked recommend a pressure canner, not a normal domestic pressure cooker. Do some reading as to why. That having been said, I used several pressure cookers for years before I broke down and bought a canner. But that's a call I made after reading all the material and making my own educated decision.

To answer the question about canners, there are two features I'd look for. First, make sure you buy a canner that's big enough that you can completely submerse a pint jar in it, with enough water covering that you don't have to keep topping it up from a boiling kettle. Second, a rack really does help, especially for keeping the jars from touching the bottom of the pot. There are other ways of doing this (tea towels, etc), but a rack makes it easy.

I bought mine at Preston Hardware for about $20. It's the standard black-enamalled aluminum, which is perfect for canning.

I also recommend buying a canning kit that includes a jar lifter, a wide-mouth funnel and - the greatest tool ever invented - a magnetic wand for picking lid seals up from the hot water.

There are two really good resources for canning information: Small Batch Preserving, by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard (www.amazon.com) is the bible of home canning and gives you all the steps for safe preserving. And the Bernardin company has a surprisingly good recipe book - www.homecanning.com/can/ and lots of tips, too.

I think it was botulism in the canned meat that caused the defeat of Napolian's army...

That's not likely black enameled aluminum but rather black enameled mild steel. At least my 20 litre and 40 litre enamel kettles were. I got rid of them both over time as I gradually acquired more stainless steel vessels

I learned that Putting Food By (www.amazon.com) was the bible, but I'm sure either is fine.

The only thing I'd get from a kit personally is the lifter (though the magnet thing sounds cool) mainly because the funnels that come with them are cheap plastic. Get the stainless steel funnel from Lee Valley instead (www.leevalley.com,2120,33279)

Hi All,
I used to joke that "I lived to can..." as one of my greatest pleasures is collecting wild fruit and making jams, jellies and sauces of them. This is a subject I would love to talk more about sometime, if I could just find time to do so.

And I have the old European love of seeing my cold storage filling up with the rewards of the harvest. I never feel as rich as in the early winter, perusing my shelves....

I think everything I was going to say has already been said---but I would like to comment that fear of illness or worse from home-canned food will, I hope, not deter anyone here from starting down this wonderful journey. Many hundreds of years of canning just in my family alone (counting up the grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and my generation)--- and not a single upset stomach even among them. And this is with far, far less "equipment" than is deemed necessary today.

I think of "canning-fear" in the same category as airplane crashes or lightning strikes---yes, the risk exists, but the chances it will happen to you is very unlikely, and just as likely to happen with a jar of store-purchased food.

I have canned just about everything short of meat (30 years now)---although I do anti-pasta (WITH TUNA)---and have never used anything but the old-fashioned black dotted canner. Get the deepest pot you can find.

One idea that has worked really well for me is this- I eat
a lot of plain yogurt with fruit on it (either fresh), or with fruit sauces I make myself. I never want to have much of the same sauces around (as I get easily food-bored), so I like to make it in small batches (and don't want to bother dragging out the canning equipment). I have tried freezing these small batches, but they lose something in taste. So, here is what I do, and it is SO EASY, and works really well for anything around for about a month.

I save "pop-lidded (vacuum) jars from whatever---which easily re-seal. As I make a small batch of fruit sauce (that basket of peaches on sale, or even mid-winter fruit specials- fig sauce is AMAZING!!!!) I simply run hot faucet water inside the jars in my sink to get them as hot as possible, pour the hot sauce inside (using my beautiful stainless funnel from Preston), run the pop-off lid under the hot water as well, wipe top of jar, as usual, and tighten lid. Within an hour or much less, just sitting on my counter, they re-seal. They are then simply stored in the fridge (3-5 large jars don't take up much space)-and they are eaten quickly, and replaced with something new. I kept a batch of prune plum sauce in this state for about 2+ months this year, and all was well.

Kristl

Yes you are right that the chances are about the same as a plane crash - provided you follow proper techniques. The more or less you do properly, the more more less your chances are. It's really up to every individual what their chances are. And you are also correct that when done properly it's as safe as commercially-canned goods. I don't mean to scare people, I just mean to underscore that IMPROPERLY canned goods should scare you! So read something and do it properly.

And the "open kettle" technique (where jars are not completely boiled after sealed with contents in them) you talk about for sauces should be perfectly safe as you note for about a month, and as long as you store them in the fridge after sealing them. Storing them longer or outside the fridge would be rather risky.

One thing I like about canning vs freezing is that it does not take up space in my freezer :-) I have the same feelings as Kristl when I go to the basement and peruse my shelves - what better personal accomplishment than to put down a whole lot of yummy food that can be enjoyed at any time! This year we've put down quite a bit. I have a lot of shelves built in my old stone basement and they are bursting full right now with stuff I've canned up!

The lack of freezer space is why I would like to start canning. The only freezer space I have available is the freezer compartment above my fridge. I do have lots of cupboard space though so I thought I'd can my sauces instead since I have more pantry space to play with. I often see apples and tomatoes on sale and I like to pick up a basket to make sauces and would love to try other sauces. It looks like pressure canning may be the way to go. The cookbook suggestions are great too thanks. I already ordered a couple of smaller recipe booklets from Bernardin I didn't realize they had a bigger book too. Thanks for the link Kombu I will have to look into it. And thanks to everyone (especially zymurgist!) for all the advice.

Pasta lover, l have been doing my own canning for years. lf you can read basic French, check out the follcowing blog.conserves.blogspot.com/. This guy has dedicated his life to spread the good news that canning is safe if done properly.

This blog outmatches any book available on canning. He's by fan the best resourcce on canning avaiable. His introduction is plain and easy to read. You will understand what you need to buy, and where to get it. He loaded his blog with hundreds of recipes. He reports it takes him 60 hours to publish a recipe. Each one is submitted to a scientific testing process.

lf you were living in Montreal you could join our canning enthusiast club. l'm sure that the is in Ottawa many enthusiast canners in Ottawa.

Pasta lover, lf l can make a suggestion for safety purpose, don't g a pressure cooker over 21 litres (10 pounds), and (10 litres of products)20 additional pounds of products). ln all that's 30 ''hot pounds''. Buying something smaller, is often too small if you intend to can regularly.

Speaking of canning kettles - I've got 2 of them to give away to anyone who wants them. One is about 20 litres and the other about 40 litres. They are of course not pressure canners - just hot water bath. Black enamel on steel. There are a few chips in both but all-in-all they are in good shape. They both used to be brew kettles a LONG time ago. But now with the chips I cannot give them away to a prospective brewer since that would leech iron into the beer, which is bad. But they are still fine for their original purpose.

Let me know if interested in one or both.

Hey zym,

thanks for the kind words about sticking around. The best place for canning supplies is Preston hardware. Bernardin has a 1 800 # for help when you are canning and it is a very useful resource. the best resource book I have seen is small batch preserving by Elli Topp. If you shoot me your email I will send you the recipe package for the preserving classes I teach.

l see a growing interest on preserving food. l initiated a small home canning group two years ago after canning on my own for years. Most of the people l'm canning with, have been canning all their life low acid products without pressure canner, and they don't want to see the must. Some of the mystery could be that Pressure Canner sounds English. ''the English people do their cooking their own way and we do our cooking according to our way''. We took the way of common sense, and we use 2 All American 41 litres ''autoclave''when necessary.

''Preserving classes would be the way of common sense''. Here is my email Anyway@live.ca. l'm anxious to read your recipe package.

Are you talking about a canner, or a nice preserving pan? If the latter, I love my maslin pan from Lee Valley:

www.leevalley.com,2120&p=46628

I am in the market for a good large hot water bath canner with a flat(tish) bottom, not ridged. I stupidly bought a solid element stove years ago, and the ridged-bottom canners are of less use. I did buy one new canner with a flatter bottom, but it is simply not high enough for jars over 500 mL and it is quite cheaply made compared to my old canner.