Reflections on Canning

I don't remember exactly what year I started canning.  I think it was about 2008 or so, maybe a year or two earlier.  As I have probably mentioned before, initially it was motivated at least partly by the need to find ways to preserve my peach harvest.  Blueberries in quantity would come later.  I probably started doing pickles either the first or second year, too, both sweet and dill, using cucumbers from my garden.

However, I also initially canned some fruit I bought for practice--blackberries, cherries (bing and Queen Anne), and maybe some blueberries from the store, too.  I wasn't a big fan of the canned black- and blueberries.  However, I wanted to experiment to get the hang of how to do the various steps.

The first session did not go particularly well.  It ended up about like this picture, with me frazzled, every pot in the house dirty, late at night, with very little to show for it at the end of it all.  I also had a lot of trouble (in the first batch) with tightening the bands enough before things went into the canner. Books suggest not tightening them too much, but that guidance can leave them too loose.  Much of my syrup boiled out of the jars in that first load, tinting the water in the canner.

Overall, it was disappointing and I was wondering if there was any future for me in canning.  I also was worried in the early days if I was going to poison myself if I had a jar with some of the brine gone.  I'm pretty over that now, but still test the pH of a lot of my batches of various things.

It took a very long time (on a per-batch basis) to process a canner load of anything.  I usually planned on it taking about four hours, and sometimes it took more time.  Partly, I had inferior tools and techniques.  For example, I cut each cherry by hand in half with a knife, split it, then removed the pit from one half.  There are cherry pitters (Lehman's sells three, and Pleasant Hill Grain has one).  They probably would've turned a 45-minute tedious task into about 10 minutes of comparative ease.  I was also very slow with packing the jars.

I'm still relatively slow.  I try to pack them carefully for a few reasons.  First, if they are randomly filled with lots of airspace, I'll use up all my brine or syrup before the batch is done and will have to do more on the fly, which is always a pain.  That might cause problems if it's syrup that is not naturally acidic (though this is only theoretical; I've never observed it in something that I actually canned).  Last, as I have noted before, more than once, I can't get as much into jars as the recipes generally suggest.  So I try to do my best so I don't have lots o' jars with little content.

However, over time things have gotten better.  My last effort with peach preserves only took about two and a half hours.  I routinely assume about three hours now, and sometimes the sessions are even shorter.  I usually aim to do a full canner load (and have done that from the beginning--though for some things, like peach butter, it's invariably less).  It's more efficient that way.  At all costs I like to avoid having one or two jars too many, although that happens sometimes, requiring a second session (if I was into this on an industrial scale, I'd be canning all day or even using something like the monstrous 15-quart canner Lehman's sells--hopefully out on a portable propane cookstove outside rather than in my kitchen in July or August).  As it is, I can more than I can use in a year.  I give quite a few jars of preserves and other products to friends.

I still haven't pressure canned anything, although I have an All-American canner for it.  And I'm sure there are people who'd still consider me a complete neophyte after less than 10 years.  But it's going better and I've learned a lot and am more efficient now.  However, I have also noticed that there are lessons I have to re-learn each season.

So if you're new to canning and feeling like the woman in the cartoon above, it really does get better.