Canning Rabbit Meat

The first litter of rabbits have now been processed.  Some of the meat has been frozen; some has been eaten fresh, and I have canned some of it.

I have never canned bone-in meat before.  All of my prior experiences have been with boneless beef or chicken.

My first attempt worked out okay, more or less.  The instructions for all meats are pretty similar.  Boneless are processed for 75 minutes for pints, 90 minutes for quarts.  Bone-in meat is processed 65 minutes for pints and 75 minutes for quarts.

I had two rabbits to can. They were in the refrigerator, so I decided to go ahead and use the boneless time.  Two rabbits, roughly four pounds, went into three jars.

For raw pack, no liquid is added, so what you see in the picture cooked out of the meat.  A couple of days after processing, I opened one up to see how it turned out.  The meat was fine.  As with all canned meat, it was somewhat over-cooked and a little on the dry side, although it wasn't objectionable at all (rabbit meat is thoroughly cooked when it reaches a temperature of 165 degrees Farenheit, so heating it up to 240 degrees is definitely overdoing it from a taste standpoint--but it's the only realistic way to get it done).  The main problem was the bones: they more or less crumbled.  That made deboning a little tricky.  I'm pretty sure that's due to the extra processing time that I built in.  Next time I'll do the 75.  Overall, though, this is definitely a viable way to preserve the meat.

Partial Success with Fermented Pickles

 I have tried a few times to ferment pickles.  While the sauerkraut has always worked, I haven't had any success with fermenting cucumbers (or green beans, which I tried once).  My most recent failed attempt used a five percent brine, at the upper limit suggested on the Make Sauerkraut site. The pickles never took off.  They didn't go bad; they just stayed bright green and crisp and were salty when I tried them.  That was discouraging enough that I shelved further efforts for a year.

I decided to try again and to go to the lower end of the brine range.  I got some mini cucs and loaded them into a quart jar, and added dill and mustard seeds in the same proportions as in making a vinegar batch: two teaspoons of mustard seed and one tablespoon of dill seed.

On day one, the cumbers were obviously fresh.

A day later, things were starting to change. The color was dulling a bit, and bubbles were appearing.  This had never happened before.

After two days, it was obvious fermentation was happening.

I pulled the plug after three full days, because the house was getting warm and three to six days was suggested as the fermentation time on Holly's site.  As it turns out, I pulled the plug too soon.  Fermentation was underway, but they probably could've benefited from another day or two.  The pH was about 4.5.

 

My water is about 6.6 normally, slightly acidic, so this did represent a substantial shift.  I would've liked to see a pH of 3.5-4.0, however.  Next time I'll let them go for a longer time.  Still, this represents a modest success and is welcome.

Sauerkraut Results, 2021

 As previously discussed, I started some sauerkraut late this spring. My indoor temps fluctuate seasonally, from too cool for optimal fermenting in the winter (mid-60s to upper 50s) to too hot in the summer (upper 70s-low 80s).  Last year's spring batch was done in the month of April and had average temps of about 70 (range, 66-72).  I fermented it for 28 days and it was fine.

This year's batch started off in the 70s for the first week, but temps soon soared as high as 83.  The average was between 75 and 76 over the 25 days that I ran the ferment.    I opened it up and it looked pretty normal.

Once I pulled out the weights and top leaves, I was able to ladle out what ended up being about 1.5 gallons (somewhat more than 5 liters, but it's packed in pretty tightly while fermenting).

It was still pretty crunchy and the flavor's great.  It turned out very well despite the warmer temps. Holly of makesauerkraut.com indicates that the first few days are important for the quality of the finished sauerkraut, and during the first week I never had temps above 75, but most of the time things were in the 68-72 range.  I don't know what species of bacteria I ended up with, but they mixed together pretty successfully.

I won't push my luck and try another batch before fall.

Sauerkraut, 2021

 Last year's kraut turned out okay.  The temps ended up being near-perfect for the whole fermenting time.  There was one three-day period when the temps were 73-75, but otherwise everything stayed 68-72.  After 28 days, I opened the crock and all was well.

This year I'm getting off to a later start.  I didn't have enough storage space in the refrigerator to do a crock last fall, and this year I procrastinated.  So in early May, way too late for Georgia, I'm making kraut.

The basic process is unchanged.  I spent about an hour chopping cabbage, mixing it with salt, and loading it in the crock.

 

This year I decided to try Himalayan pink salt, following Holly's recommendation at makesauerkraut.com.

Often people recommend against table/iodized salt; the anti-caking agents make the brine murky.  As you can see, the pink salt is also pretty cloudy (you can also see that the camera adjusted the white balance quite differently in the two pictures).  We'll see what the final product looks like.  I have always had to add at least some brine; I might generate enough from the cabbage and salt alone but I don't let them sit long enough for that to happen.  Or maybe I just don't stomp and massage it enough.

The loaded crock is now closed up and I'll base the fermentation time on the temps. So far, on day 5, the temperature has held in the 69-72 range, although the first day was a bit warmer. It reached as high as 74.

As I mentioned last year, I can only get 7-8 pounds into my 5-liter crock.  There might be room for a little more, but not if I want to put the weights in (the crock and weights came from Stone Creek Trading--they sell the glass weights separately, as well). 

Apricot Sludge

 The title may not be very appetizing.  However, it's a reasonable way to characterize what I found when I recently opened a jar of apricots that were canned a few years ago. Would 'Viscous Apricot Syrup' be any better?

I've written before about canning apricots.  It's a pretty straightforward process.  And I have written before about the storage life of canned food.  It's more than a year.

These apricots were canned in the summer of 2016, so were about four years old when opened.  As you can see, they're a little darker than when fresh, but the flavor was fine.  What may or may not be easy to see is that the syrup has turned into more of a gel:

I assume this is the action of the pectin, present at varying levels in many or most fruits.  There are no problems with quality, either of the syrup or of the fruit itself.  I don't know how long canned fruit is good for, but it seems to stretch at least four years.  As I've noted before, as well, I've opened four-year-old jars of peach preserves, too, and found them to be fine.  One exception is some sugar-free peach preserves I made with Whey Low one time; I didn't write about the effort at the time, but I followed my normal process, except substituting Whey Low for sugar.  The Whey Low, after about three years, had granulated, making the preserves somewhat disturbingly crunchy (although the flavor was okay).

I haven't seen this same gelling process with pears, which have more pectin, but I don't have any that have been canned for as long as the apricots.  The same thing may happen with them, as well, if they are on the shelf for a couple more years.

Canning Beef

As I noted a few weeks ago, I've canned some chicken.  After years of dreading using the pressure canner, I finally hauled it out and learned that it wasn't at all bad.  With the sporadic meat supply in the spring of 2020, canning it seems like a good approach rather than relying on same-day purchase (freezing is another option, but apparently everyone had the same idea and freezers sold out, so unless the capacity was on hand in early 2020, it wasn't an option).

I decided to try beef next.  I've bought canned roast beef before, and it has ranged from dreadful to not bad. Commercially-canned beef is a bit hard to find now, too, and its cost is comparable to home-canned...with the right kind of beef.  This obviously isn't an exercise to undertake with ribeye steaks or tenderloins. Chuck roast seemed like a reasonable cut to try.

I got two different three-pound roasts and cut them up.  The cutting process took about 45 minutes or so; I used an approach similar to that for making bread cubes for stuffing.  I just cut the meat into reasonable-sized pieces.

As the picture shows, the beef was seamed with fat.  I also trimmed some solid fat off.

As with the chicken, I got a little over 13 ounces in each jar; after accounting for the removed fat, I ended up with 7 jars--one of those had only 12 ounces in it.

The processing time was the same as for chicken--75 minutes, but I stretched it to 80.  After taking them out of the canner, they were seriously cooked (the short one is on the far right).

As they cooled, they all compressed down somewhat, and the fat visible at the top congealed.

I broke one open a few days later to try it.  It wasn't bad, but also wasn't good enough to justify 3x the cost of chicken breast.  If you have your own side of beef to process, it makes sense.  Otherwise, maybe not so much.

Sauerkraut Reveal 2020

On day 29, I opened up the kraut crock.  The temps for the April fermentation period were pretty close to ideal.  Early in the month it got into the mid-70s, but was otherwise mostly in the targeted range of about 66-72.

I had profound troubles with the sauerkraut tide again.  At times the water in the moat almost disappeared, then hours later (after more water was added) it would overflow and run down the sides.

The picture shows one of the low times.  There were a few occasions when it dropped below the notch in the lid, making me wonder if the air seal had been broken.  I tried shifting the lid around a bit but nothing ran out.  Nonetheless, the seal apparently stayed intact.

When I finally opened it, the view was pretty similar to last time:

That isn't mold on the top, just petrified foam.  Once again, it became apparent as I was trying to lever the glass weights out of the crock that 7-8 pounds of cabbage is the maximum this crock can hold.  Although I was maybe a pound lighter than last time going in, I got about the same amount when the jars were filled--a little over 1.25 gallons.

The Cool-Whip container at the left holds some, as well, although not much--less than a pint's worth.

The pH is about 4.0, as near as I can tell; the red tinting of the cabbage makes it hard to get a good read.

The flavor is outstanding, though the texture is much different from thin-sliced sauerkraut.  And the core pieces aren't objectionable.  This one was a success... and with the temps expected to be in the upper 80s for the first May weekend in north Georgia, this will definitely be the last batch until fall.

Canning Chicken

I have a pressure canner--I actually have two; one bought last summer and one bought a few years ago.  The picture is of my largest, an All American 921 that can hold stacked pint jars.

I have always planned to take up pressure canning, but until now haven't.  I'm not concerned about the pressure canner blowing up.  The All American has six screw-down locks, additional lugs to prevent the lid from blowing off if the main locks somehow fail, and a overpressure plug that will blow out at some point if pressure increases.  And I'm now under 1000 feet in elevation, so am able to can at 10 psi instead of 15, thus reducing the potential problems with pressure, anyway.  My main concern has been food safety.

I've gotten very comfortable with canning acidic foods, but botulism poisoning would be a show-stopper.  But it is also very rare (only 17 cases of foodborne botulism reported in 2018).  So whatever people are doing to can low-acid foods seems to work reasonably well--and I assume that the directions at the NCHFP site are designed to be safe at the > 99% level. However, the site also has horror stories.

All this being said, procedurally, pressure canning of most things is pretty easy--much more so than peach preserves, for example, which require a number of steps to get to the point that something is ready to go into jars.

For chicken, it's very easy.  In this first attempt, I canned some boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  I just cut the raw breast meat up into small pieces and packed the pieces into the jars.  I got about 13 ounces in each jar, leaving about 1 1/4" headspace (to the 'freeze' line).  The processing time is 75 minutes for pints. I processed them for 80 minutes, just to be sure the jars got to 240 degrees throughout.

If you look around online, you'll find some sites that suggest adding liquid to raw-packed meat jars before processing.  In my case, that would not have worked.

As the picture below shows, the jars are pretty full of liquid.  This may be because of the chicken I used--Great Value from Walmart.  The package said something about how the chicken may contain brine, much like the turkeys for sale around Thanksgiving.  The NCHFP site notes that there usually isn't enough liquid in raw-packed meats to cover the contents of the jar, but it worked fine with my low-grade chicken. As a side note, I'd intended to add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to each jar, but forgot--nonetheless, when I opened a jar the next day to sample it, it seemed as though it was seasoned just fine--because of the brine, I assume.

Last summer I didn't do any canning, partly because the house was hot and the thought of running boiling pots on the stove for a long period of time wasn't attractive.  That will definitely be a factor this summer, as well, which is fast-approaching.  I do have an outdoor camp stove with two propane burners that I plan to try using (though the NCHFP discourages this; it seems that it should be doable without causing damage to the canner since the body is so thick--and burners can always be turned down).  All this being said, the big canner seems to absorb and internalize most of the heat, not radiating much out into the room.  Some steam escapes, but it's less than with a boiling water bath or atmospheric steam canner.

Going forward, I expect most of my canning to continue to be non-pressurized.  However, it's nice to have the option to can low-acid foods, as well.

Sauerkraut 2020

I haven't made sauerkraut for a couple of years.  Last year I was too busy with moving, and this fall I never got around to making any.  During the winter, my indoor temperatures are actually a little low for kraut-making (65-72 is cited as the optimum temperature).  So the shoulder seasons, fall and spring, are the best time.  Temps in those months can be tricky, however; I have already had temps as warm as 76 indoors, but then cold spells plunge it back to the low 60s.

As always, I like red cabbage for sauerkraut.  I have noted before that each dressed head is about two pounds; this time my heads were a little small.  I got four, and ended up with seven pounds of chopped cabbage total.  The first step was to quarter the heads and cut out the core sections.

Chopping up each head only took about 10 minutes or so; I spent about an hour on the process overall.  This time, I tried cutting up the core and including some (not all) of it in the crock, as well.  We'll see how that goes.

As previously, I don't use anything other than a now fairly dull serrated knife to cut the cabbage; there are certainly ways to make a much finer consistency than I use, but this has worked okay for me so far.

I then added one tablespoon of salt per two pounds, squeezed the shredded cabbage a bit, then put it in the crock and used the stomper.

Finally, I added some brine to get the fluid level up to the top of the cabbage, even though I knew it would continue to excrete juice for a while and add to the mix.  This time I used coarse kosher salt, which is not recommended on makesauerkraut.com, but I thought it was the only plain salt I had. I later noticed a bag of canning salt on the shelf.  Oh, well. The brine that I added helped dissolve it.

Now I just let it sit for a while.  By the time I open it, it will be nearly May, and getting much warmer (most likely).  The first few days have been in the upper 60s to low 70s, which is almost perfect. Hopefully the ferment will turn out well.

Canning Pears, 2018

The last time I got a bunch of pears I canned some.  As I noted at the time, it went okay.  I followed pretty much the same procedure this time, except that--inspired by Jill Winger at the Prairie Homestead--I didn't peel the pears. It still took about two minutes per pear, however. I guess I've lost whatever speed-processing talents I developed last time around.

One thing I noticed (again) was that some of them had grainy/hard inclusions in them.  When I found them I tried to remove them, but some no doubt are still embedded in the now-processed pears.  Also, I got two batches of pears this time around from Jaemor.  The second bag was much riper on average than the first; some of them were even pretty good for fresh eating (I sampled a couple of quarters while cutting).  Kieffers.  Amazing.  Last  time around I kept some in the refrigerator for a long time, trying to get them to soften and sweeten up.  It didn't go well.  Maybe when my own trees get to the point of producing pears I'll leave some and see if they end up getting softer/sweeter before falling.  The contrast can be seen in the shot below of the quartered slices; some are green while others are pretty yellow.

As I noted back when I first started working with pears, this is the time of year when the Kieffers are dropping all over north Georgia.  It has been going on for a few weeks, but the trees I drive by frequently still have a lot of ripe ones on them.  Maybe tree-ripened palatability is a possibility...

As before, I used a light syrup mix of 1 cup sugar to 3 cups water.  And as before / as always, I failed to get as many pears into each jar as the NCHFP says I should (and as Jill did). I started off with about 18 pounds and cut out about 5 1/2 pounds' worth of bad spots and cores...so I only got about 1.3 pounds of pears in each quart (when counting the net weight, but usually I use the gross [pre-cut] in the figures I cite here, and that's what the NCHFP uses when giving quantities per quart or pint as a general rule).  On top of this I needed almost 15 cups of water and 5 cups of sugar. I raw-packed them because the ones I did last time turned out fine.  There were some quarters left over; I snacked on some but they weren't enough to make a pint, so didn't can a pint jar on top of the 10 quarts.

I heard some booms in the canner during the first load (my canner holds eight quarts, so I had to do two heat cycles).  I wondered if jars were breaking.  As it turned out, I just had some lids get creased.  This happens sometimes and it indicates the bands were put on too tight.  I mentioned last year that I initially (and to some degree still) have trouble getting the right amount of tension on the bands.  Too loose and syrup boils out of the jars, causing a mess and leaving empty space behind; too tight and the lids buckle.  I have never (as far as I can remember) had a bent lid fail to seal, however.  It all works out in the end.

The top picture shows the lids pre-seal, right after coming out of the canner.  There were three lids that buckled in the first batch, so I was unusually heavy-handed when tightening.  I still got a little syrup overflow.  And yes, the jar at the top right does have a reused lid; I noted previously that I periodically reuse lids to test their ability to seal.  So far they have performed pretty well.  It might be good to know sometime.

The next picture shows the same lids (albeit from a different angle) after they have sealed.  And below is a photo from the side post-processing; the pear slices are pretty densely-stacked and still fill the jars.  I don't know how I could get any more in them. Side note:  some of the jars in the photo below are amber.  In recent years, Ball has released a number of color variations--light blue, green, and purple--as commemoratives (there's a purple one at the back right).  Now it appears light blue and amber are going to be available going forward.  Their price is pretty steep compared to the clear glass versions, almost three times as much, but they are nice(r) and help limit light exposure for the contents.

Pear Preserves, 2018

As I have previously noted, the pear crop failed in north Georgia last year due to a late frost.  So this is my first opportunity to do anything with pears since 2016.  I have two Kieffer trees that are too young to bear, but a nearby farmers' market, Jaemor, sells them.

Back in 2016, I made preserves. I repeated the process this time around and noted again that the eight cups of pear bits didn't break down much when mashed with the potato masher, so I was essentially heating pear dices with very little liquid in them.  Per instructions from the BBB and SureJell site, I added the lemon juice and pectin initially, as well.  It had been long enough since the last time that I had forgotten this is how it was before, as well, and I put in another four tablespoons or so of lemon juice.  More acid never hurts, though it might inhibit the set. When the pot boiled I dumped in the sugar--all 10 cups' worth--and the mixture eventually turned sort of syrupy.

I cut up about 8.5-9 cups of pears and got 6.5 pints.  I happened to have a half pint jelly jar from someone who gave me some jam once, so I went ahead and used that in addition to six pint jars.  Normally I don't bother with half pint jars; they're too small.  Everything turned out well.

Pear preserves are nice, but they don't have as strong of a fruit flavor as peach preserves or (maybe) even as much as blueberry preserves.  But they're a worthy addition to the canning mix.  Over the two years since I made them last time, I've used up all but two of the pints I did back then.  That says something.

Pears, 2018

A couple of years ago I got some Kieffer pears to try different preserving methods with.  I canned them, made preserves, and dehydrated some.  Last year there was no pear crop because of a late-March frost, which came after pears had bloomed but before apples started opening.  So this is the first crack I've had at them since that first time.

I got about 20 pounds and put half into the dehydrator.  This time I didn't peel any of them.  I quartered them, cutting out the core and seeds as previously; I only needed to use the melon baller on some.  Usually, once they are quartered, cutting the in- or less-edible portions out is pretty easy.

Next they went into the dehydrator for about 3 days at 135, emerging with dark brown skins and--as I recall from last time--a few sharp tips from the tops of the quarters.  They have to be eaten carefully or they can scratch gums and tongue.  Using an apple corer/slicer might work better, and I may try that at some point.  For now, this is okay, and the flavor is pretty good, as I noted before.  It's a good preservation method.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

After the quick jar-filling exercise with the dill pickles, I got what I thought was an inspired notion to keep the cucumbers more or less together after slicing crosswise, as for bread and butter pickles.  That, I thought, would help fill the jars faster because I could just dump in the poker chip-like stacks of cucumbers that were all aligned with each other, then fill in the gaps with shards of sliced onion.

It didn't really work out as planned.  These cucumbers were a little larger in diameter, but as I was packing the jars I belatedly recalled that I had to break up single-cucumber sets and fit the long  spears into a lot of small spaces while jar-packing with the dills.  It may have helped some, but wasn't the quick and easy fix I'd anticipated.  Still, packing went a lot faster for this second batch of the season.

It also illustrates at least one reason why smaller cucumbers are favored for pickling.  I've canned some huge ones. But it is undeniably easier with smaller cucumbers.

In other news, the cost of cucumbers, onion, sugar, and spices for this batch was less than $15 for 8 quarts (actually, 7 quarts and 2 pints).  A quick check of Amazon finds bread and butter pickles going for about $2 per pint or more--many varieties are made with high fructose corn syrup, though sugared (and even sugar-free) types are available.  As long as the time value doesn't exceed half the minimum wage, homemade ones are a bargain...

Dill Pickles

It's one of the most basic things to do in canning: dill cucumber pickles.  Even so, I think I have only made a couple of batches in my life.  I have an inventory and canning log going back to 2012 and it shows no dill pickles, only bread and butter ones--which I do most summers.  There's no garden this year, but in the past, my first choice with the cucumbers I harvested has been to do the sweet ones rather than dills.  The same has held when I've bought cucumbers for pickling.

That being said, I've wanted to get back into dill pickles for a while.  This year I finally have, and the process I followed was pretty easy.

The NCHFP page on fresh-pack dill pickles has a recipe and a process--it calls for pre-brining in a water and salt mixture.  As I have commented more than once in the past, the quantity of food the NCHFP recipe calls for is greater than I can stuff into jars.  On the page linked above, the "7 to 9 pints" recipe starts with 8 pounds of cucumbers.  So doubling that would lead to 16 pounds for 7 to 9 quarts.  I actually used 11 pounds for 8 quarts and my jars were packed.

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I did not pre-brine my cucumbers.  Some canning recipes, like Ball's numerous versions, skip the brining step. I also increased the vinegar a bit; I don't want to use less than a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water.  This effectively yields a solution that is 2.5% acetic acid (the NCHFP recipe would yield a 2.1% concentration). An article written long ago tested botulism growth on whole-cucumber pickles and found that acetic acid concentrations of 0.9% or greater prevented spore growth and toxin formation (Keith Ito, et al.  "Effect of acid and salt concentration in fresh-pack pickles on the growth of Clostridium botulinum spores." Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 1976; 32(1):121-124).  They tested salt concentrations of 0%, 4%, and 8%, but also pre-brined and blanched the cucumbers.

I quartered most of the cucumbers, but further cut some in half--these can be seen in the photo above.  The small pieces I laid on top of the whole cucumbers, which were packed into the jars standing on end.  Unlike with the bread and butter pickles, jar-packing went fast--very fast.  Each jar only took a couple of minutes.  I also tried putting oak leaves (seen above in the bowl on the right) into some of the jars to see if they really help the pickles be crisper, as some sites allege.

As the pictures above and below show, my jars were packed about as tightly as possible. Even after processing, they're still full of cucumber with little empty space.  Increasing the cucumbers by 45% wouldn't be possible.

Sweet Pickles 2018, and Re-Learning Canning Lessons

I'm not growing cucumbers this year, but I still did some sweet pickles.  Unlike in the past, the cucumbers I got were pickling size, rather than the sometimes very large ones I harvested out of my garden (I still would prefer home-grown...maybe next year).  At any rate, sweet aka bread-and-butter pickles are mostly easy.  I have used Mrs. Wages mix in the past, but more recently have started making my own mix following the Pickyourown.org and NCHFP sites, as noted before.  Also as noted previously: I don't do the salt-and-refrigerate thing; it's unnecessary.  My standard recipe is, for about 8 quarts:

8.5 lb. cucumbers
2 large onions

3 tbsp canning salt (based on Mrs. Winner’s mix)

8 c vinegar

9 c sugar

4 tbsp mustard seed

3 tbsp celery seed

2 tbsp turmeric

This time around, I had about that much in cucumbers and ended up with 8 quarts, 1 pint (my canner holds 8 quarts, so I had to do two runs, alas).  So in comparison to the last time I wrote about this, I got a little less packed into each jar.

Packing cucumber slices is tough, and it takes me a long time.  As I have noted on a number of occasions before, I have no idea how these canning recipes can contemplate stuffing so much into each jar.  According to the NCHFP site, I should've been able to get over 50% more cucumber into each jar.  It just can't be done, as far as I can see.

The brine mix is pretty sinus-clearing and eye-burning as it heats up.  I mix everything together and let it start to simmer while I'm cutting cucumbers.  As I have noted elsewhere, I have gotten better and more efficient at canning.  One obvious efficiency is to start the dishwasher while getting everything ready to go into the canner--I always run my jars through a cycle before canning, both to clean them and heat them.

So I did that this time.  That being said, I didn't get it quite right and was done slicing cucumbers about 20-30 minutes before the dishwasher was done. Once it finished its cycle, packing the jars was slow, as noted above.  It took me about an hour to fill the 9 jars (quarts and pint).

That's s l o w.

Partly I think I have forgotten what worked well in the past.  As a glance at the 2015 picture shows, the jars were pretty decently-packed.  Cucumbers have a lot of air in them, and will shrink in the jars as they're heated--there's no getting around that with raw pack.  But this time around, despite having smaller/easier cucumbers to work with and taking a long time, I did not (at a minimum) improve on 2015's performance.  I may even have regressed a little, judging by weight per jar.

I both can a lot and don't can much.  I usually only do one batch of anything per year, although I did a couple runs of applesauce last year and I've done multiple batches of preserves some years.  I've done multiple runs of apricots.  But there's a long enough gap in between for me to forget a few things.  Sigh.  It's simultaneously familiar and new each time I do it, I suppose.

The pickles did (or will) turn out great.  The only time I've screwed up a batch is when I used 1/2 cup of salt as called for in the other recipes, but without rinsing it off before canning.  Those were still edible, but definitely weren't all that good.

More on Pickled Asparagus

Previously I described the process I use to pickle asparagus.  Here's a little more detail.

I mentioned that I cut the spears to fit in the jars.  That's pretty obviously needed.  Below is a picture of my cutting board.  I use the two Sharpie dots as guides.  I line the tops up using the left dot then cut along the right, leading to the small pieces shown at the top.  I cut some of those into bite-sized chunks and fill them in around the longer spears as needed.   I also can a couple of quarts of just small chunks.  It might not have much eye appeal, but the jars are completely usable.  The whole spear more or less has the same flavor, at least as far as I can tell.

I always look before buying--and after opening the bag--for bad spears.  They usually seem to go bad at the tip first.  Frustratingly, some bags don't allow very thorough inspection of the tips before buying.  Sometimes I've gotten a lot of bad ones, but usually they're not too bad.  The one shown here is one of only a couple of culls in my latest batch of eight pounds (which went into nine quarts).  Even with the culls, the rest of the spear is often fine.  I just cut the tip off of this one.  Side note:  while trimming, I discovered the dog likes asparagus.  I only gave her a few pieces.

I also cut off the woody ends (if applicable), and at a minimum trim off the very bottom that's usually dried out and often uneven.  Then into the jars they go (as noted previously, with one clove of garlic per pint of jar capacity).

I used to try to use fresh dill, but since I don't have dill growing myself--yet--I just use seed.  One teaspoon per jar.  It works well and dill seed keeps a long time.  Also as noted previously, the canning liquid is 50/50 water/vinegar and it reliably shows a pH of around 3.0. I heat it to boiling

I ladle hot syrup into the jars, then process in atmospheric steam for 15 minutes.  It's quick, easy, and works well.  It took about three hours to do everything.  The eight pounds of asparagus cost about $24; the jar lids were another $1.50 or so; the dill seed and garlic together were less than $1.  That's nine quarts for $26.50 plus time (maybe add another $0.90 for jar depreciation).  It looks like the cost for commercially-pickled asparagus is about $13 or more per quart.  That's a $90 return for three hours of work.  Not bad...

Another Seal Failure with a Reusable Canning Lid

As I noted previously, I have had a higher seal failure rate with reusable lids than with single-use lids.  Also as noted, most of the failures have been slow to develop: the lid seals initially, then comes unsealed in storage days or months later. Ball, albeit with an unavoidable conflict of interest, points out that the vacuum strength can deteriorate 50% within a year.  That does match my experience. 

It has happened again.  I am no longer using reusable lids on new canning projects, but do still have some in storage.  A jar of peach preserves put up in July, 2016, was sealed from that time until sometime in the last month or so. I had checked it periodically and it was fine, but now it's not. Alas.

Cranberry Sauce, 2017

I usually make a canner load of cranberry sauce sometime before Thanksgiving, when berries are usually widely available in stores.  This year I missed that window, but found some at Costco in mid-December.  I brought home ten pounds; my normal batch is about 8-9 pounds of cranberries that make about 8-9 quarts of finished sauce.

As usual, there were a lot of bad berries.  I have gotten better (I think) at picking through them; this time I spent about 10 minutes per 2-pound bag sorting out the culls.

The bags were actually somewhat over-filled; although I pulled out almost 1.5 pounds, I ended up with about 9 pounds total--enough that they didn't fit in the pot initially (the picture below shows about eight pounds' worth when they were first added).  The berries rapidly compress as they start to rupture with the heat (my normal mix is 10 2/3 cups each of water and Whey Low, plus the berries; the berries pop when the water gets hot enough).  I added the remaining berries as the mixture cooked down a bit.

Here's something I forgot from previous sessions:  cranberries compress not only when first heating but after canning.  I had a note in my recipe book to leave 1/4"-1/2" headspace but observed that the sauce compresses as it cools. The Ball Blue Book recommends 1/4".  I ended up leaving about 1/2" in most of the jars, which led to this:

As you can see, they collapsed a lot.  The large ridge around the neck is about at the 1/2" mark, and the contents receded well below that.  They'll still be fine, and all the jars sealed with no problem, but they look like some of the contents leaked out during processing--which has happened, but did not happen this time.  I've never had issues with any jam-type products doing that, only ones with a lot of water in the jars (e.g., pickled things).

I go through about nine quarts per year, so one canner load is about right.  They keep for a few years; I have opened jars up to three years old that were completely fine.  As I noted previously, I used to buy bags and stash them in the freezer, to make sauce on demand whenever I wanted it--as it turned out, that usually did not work well and I ended up tossing them eventually.  Canning works much better to preserve them.

This sauce ends up being relatively low-carb compared to an alternative sweetened with sugar.  According to the Fat Secret website, raw berries have about 3.46 grams of carbs per ounce, but 1.3 grams of that is fiber--net 2.16 grams.  That means there are about 35 grams of carbs per jar from the berries (one pound), plus the carbs from the Whey Low.  For 10 2/3 cups divided by 9 quarts, the amount of Whey Low per jar is about 1 1/6 cups per jar.  That much sugar would be about 235 grams of carbs.  If Whey Low clocks in at 20% - 40% of that, it will reduce the overall carb impact of the sauce--when consumed in moderation.