How do YOU can meat/broth/soups and other non-acid foods?

[2dream]

There are people here who use only the water bath to can everything. And so far so good for them. However it only took
me looking up the word botulism to scare me away from that.

PRESSURE, PRESSURE, PRESSURE plus an extra 5 minutes for me. LOL

 

[justusnak]

I have to say...pressure canning is the way to go. My grandmother BWB everything! She had a pressure canner explode once...so she never tried it again. I dont recall her ever getting sick from her canning...but I dont like to flirt with it. My mother used to BWB beef. However, she would BWB a quart for 4 hours! Seems alot faster and easier, and SAFER to pressure can it...so, for me...its by the book!

 

[NurseNettie]

Great replies! I'm loving this! Maybe I need to go on a crusade, of sorts, to teach the "tried and true" Mainers here about botulism. Not likely they'll change their ways, but I can try

 

[patandchickens]

45 minutes in a pressure canner may seem like a long time, but if you look at how long one should process the same item in a boiling water bath to have reasonable possibility of safety (which will still NOT be as safe as pressure-canning), that's like 2-3 *hours*. Also it is more important to hard-boil "questionably canned" stuff after opening (before eating) than it is with properly pressure cooked stuff, although it's not a bad idea to do it with pressure-canned stuff either.

Suddenly 45 minutes to pressure-can yer soup seems like a pretty good deal, with added safety thrown in as a bonus...

Ldychef2k, the whole point of boiling water bath times is that the whole jar contents DO come up to 212 degrees. Leaving the jar in past that time is not going to make anything any hotter, it just overcooks the food. Botulism spores aren't killed until, what is it... <whick google for number>... 240 F. The only way to GET 240 F is with a pressure canner.

And bear in mind that food can be growing up a poisonous amount of botulism *even without detectable off-flavors, discoloration, or gassiness*. So you cannot rely on your nose and eyes to necessarily protect you.

Quite honestly, nobody really has a good grasp of the statistics on how commonly people are made ill or killed by botulism from home canning. Both historically *and* nowadays, it is likely to be frequently misdiagnosed and thus many cases not recorded as such. If you follow sound procedures it is pretty rare. It is also pretty *avoidable*, though.

Of course everyone can do what they want, it's a free country. But it's worth being aware of the situation; also considering it if you are going to feed your canned products to family members or other people.

JMHO,

Pat

 

[Ldychef2k]

Ldychef2k, the whole point of boiling water bath times is that the whole jar contents DO come up to 212 degrees.

Then shouldn't the contents be boiling when they are removed from the water bath, as they are with the pressure canner? I have never had that happen, and I follow instructions scrupulously.

 

[patandchickens]

Then shouldn't the contents be boiling when they are removed from the water bath, as they are with the pressure canner? I have never had that happen, and I follow instructions scrupulously.

I am not sure what you mean 'boiling'. Boiling *temperature* (212 F), yes. (But how would you know for sure, without food-science type laboratory equipment?)

But as far as LOOKING boiling... well, before the jar seals tight, when you are first lifting the jar out of the canner, you most often *do* see it continue to exhaust air and look 'boiling' inside the jar, unless you have overfilled the jar and it has already lost any free headspace (this is restored to some degree when the jar cools). Although for at least some recipes (some pickles for instance) there are enough solutes added to the product -- sugar and salt and so forth -- that the boiling temperature of the liquid is significantly above 212 F *anyhow*, and thus not GOING to boil in an open waterbath canner even when it has indeed reached 212 F.

Once the jar is more or less sealed, though, especially if it lacks free headspace, you are not going to see it look all bubbly-roily-boily, except under higher temperatures than a boiling-water bath is capable of producing. (Because the sealed jar essentially acts as its own pressure chamber, so that as soon as the water first begins to boil, it raises the pressure and thus the boiling temperature...) (obviously you CAN explode a jar at too-high temperatures, but those temperatures are not going to happen in an open kettle canner except like on the ocean floor <g>)

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Ldychef2k]

That's what I meant, that the BWB doesn't cause the contents to boil. My pressure canned foods boil for sometimes 30 minutes after the seal has popped. (I am just above sea level...300 feet.)

Maybe I am nuts, but it seems to me that longer processing times in a BWB for certain low acid fruits and veggies would raise the internal temperature. It would take forever for that temperature to get to 212, but there are bacteria that die at much lower temperatures.

As I stated, though, I follow the rules. I just question them sometimes because of my longstanding adversarial relationship with the food police !

 

[country lady]

I haven't canned meat but I plan to try it with venison. My Mirromatic pressure cooker only holds 7 pints and I will go by the instructions in the manual. I wouldn't water bath meat but I would feel safe eating canned meat. Now I'm wondering if the BPA on the lids gets in the food during the canning process. Always something to worry about, eh!

 

[patandchickens]

That's what I meant, that the BWB doesn't cause the contents to boil.

It does for me, frequently - perhaps we are canning different things? <shrug>

But boiling *doesn't matter*. Microbes don't care. What matters is what temperature they get to.

Maybe I am nuts, but it seems to me that longer processing times in a BWB for certain low acid fruits and veggies would raise the internal temperature. It would take forever for that temperature to get to 212, but there are bacteria that die at much lower temperatures.

It *doesn't* take forever for a jar to get to 212 in a boiling water bath, though. That is what you are *doing*. It gets that hot. It just doesn't always *boil* (i.e. turn to steam), which is a separate and irrelevant thing.

Although certainly yes, many/most contaminants will be killed at 180F or so.

Pat