• Prep Time:
  • Cooking Time:
  • Serves: 1 Guide

Ensuring High-Quality Canned Foods (1/2)

  • Recipe Submitted by on

Category: Canning

 Ingredients List

  • Begin with good-quality fresh foods suitable for canning. Quality varies
  • among varieties of fruits and vegetables. Many county Extension offices can
  • recommend varieties best suited for canning. Examine food carefully for
  • freshness and wholesomeness. Discard diseased and moldy food. Trim small
  • diseased lesions or spots from food.
  • Can fruits and vegetables picked from your garden or purchased from nearby
  • producers when the products are at their peak of quality-within 6 to 12
  • hours after harvest for most vegetables. For best quality, apricots,
  • nectarines, peaches, pears, and plums should be ripened 1 or more days
  • between harvest and canning. If you must delay the canning of other fresh
  • produce, keep it in a shady, cool place.
  • Fresh home-slaughtered red meats and poultry should be chilled and canned
  • without delay. Do not can meat from sickly or diseased animals. Ice fish
  • and seafoods after harvest, eviscerate immediately and can them within 2
  • days.
  • Maintaining Color and Flavor in Canned Food
  • To maintain good natural color and flavor in stored canned food, you must:
  • * Remove oxygen from food tissues and jars, * Quickly destroy the food
  • enzymes, * Obtain high jar vacuums and airtight jar seals.
  • Follow these guidelines to ensure that your canned foods retain optimum
  • colors and flavors during processing and storage:
  • * Use only high-quality foods which are at the proper maturity and are free
  • of diseases and bruises.
  • * Use the hot-pack method, especially with acid foods to be processed in
  • boiling water
  • * Don't unnecessarily expose prepared foods to air. Can them as soon as
  • possible.
  • * While preparing a canner load of jars, keep peeled, halved, quartered,
  • sliced, or diced apples, apricots, nectarines, peaches, and pears in a
  • solution of 3 grams (3,000 milligrams) ascorbic acid to 1 gallon of cold
  • water. This procedure is also useful in maintaining the natural color of
  • mushrooms and potatoes, and for preventing stem-end discoloration in
  • cherries and grapes. You can get ascorbic acid in several forms:
  • ** Pure powdered form--seasonally available among canners' supplies
  • in supermarkets. One level teaspoon of pure powder weighs about 3
  • grams. Use 1 teaspoon per gallon of water as a treatment solution.
  • ** Vitamin C tablets--economical and available year-round in many
  • stores. Buy 500-milligram tablets; crush and dissolve six tablets per
  • gallon of water as a treatment solution.
  • ** Commercially prepared mixes of ascorbic and citric
  • acid--seasonally available among canners' supplies in
  • supermarkets. Sometimes citric acid powder is sold in
  • supermarkets, but it is less effective in controlling
  • discoloration. If you choose to use these products, follow the
  • manufacturer's directions.
  • * Fill hot foods into jars and adjust headspace as specified in recipes.
  • * Tighten screw bands securely, but if you are especially strong, not as
  • tightly as possible.
  • * Process and cool jars.
  • * Store the jars in a relatively cool, dark place, preferably between
  • 50 degrees and 70 degrees F.
  • * Can no more food than you will use within a year.
  • ======================================================= === * USDA
  • Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 539 (rev. 1994) * Meal-Master format
  • courtesy of Karen Mintzias
  • From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini

 Directions



Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05

Title: Ensuring High-Quality Canned Foods (2/2)
Categories: Canning, Information
Yield: 1 Guide


Advantages of Hot-packing

Many fresh foods contain from 10 percent to more than 30 percent air. How
long canned food retains high quality depends on how much air is removed
from food before jars are sealed.

Raw-packing is the practice of filling jars tightly with freshly prepared,
but unheated food. Such foods, especially fruit, will float in the jars.
The entrapped air in and around the food may cause discoloration within 2
to 3 months of storage. Raw-packing is more suitable for vegetables
processed in a pressure canner.

Hot-packing is the practice of heating freshly prepared food to boiling,
simmering it 2 to 5 minutes, and promptly filling jars loosely with the
boiled food.

Whether food has been hot-packed or raw-packed, the juice, syrup, or water
to be added to the foods should also be heated to boiling before adding it
to the jars. This practice helps to remove air from food tissues, shrinks
food, helps keep the food from floating in the jars, increases vacuum in
sealed jars, and improves shelf life. Preshrinking food permits filling
more food into each jar.

Hot-packing is the best way to remove air and is the preferred pack style
for foods processed in a boiling-water canner At first, the color of
hot-packed foods may appear no better than that of raw-packed foods, but
within a short storage period, both color and flavor of hot-packed foods
will be superior. Controlling Headspace

The unfilled space above the food in a jar and below its lid is termed
headspace. Directions for canning specify leaving 1/4-inch for jams and
jellies, 1/2-inch for fruits and tomatoes to be processed in boiling water
and from 1- to 1-1/4-inches in low- acid foods to be processed in a
pressure canner This space is needed for expansion of food as jars are
processed, and for forming vacuums in cooled jars. The extent of expansion
is determined by the air content in the food and by the processing
temperature. Air expands greatly when heated to high temperatures; the
higher the temperature, the greater the expansion. Foods expand less than
air when heated.



 Share this Recipe

Recipes by Course

Recipes by Main Ingredient

Recipes by Cuisine

Recipes by Preparation

Recipes by Occasion

Recipes by Dietary

Sign Up and Create a Cookbook Today!

Please Sign in to your Account or Sign up if you are new user.

Who loves our Healthy Recipes?