Canning

The weirdest thing about canning is that it uses glass jars, not cans. Go figure!

A Little Canning History

In the late 1700s, Napoleon Bonaparte was looking for a way to dependably preserve food for his troops and so offered a cash prize to anyone who could produce a better method. After much experimentation, a French cook named Nicolas Appert discovered the packing, heating and sealing technique that is essentially what we use today. Home canning has been popular in the U.S. since the late 1850s, when John L. Mason invented the first reusable jar with a screw-on lid. Canning technology gradually improved and in 1915, Alexander H. Kerr developed the two-part canning lid that we still use today.

The process-

The mechanics behind canning are fairly simple. You fill a clean jar with prepared meat, vegetables or fruit, apply the flat lid and the threaded ring to the jar and submerge the filled jar in boiling water for a prescribed amount of time (times vary widely, depending on what you’re canning). When you remove the hot jar from the water, the heat begins to escape, taking with it any air left in the jar. The escaping oxygen pulls the lid down, creating an airtight seal. A food-safe sealing compound embedded into the lid aids in the maintenance of the seal. All high-acid foods preserved using this method will keep happily for years.

Supplies-

To do some canning you will need

• Tongs
• A wide-mouth funnel
• A variety of measuring cups
• Glass jars (often called Mason jars)
• Lids
• A jar rack or lifter
• a large wide vessel big enough to hold your rack.

Pressure Cooking

Pressure cooking is the process of cooking food under high pressure steam in a sealed vessel known as a pressure cooker. High pressure limits boiling, and permits cooking temperatures well above 100 °C (212 °F) to be reached and cooks food far more quickly (especially at high altitudes), often cooking in between half and a quarter the time for conventional boiling. Almost any food that can be cooked in steam or water-based liquids can be cooked in a pressure cooker but avoid noodles. They will froth and plug up the vent.

Meats are best preserved using a pressure cooker rather than conventional canning. Since meat is a low-acid food, a regular boiling-water canner will not be able to heat it at a high enough temp to make it safe for storage.