Canning for Germaphobes
July 17, 2016 12:45 PM   Subscribe

I really want to get into canning/preserving/pickling but I'm terrified of poisoning myself. Aside from "use proper techniques and you'll be fine", what foods are least likely to cause a problem? Which are the most foolproof?
posted by coffee and minarets to Home & Garden (17 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Lots of fruit is really easy to do - preserves and so on. The Kitchn has a tutorial here on making jam - that kind of thing always [appears to me] to go the quickest and has a great payoff that you can give out as gifts.

Tomatoes / tomato based things are the trickiest. According to my mom you know you got that one right when later on the cans aren't exploding in the cabinet. This is an extreme joke but I do think it's a higher skill level that's required to get it just so.
posted by Medieval Maven at 12:58 PM on July 17, 2016


The National Center for Home Food Preservation says:
Whether food should be processed in a pressure canner or boiling-water canner to control botulinum bacteria depends on the acidity of the food. Acidity may be natural, as in most fruits, or added, as in pickled food. Low-acid canned foods are not acidic enough to prevent the growth of these bacteria. Acid foods contain enough acid to block their growth, or destroy them more rapidly when heated. The term "pH" is a measure of acidity; the lower its value, the more acid the food. The acidity level in foods can be increased by adding lemon juice, citric acid, or vinegar.

Low-acid foods have pH values higher than 4.6. They include red meats, seafood, poultry, milk, and all fresh vegetables except for most tomatoes. Most mixtures of low-acid and acid foods also have pH values above 4.6 unless their recipes include enough lemon juice, citric acid, or vinegar to make them acid foods. Acid foods have a pH of 4.6 or lower. They include fruits, pickles, sauerkraut, jams, jellies, marmalades, and fruit butters.
If you are working clean--and you want the reassurance of working with more acidic foods--start with pickles.
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:04 PM on July 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


High-acid foods are generally the safest. Water bath (as opposed to pressure) canning is generally reserved for the high-acid foods, and you have the backup protection of the lid* popping up/off.

*NEVER STORE A CANNING JAR WITH THE RING ON, or if you must put it on at least don't screw it down, so that gas can blow open the seal on the flat lid piece if bad things are happening.

But honestly...I did fiddle around with water bath canning and then decided: you know what, screw this, and then I bought the cheapest chest freezer at Lowe's. Freezer jam is perfectly good jam. Cooked vegetables frozen are comparable to canned. The equipment and heat necessary to water can anything more than a tiny jar of food just isn't worth it to me when I can generally expect to live on the grid or be taken out very early in the zombie apocalypse because I can't run very fast.

The nice thing about pickles is that a thing becomes a pickle in half an hour. You can ramp up from there to refrigerator pickles and stay there if you want, or if you want to move on to actual fermentation you can even take classes from your county extension office or Local Garden Center. If it'll soothe your phobia, there is even a Master Food Preserver certification (in the US) you could pursue.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:05 PM on July 17, 2016 [5 favorites]


While things are more difficult to preserve, if you do follow proper techniques...you'll be fine. I preserve everything from peaches to tuna, and if you follow your local extension office's (this is mine, fruit and veg guides at the bottom of the page) guidelines to canning, you will be fine. There aren't many 'hidden' things (botulism is one, but again; follow instructions, and you won't encounter any...it happens a couple dozen times a year in the US, and always because someone didn't follow the rules laid out by the extension service) that happen with canning, most of the time, if something goes wrong, it goes catastrophically wrong, and the color and smell of the item will steer you away from eating it.

If you're following proper sterilization, heat and times, there's nothing that is 'more foolproof' than not. Tuna can be safely canned at home. So can peaches. So can just about everything if you have a pressure cooker. Some people find 'water bath' canning easier and less intimidating, but it's no more foolproof than pressure cooker canning.

As for ease; start with canned peaches. They're really good, and if anything goes wrong with them, they will let you know (ie, weird colors and a stench to match). Jams, jellies, and other preserves like that are fairly easy.

Natural pickles are also very easy, and nothing really hides in a brine that can hurt you. Scum can form on top of a brine, but that is easy to get rid of and really doesn't do much damage to a human even if you ingest some.

A quick note; if you don't live in the United States, your country might have different food preservation guidelines. If you're nervous about canning, you should stick to the US canning guidelines at our extension offices; they're designed to be total and complete overkill to prevent any kind of baddies from getting into home canned goods. The quality of the product is secondary to the safety in the US system.
posted by furnace.heart at 1:06 PM on July 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


Note that the USDA does not support canning in pressure cookers (stovetop OR electric), only pressure canners.

The USDA is definitely way far over on the side of safety over either creativity or flavor, so if you are following their guidelines you are well into very safe/very tested territory. USDA and Ball recipes are also your most reliably standardized-for-safety recipes (in particular, with fruit preserves, you'll see a distinction between commercially-produced bottled lemon juice or specific types of vinegar or citric acid, which has a standard pH, versus lemons or other naturally-derived forms of acid; that said, I have made preserves with my tree lemons and never had a lid pop or mold or anything).
posted by Lyn Never at 1:33 PM on July 17, 2016


what volumes are you aiming at? for low volumes you can make jams that should be fine and then, to be doubly sure, keep them in the freezer.
(incidentally, jam keeps well because of the sugar level, not the acidity).
posted by andrewcooke at 1:58 PM on July 17, 2016


Pickles are pretty impossible to screw up if you pick a vegetable that stays crunchy. This is my favourite dilly bean recipe.

Jam is also low risk and a good starting point, but sometimes doesn't set properly and ends up too liquidy (note this is not a safety issue, but is a way that the recipe can "fail")

The excellent Food in Jars blog has an extensive New to Canning section.
posted by quaking fajita at 1:58 PM on July 17, 2016


Jam that doesn't set becomes waffle syrup. Also good on ice cream.
posted by Mitheral at 2:06 PM on July 17, 2016


Jam is easy and foolproof---even if for some reason it doesn't set, then you'll have tasty syrup to use on stuff. The jars are resterilized by the hot jam. My go to resource is the Ball Blue Book (I'm in the states). Choose whatever fruit you have handy. I'm a fan of liquid pectin---I think it gives better results---but go with what your chosen recipe recommends.

Once you've mastered jam, then move on to vinegar pickles. I really like carrot pickles. You boil the jars, put in the raw vegetables, boil up the pickling brine, pour over the vegetables. The hot brine resterilizes the jar and vegetables.

Having a boiling water canner, canning funnel and jar tongs makes things easier, but you can also use a dish towel in the bottom of a stock pot in a pinch. You do need to buy some mason jars.

(MeMail if you want to ask more questions!)
posted by leahwrenn at 2:27 PM on July 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


When I was growing up, we would can fresh peaches and cherries in the fall a bushel at a time. I never saw any go bad, including the jars that sat for a decade before I opened and enjoyed them.

This happened because a) they're naturally acidic, as mentioned above and b) my mother was super-strict about making sure that anything which touched anything which touched the jars or the fruit was completely immersed in boiling water for the required time just before use. That is what the instructions boil down to (pardon the pun).
posted by clawsoon at 3:10 PM on July 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


I was astonished when I discovered how easy it was to make jelly. The jars are beautiful to look at too, all shining jewels lined up on the windowsill to cool. My current favourite is apple jelly, made from feral apple trees growing along back roads near abandoned farm sites - they're tiny and tart and full of flavour, and the high skin-to-flesh ratio means they have lots of natural pectin. And of course it tastes better when it's made from free apples ;)
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 4:02 PM on July 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


Agreeing with most of what's been said here. Acid is your friend. The other step that I think beginners don't realize is REALLY IMPORTANT is wiping the rim of the jar with a damp cloth before putting the lid on and putting the jar into the canner. Any little bit of debris or dot of jam can interfere with a good seal, and a good seal is what prevents you from getting sick or having your canned goods go off.

Pickles are pretty impossible to screw up if you pick a vegetable that stays crunchy.

Seconding this too, and emphasizing the latter part of the suggestion. I wouldn't suggest dill pickles as a first attempt because getting cucumbers to stay crisp is really tricky. You'll find lots of advice on how to keep cucumber pickles crisp (e.g., can the same day you pick them, remove the blossom end, add tannic leaves [oak leaves, cherry leaves, grape leaves], use "Pickle Crisp," aka calcium chloride). I've tried every single one of those methods and my pickles' crispness has never survived the time the cukes spend in the hot water bath. Bread and butter pickles, on the other hand, are just fine if they're not perfectly crisp, and they're really delicious.

Salsa is also a good option, provided that you follow a tested and vetted recipe that contains some supplemental form of acid -- usually vinegar.

If it's just general preserving/pickling that interests you and you're willing to forgo the canning, look into lacto-fermentation. It's a lot of fun, and even more science-y than canning (in a totally accessible and passive way), and it will pretty much never kill you. If your lacto-fermentation goes wrong in a way that's bad for you, you'll know it as instinctively as you know not to eat a food that has changed drastically from its normal color.
posted by mudpuppie at 6:19 PM on July 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


My family cans peppers in oil using a water submersion method - This is what we do:

ANTIPASTO STUFFED PEPPERS

Take HOT Cupid red peppers and slice open:
Stuff each pepper with a cube of Asiago cheese, an olive, garlic (or a garlic-stuffed olive), and an anchovy.

Add spices (basil, oregano, salt, pepper, whatever)

Stuff the olives into the jar and fill to the top with oil.

Once you seal them by boiling, they'll last ... gosh, well ours don't last long but I'd say probably 6 months. And the oil gets spicier and spicier--use it for cooking spicy eggs later!!

When you're ready to crack them open - get some fresh fruit and crusty bread, take out one of the stuffed peppers and slice it open... and you have yourself a delicious antipasto meal.
posted by Dressed to Kill at 5:41 AM on July 18, 2016


The recipe dressed to kill posted is exactly what you're not supposed to can in a waterbath canner, so FYI, if a recipe includes oil, dairy or fish and doesn't use a pressure canner, don't use it.
posted by fiercekitten at 10:05 AM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


My entire ginormous Italian family is still alive and kicking.

This link shows the use of a water bath for canning peppers in oil... soooooo?
posted by Dressed to Kill at 11:38 AM on July 18, 2016


there are huge regional variations about all this.

as someone said up-thread, the standard american (usda) recommendations are the ones to follow if you want to be as safe as possible (i don't use them, no-one i know personally uses them, but i am pretty sure that they put safety above all else).
posted by andrewcooke at 1:48 PM on July 18, 2016


Re: regionalism - our MF canning group uses either the Ball or USDA recommendations for methods and times.
posted by fiercekitten at 2:42 PM on July 18, 2016


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