What to do When You Blow Your Lid

I was moving around some quart size jars that have pressure canned chili in them which were sealed up a few weeks ago when I noticed that the lid on one of the jars was no longer sealed. This reminded me to write about the importance of checking your jars, and cans for that matter. Lids pop up when the seal has been broken, or when bacteria that did not die during processing have filled the space with their gaseous byproducts. Either way, this is bad news.

If a jar does not seal within an hour or so of removing it from the canner, you can sterilize everything again, use a new lid, reheat the food, and completely reprocess the jar. Or, as frequently happens at my house, I put the unsealed jar in the fridge and use it within a week. Since my chili was canned a few weeks ago, and all of the jars sealed at that time, I can only say that the specific jar in question got contaminated at some point during the process, or the lid got knocked pretty hard by something which broke the seal. Regardless, I emptied the jar into the garbage disposal and cleaned the jar with bleach water after inspecting it for cracks and chips. This will happen on occasion, and while it is annoying, it should not stop you from canning.

Jars and home-canned things are not the only things susceptible to this type of spoilage. As a prepper, I usually try the sniff test on cans (store-bought) which may be a little past the expiration date. But take a good look at the can as well. If the can itself is rusty or degraded in any way, or the seal is popped, throw it away!  Botulism is a nasty disease that you can get from eating improperly sealed food. When in doubt, throw it out is a good motto to live by. In a TSHTF scenario, having food poisoning from unsealed and tainted food can kill you.

Light, air, humidity and bugs can ruin dry goods, which I keep in 5 gallon buckets. I am working on a post with pictures about storing dry goods that I hope to have posted within the next few days.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Prepping!

Pressure Canning: Soup With Meat

      It's the day before Thanksgiving and you are looking forward to cutting up the bird, your mouth waters over the idea of leftover rolls stuffed with turkey on your way out to shop on Black Friday, but by Sunday you know that you will not care if you never see another ounce of poultry. Ever wonder if you can save yourself this misery? Well, you can. No, literally, if you can then you can save your poor overloaded tastebuds.

     Making soup, chili, even spaghetti sauce is something I love to do, and I usually make a huge pot full. Dinner is served and the rest goes immediately into newly sterilized jars bound for the pressure canner and ultimately onto a shelf. Nothing about canning is hard as long as you follow the directions. Every pressure canner is different so YOU MUST READ THE DIRECTIONS FOR YOUR PARTICULAR CANNER!! 

    I use an All-American canner and these directions are step-by-step for that specific style of canner. Some of the instructions are generic; for example, any canning project starts with sterilizing your jars and lids, and prepping the food you wish to can. Boiling bath canners and pressure canners alike need to have a jar rack in the bottom to keep the boiling water from slamming the jars onto the bottom of the pot and causing those jars to break.

     Boiling bath or pressure canner, which method to use?

     If your food has plenty of acid (and sugar is an acid), it can be processed in a boiling bath canner: jams, jellies, and pickles can be done this way. Any low acid food including meat have to be processed by pressure canning. There are many websites that go into these processes in much more depth then I will use here; my favorite is: pickyourown.org

    So here we go:

• Sterilize your jars and lids. Put the rack into the bottom of the pot, place your jars in, and fill with hot water until all jars are filled, and the pot is filled one inch above the tops of all of the jars. Bring the pot to a rolling boil and maintain this for a minimum of 10 minutes. If you choose to boil them for longer, add more water as needed to maintain the water level (I usually boil my jars for 20 minutes or so.)

• Turn the burner off and remove the jars from the water using the jar tongs in your canning toolkit. Empty the water from the jars and set the hot jars on a towel in preparation for filling the jars. You want to be ready to fill the jars at this point. The longer the jars spend out in the open air, the more likely they may become contaminated. I usually set my lids into a pan at this point and bring them to a boil for a few minutes. You need them sterile, and the gummy rubber needs to be pliable, but boiling them too hard will damage the seal. Again, do not put too much stress into this, boil, then back off the heat to a simmer and leave it there until you need the lids.

• Using the funnel from your canning toolkit, fill the jars. Stop filling when the level is about even with where the screw threads begin on the jar (see picture). There is a lot of debate on how high to fill your jars on many canning forums, I usually stop at the threads as I described above when I am pressure canning, with boiling canning, I go a bit higher. The seal will not form if you go too high though, so be careful with the level.

• Wipe the edge of the jars!!! This very simple step is so easy to forget and so annoying when you do. Nothing will seal if you forget to wipe the edges of your jars! Wet the corner of a paper towel with hot water and go around the edge a few times to remove any food that may have splatter there during filling.

• Use the magnetic lid grabber from your canning toolkit to grab a lid, one at a time, and place it on the jar. I use a system of: wipe the edge, get a lid, place the lid, screw on the ring, place into canner.  

• ***To this point, boiling bath and pressure canning is identical. After this point is the variation for pressure canning, specifically with an All-American canner.***

• With the jars filled, lids and rings on, and all placed into the canner, add water until the level is halfway up the side of the jars: more for quart size, less for pints. If you and lucky enough to have a canner that will hold another level of jars, just fill to halfway up on the first row, but don't forget to add a canning rack on top of the first stack of jars before starting the second stack.

• Move the canner to the stove, and oil the bevel of the pot with olive oil. This bevel is where the lid of the pot meets the body of the pot. The oil allows for the formation of a seal within the pot to keep the pressure. Once the bevel is oiled, place the lid on the pot following the arrow and screw it into place.

• The knobs should be brought up onto the lid and screwed into place in sets of opposites, like tightening lug nuts on a car tire. If you do the 12 o'clock knob, do the 6 o'clock knob at the same time. This opposite tightening allows the lid to be tightened evenly and prevents the possibility of the lid warping.

• Turn the heat on again and you will notice that your pot will begin to hiss through the spout on the top of the lid. Once this hissing is constant without and breaks, start your timer for 7 minutes. Vent the pot for that 7 minutes before adding the weight or closing the vent.

• When 7 minutes is up, add your jiggler weight or close the vent. I use the jiggler weight on the 10 psi setting. This weight comes with the possibility for 5, 10, and 15 psi. To determine which one you need to use, you should read the directions for your pot. The benefits of using the jiggler over just closing the vent are great. I ended up buying 2 jiggler / vent kits since "two is one, and one is none." The weight keeps the pressure inside the canner right around 10 psi with no help from me. This frees up my time to do other things, like that post to the blog last night. If all you have is the vent which you close then have to watch the pressure gauge, I started canning that way and I can completely sympathize. Consider getting the weight, it is worth the money!

• Process your jars in the canner for 90 minutes since my soup has meat. The time varies depending on what you are canning, but for meat, it's 90 minutes.

• An hour and a half after beginning, turn off the heat and remove the canner from the burner. Allow the pressure to drop to 0 before removing the weight.

• Once the pressure on the gauge is at 0, remove the jiggler and wait for the hissing to stop. Then unscrew the knobs by opposites again, unscrew the lid, and remove the jars from the pot onto a waiting towel using the jar tongs. The contents of the jars will still be boiling and making all sorts of noise, this is fine. As the jars begin to cool, you will hear the satisfying "pop" noise of the lids sealing. 

Left: Sealed, Right: Not Sealed

• Once cool, any lids that do not seal should be removed from the jar, the edge wiped again, and a new lid used before processing again. I usually put the jar into the fridge and eat it within a few days, or put it into the freezer. The jars that did seal should be washed and dried since they will be greasy. Rings are optional at this point, and the jars do fine without them if you care to leave them off.

   But that's it, you can label your jars with contents and canning date and stack them into your inventory. It is time intensive, but well worth it. Having jars of homemade soup, chili, or spaghetti sauce in the pantry makes dinner preparation on busy nights a breeze! 

magnetic lid grabber

jar tongs

This amazing chicken, corn and lime soup recipe can be found here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chicken-Corn-and-Lime-Soup-103102

Please add your comments, recipes, and pictures, I'd love to know what you have in the jars! Thanks for reading, and Happy Prepping!!

No Food, No Problem, I'll Shoot a Deer...

   As I am canning the leftover soup  I made for dinner, and taking pictures so I can post directions for pressure canning tomorrow, I had to spare a moment to laugh at the number of times I've heard people say that "not having food stored is no problem since [they] know how to hunt." I think its worth the bandwidth to say a few things about this myth.
 
   Hunting is a great prepper skill to have! I recommend that everyone, men AND women, learn how to procure their own food. Learning now that you can look at a beautiful wild animal and pull a trigger will alleviate any fears you may have when the trucks stop bringing food to the stores. Knowing that dinner can be bought on the way home if necessary takes the pressure off and lets you concentrate on your task. Being able to properly clean that animal without tainting the meat is a huge bonus! Sadly, hunting is not yet a skill I have. But I can (and have) cleaned and cooked both chickens and rabbits, so squirrels and doves should be easy enough since those basic skills will translate over from one small mammal (bird) to another.

   So why do we prep for when TSHTF (The Stuff Hits The Fan)? 

   We have plenty of wild game in the woods all around my condo, but we also have trucks bringing food to the grocery stores on a very predictable schedule. When those trucks stop rolling in on a reliable basis, or just stop forever, you can be assured that everyone with a gun will head to the woods to "shoot me a deer." Hunger will cause acts of desperation, and you hopefully can see where any normal civility to other hunters would be abandoned rather quickly. A very dangerous position to be in.

    The unshakable optimism of hunters is refreshing however. Having the ability to put food on the table is really great. But ask yourself or your hunter how many deer he or she brought home last season. Be realistic about this. Most hunters will bring down a scarce few all season, and some will not even be that lucky. The majority of those deer go out for processing, and the conveniently packaged meat goes into the freezer next to the TV dinners. Now complicate this happy little vision with the knowledge that there may not be electricity anymore; and you may as well forget the convenience of processing.
 
    IF, big if, you are able to bring down a deer, and get it home without being mugged for your kill, what are you going to do with the meat after everyone in your family has eaten their fill? The unfortunate thing is that most sheepole (sheep-people) will eat what they can and the rest will rot where it lays. Preppers will preserve every scrap they can using methods like salt or sugar curing, dehydration, and canning.

    So why am I a prepper? I choose to stock my many shelves before TSHTF, so I will not have to risk my life going out in search of food immediately after a disaster. All forms of meat, fish, shrimp, vegetables, and fruit can be canned or dehydrated and will last for a few years in jars in a low-light environment. Salt, which is extremely cheap now, will once again become worth its weight in gold just like sugar. In essence, it is easier to give up space in my small condo now than it will be to find food after a major disaster. My family will eat.

    Please send in any comments, I'd love to hear from you! I hope to have a pressure canning post with directions and a link to tonights soup posted up and live tomorrow. Thanks for reading, and happy prepping!!