Home preserving question

B B Q and hot sauce should be easier. Keep in mind because of the hi acid of the bbq sauce it should not hurt anyone. If you use any kind of tomato or vinegar base thats good. give it a shot. Hot sauce a little different dont can bottle only, age peppers in vinegar(sherry vinegar is good). Blanch peppers in boiling water first to kill any bacteria on outside skin then marinate. Good Luck:lips:

The acidity level has to be below a ph of 4.6 to be safely canned. A hot sauce made with just vinegar and peppers *should* be okay but it is safest to test the levels with a ph meter or test papers

Contact the home extension office nearest you, or go to this website to get all your questions answered.

click here---> National Center for Home Food Preservation | UGA Publications

My husband dabbles quite serioulsy in peppers. He wants all sorts of things made from them, and I just treat them as I would any other food I'm canning. One thing: If you make your own BBQ, do NOT listen to your husband telling you he wants it good and thick! I ended up tossing an entire batch, along with costly pony bottles and caps, due to this "request", when I was dismayed to realized I couldn't get it out of the bottles at all!

Never again.

I agree that you should follow the canning preparation and not take chances.

Amazinggrace I had no idea there was a resource National Center for Home Food Preservation | UGA Publications. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, it's the only place I go for canning information. We all know how to do this or that, but when trying to tell another person, something either gets lost in the communication, the translation or the interpretation. There are so many intervening variables. Altitude, jar size, type of canner used, as well as each individual's own idea of what is correct, even if it might fly in the face of established procedure.

Excellent advice by amazingrace!!

Even the famed Ball Blue Book published '94 and earlier is behind the times as far as food safety.

jt

Or buy a pressure canner, then you don't need to worry about acid levels.

I agree wholeheartedly with greyeagle...pressure cooker/canner is all i use anymore.

I also agree with the advice of calling your local extension service or the resource amazing grace left for us all. It is a great resource for getting all of your canning advice.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with the last two posts.

 

Nothing against pressure canners. I have two of them. But the ideas that they are easier to use and do a better job is just nonsense. There are reasons for both boiling-water-bath processing and reasons for pressure canning. And, indeed, many of the best bwb recipes have not been adapted to pressure canning.

 

I also object to the implication here and on the other active home-canning threads that home preservation of food is dangerous and frought with food safety issues. Fact is, we've been usingt some of these techniques for 300 years without any help at all from the USDA.

 

The secrets of successful canning are cleanliness, quality of the foodstuff, and following proper technique. And that applies whether bwb or pressure.

 

And, btw, being as you're so concerned, a pressure cooker should never be used for preserving. Only a unit specifically identified as a pressure canner is the proper "safe" tool.

Forgive me for making that mistake. Let me rephrase, pressure canner...Though I do can some items that require a water bath, my point is this, I use my pressure canner as a water bath when the item i am canning does not require the use of pressure.

 

Also, KYHeirloomer makes a valid point. Do not use a pressure cooker for canning. The models I use can be used as both a pressure cooker and as a pressure canner and I have used them for each task very successfully.

 

There is no doubt that on some items being canned a pressure cooker is a lot faster than a water bath canning method...green beans for example. My mother used to can everything extra from the 1 acre garden we grew each year. Green beans were a pain in the backside as it tied up the stovetop for a minimum of 3 hours per 7 quarts of green beans. Once she received her pressure canner she could do twice as many beans in half the time.

 

Yes people may have been using certain canning methods for over 300 years, but back then there were no resources to rely except over the back yard fence. Has canning become safer with pressure canning? In my opinion yes. But that is my opinion.

 

Is having a resource like home extension services for questions on canning certain types of foods valuable? Again, in my opinion yes. Would a service like the USDA been used 300 years ago if it were available. I think it would have.

 

I am not trying to split hairs here, rather just let people know the possible sources of information available to them as well as what i have found through 20 plus years canning myself with both bwb and pressure canners.

 

Let them all decide what they want to do with what ever information they feel works for them is my  thought.

Just because most of the people in your family make it to 60, doesn't mean your food preservation practices are good. The thing about mild food poisoning is you never know exactly where you got it.  Most of the time it's a little stomach ache, maybe some nausea and diarrhea, and gets misdiagnosed and explained away as something else.  

 

300 years of sloppy home canning killed a lot of people, and the American south is filled with graveyards, themselves littered with tombstones engraved: "My bottled sauce ain't killed no one yet."

 

Hard to believe, but the fed'ral gummint knows what it's talking about and is not messing with you.  Sterilize, sterilize, sterilize, follow the guidelines for specific foods and pressure can when recommended. 

 

Welcome to the 21st Century.  If it's something you can vacuum seal and freeze, think about it.

 

BDL

300 years of sloppy home canning killed a lot of people

 

Sloppy home canning practices used yesterday can kill a lot of people, too. So, let me reiterate: The secrets of successful canning are cleanliness, quality of the foodstuff, and following proper technique

 

Hard to believe, but the fed'ral gummint knows what it's talking about.........

 

I won't argue the point. If you want to believe the paternalism of FDA and USDA that's your choice. But developing an understanding of how and why various preservation techniques work is, IMO, a better approach.

 

Sterilize, sterilize, sterilize

 

You can't have it both ways. Government recommendations no longer call for sterilizing jars and equipment. So which way to you want to go: sterilize jars and equipment, the way your Momma taught you, or go with the gubmint, which "knows what it's talking about?"

 

      

 

 

 

 

Don't care what anyone says re. pressure canning. If it's done wrong ,and it's low or no acid you could kill someone.