What are you canning now?

[michickenwrangler]

We had our first frost last night so I spent all of last night canning green tomato pickles and tomato sauce. I've got a bunch of raspberries in the freezer so I should make jam and jelly out of that soon.

 

[vfem]

2 quarts of garlic pickled sweet banana pepper rings. Perfect for sandwiches!

 

[ChikeeMomma]

4 pints of raspberry jam
3 quarts and 1 pint of tomato puree

 

[caspernc]

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this site is so informative. I have learned as much about canning and cooking as I have chickens.
I was given three five pound cans of tomato sauce. I was going to re-can them into sizes that I could actually use, quarts or pints. I also have pumpkin paste... I figured I would re-pressure can that. As long as it is sterile to sterile, I should be fine right?
or... I could feed it to the chickens.
I need more can't can it rules, I went from thinking I would kill off my family to "It's been pressure canned, it's safe."

oh nuts, my spell checker disappeared. Now you know, I am lexicon intolerant.

Well, there is no such thing as sterile to sterile. As soon as you touch something with your hands, open it to the air, stick a spoon in it, etc it is no longer sterile. That's why there is no need to sterilize your jars and lids before use -- just heat them -- because as soon as you remove them from the sterilization bath they would no longer be sterile anyway. The "sterilization" of the food you cans happens in the canner when you're processing it, that's why we don't do inversion canning anymore, for instance.

So, now with that said, it still would be find as far as I know/am concerned to re-can some canned things but not okay for others. In the case of these two examples the tomato sauce would be fine, but I would not re-can pumpkin paste. The reason being: it's not recommended to home-can pumpkin of any kind. It's too dense. So, IOW, I would say it's fine to re-can anything that is safe to can to begin with, but would not try to re-can goods that are not safe for home canning to begin with.

Another thing to consider when re-canning is the texture -- I said it was okay to use canned tomato paste to can enchilada sauce or to re-can tomato sauce because texture isn't a concern with those goods. If you took a 10 lb can of green beans and re-canned those into pints on the other hand, you'd end up with mush. It would be safe, but the result would be yuck!

Could have been the mushy yuk factor was why i was tole not to recan salsa. Maybe i just assumed it was the unsafe factor. They told me to freese it instead.

 

[breezy]

4 pints stew meat

 

[bockbock2008]

For those of you that sell your products, I have a question. I have a handful of people asking to buy some of my jellies. I have no idea how much to charge. Its not bulk , just a few jars each. And what size jars do you use for things you sell? Pints or half pints?

 

[math ace]

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I think I would like to know too . .. . just incase someone asks me Ha Ha LOL Ha Ha

 

[MissPrissy]

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You can re-can anything. The only issue is when pressure canning the food cooks in the jar. If you reprocess the jars you are cooking the food twice and therefore it might turn to mush. Water bath canning is the same. If a jar doesn't seal you have to reprocess it with a new lid to seal it.

 

[vfem]

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I base mine on cost and profit, 1/2 pint jars go for about $6 here. When prices flux on some items I get $6.25-$6.50 sometimes. Check your local farmers market and see what they ask for theirs. Otherwise, if its just to people you know and you don't want to make a profit but just get your cost back, find out what each jar cost you plus costs of sugar/pectin/fruit and just ask for that.

 

[Tracydr]

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I have never heard the "don't re-can" it rule, myself.

I would think minus the oil and flour (which I totally missed the first time around) you should be okay.

this site is so informative. I have learned as much about canning and cooking as I have chickens.
I was given three five pound cans of tomato sauce. I was going to re-can them into sizes that I could actually use, quarts or pints. I also have pumpkin paste... I figured I would re-pressure can that. As long as it is sterile to sterile, I should be fine right?
or... I could feed it to the chickens.
I need more can't can it rules, I went from thinking I would kill off my family to "It's been pressure canned, it's safe."

oh nuts, my spell checker disappeared. Now you know, I am lexicon intolerant.

There is no safe, approved method to can pumpkin paste at home that I know of. What instructions are you using to pressure can it? As far as I know, you can only can chunks of winter squash. I researched this about a year ago pretty thouroughly because I really wanted to can pumpkin butter and found out that I couldn't.
Also, you can rarely recan things that have been canned before, commercially or otherwise. There are only a few exceptions to this in tested recipes like Annie's Salsa and some recipes in good, tested books like Elle Topp's Small Batch Preserving.