Q. I need to be enlightened: What is the difference among jams, jellies, marmalade, and preserves?
A. Jams, jellies, marmalade, and preserves are all cooked mixtures of fruit, fruit juices, sugar, and sometimes pectin. (Some fruits contain enough natural pectin to thicken on their own.)
The difference is that some of these spreads have pieces of fruit in them, while others do not. Jelly is a clear spread made from fruit juice, sugar, and sometimes pectin.
Widely used to spread on bread or to fill cakes and cookies, its tender texture is firm enough to hold its shape when released from its container.
Jam is a thick mixture of fruit, sugar, and sometimes pectin that is cooked until the pieces of fruit are soft. The fruit is then purèed, but small, mashed pieces often remain. Preserves are made in the same manner as jam, but the fruit is left in medium to large chunks.
Marmalade is a preserve that contains pieces of citrus fruit peel. The most common variety is made from Seville oranges. Conserves, another type of fruit-based spread, are made from a mixture of fruits, nuts, and sugar. A conserve is often used to spread on biscuits.
For some great recipes using jams, jellies, and marmalades, see:
Pressure canners for use in the home have been extensively redesigned in recent years. Models made before the 1970's were heavy-walled kettles with clamp-on or turn-on lids. They were fitted with a dial gauge, an air-venting device either in the form of a petcock or a pipe closed with counterweight, and a safety fuse or valve. Modern pressure canners are light-weight, then-walled kettles, mostly with turn-on lids. They have a jar rack, dial or weighted gauge, automatic vent/cover lock, and vent port (steam vent) to be closed.
Canners are rated by the volume of water they will hold. That is, a 16-quart model will hold 16 quarts of water. This size pressure canner will normally hold seven quart or nine pint jars when loaded.
Pressure does not kill bacteria; they are killed by the high temperatures reached in pressure canners in a short time. The time for killing these bacteria is dependent on temperature; the higher the temperature, the shorter the time. If the pressure gauge is inaccurate, the temperature inside the canner will also be inaccurate; thus, we cannot be certain whether a given schedule of time at 5, 10, or 15 pounds of pressure is adequate to sterilize the food. Most county extension offices are equipped to check the accuracy of dial pressure gauges.
to be continued..
Peggy and her husband John, along with 6 children (ranging from young adult through four years) live along the Appalachian mountains range in Pa. Peggy enjoys home canning, is a Master Food Preserver and has been putting foods by for over 23 years.
You can find her blogging about living a simple live at The Simple Woman
For more tips and encouragement for your canning endeavors, visit her "putting foods by" blog, A Simple Woman's Cannery.
3. Load filled jars, properly fitted with lids, into the canner rack and use the handles to lower the rack into the water; or fill the canner, a jar at a time, with a jar lifter.
5. Turn heat to its highest position until water boils vigorously.
6. Set a timer for the minutes required for processing the food.
7. Cover with the canner lid and lower the heat setting to maintain a gentle boil throughout the process schedule. (Make sure your jars are covered with water the entire canning time. If you have to add water, make it hot before adding as not to slow your canner down)
8. When jars are boiled for recommended time, turn off the heat, and remove the canner lid. Make sure to watch the steam as you lift off your lid.
9. Using a lifter, remove the jars without delay and place them on a towel, leaving at least one-inch spaces between the jars during cooling. Do not place directly under a ceiling fan, cold surface or in front of cool draft. Let cool naturally.
Peggy and her husband John, along with 6 children (ranging from young adult through four years) live along the Appalachian mountains range in Pa. Peggy enjoys home canning, is a Master Food Preserver and has been putting foods by for over 23 years.
You can find her blogging about living a simple live at The Simple Woman
For more tips and encouragement for your canning endeavors, visit her "putting foods by" blog, A Simple Woman's Cannery.
Do not taste food from a jar with an unsealed lid or when food shows signs of spoilage. You can more easily detect some types of spoilage in jars stored without screw bands because the jar lids will be lose! Growth of spoilage bacteria and yeast produces gas which pressurizes the food, swells lids, and breaks the seals. As each jar is selected for use, examine its lid for tightness and vacuum. Lids with concave centers have good seals.
Next, while holding the jar upright at eye level, rotate the jar and examine its outside surface for streaks of dried food originating at the top of the jar. Look at the contents for rising air bubbles, and unnatural color.
While opening the jar, smell for unnatural odors and look for spurting liquid and cotton-like mold growth (white, blue, black, or green) on top food surface and underside lid.
Discard any jar of spoiled food to prevent possible illness to you, your family, and pets.
Peggy and her husband John, along with 6 children (ranging from young adult through four years) live along the Appalachian mountains range in Pa. Peggy enjoys home canning, is a Master Food Preserver and has been putting foods by for over 23 years.
You can find her publishing a new monthly e-zine entitled, "The Simple Woman's Gazette". You can find a FREE sample issue at http://thesimplewoman.blogspot.com/
When you remove hot jars from a canner do not retighten their lids. Retightening hot lids may cut through the gasket and cause seal failures. Cool the jars at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours undisturbed. You will notice after cooling that your raw-packed foods are much lower. Air is taken out during processing and the food of course shrinks. If a jar loses excessive liquid during processing, do not recontaminate by opening it to add more liquid. It probably will seal anyway.
Testing Jar Seals
After cooling jars for 12 to 24 hours, test seals with one of the following methods:
1. Press the middle of the lid with a finger or thumb. If the lid springs up when you release your finger, the lid is unsealed.
2. Tap the lid with the bottom of a teaspoon. If it makes a dull sound, the lid is not sealed. If food is in contact with the underside of the lid, it will also cause a dull sound.
3. Hold the jar at eye level and look across the lid. The lid should be concave (curved down slightly in the center). If the center of the lid is either flat or bulging, it may not be sealed.
If a jar fails to seal, remove the lid and check the jar-sealing surface for tiny cracks. If necessary, change the jar, add a new, properly prepared lid, and reprocess with 24 hours, using the same processing time. It will not be as good, but the food will be safe to eat. Most often my family will not mind a jar left to eat now...especially jam on home-baked bread or pickles.
Storing Canned Foods
If lids are tightly vacuum sealed on cooled jars, remove screw bands, wash the lid which is often times sticky, then rinse and dry jars. Label and date the jars and store them in a clean, cool, dark, dry place. Do not store jars above 95 degrees or near hot pipes, a range, a furnace, in direct sunlight or an annulated attic. Also, do not store where it grows too cold and would freeze your canned goods. It would not cause spoilage unless the jars became unsealed. However, freezing and thawing may soften food, lowering its quality.
Remember to completely dry your rings. After I dry mine I put them in a brown paper bag, marked on the outside. Be sure to keep all of your canning supplies in a place where all things are together. I find this works best once those first fruits of the season are ready for harvesting. Begin now to plan!
Peggy Hostetler and her husband John, along with 6 children (ranging from young adult through four years) live along the Appalachian mountains range in Pa. Peggy enjoys home canning, is a Master Food Preserver and has been putting foods by for over 23 years.
If you ever share a recipe on your blog that you are canning or a favorite you have canned, I would LOVE to know about it! Just email me, Peggy atsimplicity@superpa.net with the direct link to that blog entry and I will share it on our homestead "Front Porch" within the "Putting Food By" category I write on Wednesdays. Thank you in advance!!
A certain amount of headspace must be allowed in all canned foods. This is the space in the jar between the underside of the lid and the top of the food or its liquid. Some foods, especially those that are starchy, swell more in the jars than others, and, therefore, require more headspace. Pressure canned foods also expand more and require more headspace.
If too little headspace is allowed, the food may expand and bubble from the jar during processing. The bubbling food may leave a deposit on the rim of the jar or the seal of the lid and prevent the jar from properly sealing.
If too much headspace is allowed, the food at the top is likely to discolor in storage because of the headspace will contain more residual oxygen.
Headspace is measured from the top of the jar to just where is begins to balloon out.
1/4-inch headspace (just below the first glass thread)
1/2-inch headspace (just below the middle glass thread)
1-inch headspace (just below the finish or last larger thread)
1-1/4-inch headspace (mid-way on shoulder)
1-1/2-inch headspace (just below the shoulder)
Lids
The common self-sealing lid consists of a round, flat metal disc held in place by a metal screw band during processing. The flat lid is crimpled around its bottom edge to form a trough, which is filled with a colored gasket compound. When jars are processed, the lid gasket softens and flows slightly to cover the jar-sealing surface yet allow air to escape from the jar. The gasket then forms an airtight seal as the jar cools. Gaskets in unused lids work well for three to five years following manufacture instructions.
Buy only the quantity of lids you will use in a year. To ensure a good seal, carefully follow directions. Examine all metal lids carefully. Do not use old, dented, deformed lids or lids with gaps or other defects in the sealing gasket. While I buy used canning jars, I only use new lids and rings.
After you remove air bubbles by inserting a flat plastic spatula between the food and the jar, slowly turn the jar and move spatula up and down to make sure all air has escaped. Adjust the headspace and then clean the jar rim with a dampened paper towel.
Place the lid, gasket down, onto the cleaned, jar-sealing surface. Then fit the metal screw band (I call these rings) over the flat lid. Screw until you begin to feel resistance and then make snug. DO NOT over tighten your lids. This is like getting your water the right temperature to make your yeast work.....not to hot and not to cold. It is the same way with your lid tightening.
--If rings are too loose, liquid may escape from jars during processing, and seals may fail.
--If rings are too right, air cannot vent during processing and food will discolor during storage. Over-tightening also may cause lids to buckle and jars to break, especially with raw-packed, pressure-processed food.
As jars cool, the contents in the jar contract, pulling the self-sealing lid firmly against the jar to form a high vacuum.
Screw bands are not needed on stored jars. I remove my lids only after jars are completely cooled. I then clean and dry them thoroughly before putting them away. If you leave them on, they may become difficult to remove, often rust, and may not work properly again. They may also conceal the loss of the seal in the jar.
I will continue this topic next Wednesday.
Peggy and her husband John, along with 6 children (ranging from young adult through four years) live along the Appalachian mountains range in Pa. Peggy enjoys mentoring women in home things. She has just introduced a new monthly e-zine entitled, "The Simple Woman's Gazette" coming out in early March. You can find a FREE Sample and subscription information at this link
You can also find Peggy's articles and devotionals archived at Home Made Simplicity and lots of basic canning information as well as encouragement at her food preserving blog, The Simple Woman's Cannery.
Many fresh foods contain from 10 to more than 30 percent air. How long canned food retains high quality depends on how much air is removed from food before jars are sealed.
Raw Packing~ is the practice of filling jars tightly with freshly prepared, but unheated, food. Such foods, especially fruit, will float in the jars. The entrapped air in and around the food may cause discoloration with two to three months of storage. Raw-pack styles are more suitable for vegetables processed in a pressure canner.
Hot Packing~ is the practice of heating freshly prepared food to boiling, simmering it three to five minutes, and promptly filling jars loosely with the boiled food. Juice, syrup, or water after added to hot or raw-filled foods should also be heated to boiling before adding to jars. This practice helps to remove air from food, shrinks food, helps keep the food from floating in the jars, and increases vacuum in sealed jars. Hot packing is the best way to remove air and is the preferred pack style for foods processed in a boiling water canner. At first, the color of hot-packed foods may appear to be no better than raw-packed foods, but after a short storage period, both color and flavor of hot-packed food will be superior.
Advantages of hot pack:
-Fewer problems with fruits or tomatoes floating to the top of the jar
-Fewer problems with fruits turning brown near the top of the jar
-Ability to get more food into each jar since heating shrinks foods,but hot food should be packed fairly loosely and not crushed
Advantages of raw pack:
-Foods that tend to lose their shape in cooking are usually easier to handle if they are raw packed
-Takes less time
Acidity of Foods
Whether food should be processed in a pressure or boiling water bath canner to control botulinum bacteria depends on the acidity in food. Acidity may be natural, as in most fruits, or added, as in picked food. Low acid canned foods contain too little acidity to prevent the growth of these bacteria. Acid foods contain enough acidity to block their growth, or destroy them more rapidly when heated. The term "pH" is a measure of acidity level in foods can be increased by adding vinegar, lemon juice, or citric acid.
Acid foods have a pH of 4/6 or lower. They include fruits, pickles, sauerkraut, jams, jellies, marmalades, and fruit butters. Although tomatoes usually are considered acid food, some are now known to have pH values slightly above 4/6. Therefore, if they are to be canned as acid foods, these products must be acidified to a pH of 4.6 or lower with lemon juice or citric acid. Properly acidified tomatoes are safely processed in a boiling water canner.
Do you remember (you older gals might) when as girls, you would go out into the garden (at least I did:-) with a little salt shaker and eat tomatoes right off the ground. Remember how nice and strong the acid taste was in your mouth...alot of today's tomatoes are not as they were in those days. You can barely TASTE them. Sadly, that is why I rarely if at all buy tomatoes in the grocery store, they taste like plastic nothings. So I just bid my time until I plant my own in the garden.
When planning your tomato harvest, I would ask my local seed/plant greenhouse/distributor about those that grow the highest acid type of tomatoes...either way make sure your acid level is correct when usimg a boiling water canner. When in doubt make the best decision for your family. Here again, no fear, but learning and using wisdom. Remember if you live where a garden is out of the question, but LOVE tomatoes, you can grow lots in pots!! Make sure they get LOTS of good hot sunshine. They love that! Oh! and do not water unless it is early morn or late day so as not to burn the plant. Enjoy!
Peggy and her husband John, along with 6 children (ranging from young adult through four years) live along the Appalachian mountains range in Pa. Peggy enjoys mentoring women in home things. She has just introduced a new monthly e-zine entitled, "The Simple Woman's Gazette". You can find a FREE Sample and subscription information at this link
You can also find Peggy's archived articles and devotionals at Home Made Simplicity and lots of basic canning information at her food preserving blog, The Simple Woman's Cannery.
Hello Fellow Bloggers! I am honored to have been asked by Kris to help fill this spot on 'The Front Porch". "Putting Food By" is a fun topic for me and so I will do my best on Wednesdays of each week to share with you a bit about canning your own foods.
Some of you know that I have been posting on my personal blog, "The Simple Woman's Cannery" for the past few weeks. Those posts are a great start for the new food preserver and will be the backbone for my future entries here on the "Porch". But, for today have a look there, perhaps make some notes from what I've shared thus far and I will see you from now on here at this spot each Wednesday.
Also, I would LOVE to hear from you! Do email me with questions and also topics you would like to see me address here on "The Front Porch".
Peggy and her husband John, along with 6 children (ranging from young adult through four years) live along the Appalachian mountains range in Pa. Peggy enjoys mentoring women in home things.
You currently can find her writing at her main blog, Home Made Simplicity and at her preserving/canning blog, The Simple Woman's Cannery.
In the next week she will be introducing a new monthly e-zine entitled, "The Simple Woman's Gazette". You can also join Peggy at her yahoo group, "The Simple Woman".
Peggy has been VERY busy over the past week adding lots of great information to her canning blog. Here is a listing of all of the new posts that have appeared in the past week:
Peggy and her husband John, along with 6 children (ranging from young adult through four years) live along the Appalachian mountains range in Pa. Peggy enjoys mentoring women in home things and has written articles for various magazines in the past.
You can now find her writing at her main blog, Home Made Simplicity and at her preserving/canning blog, The Simple Woman's Cannery. In the next week she will be posting a new study series entitled, "More Than Dishes and Laundry" as well as introducing a new monthly e-zine entitled, "The Simple Woman's Gazette". You can also join Peggy at her yahoo group, "The Simple Woman".
The category of "Putting Food By" is a bit empty right now so I have asked Peggy Hostetler if she would give me permission to repeat some of her posts here on the Front Porch. She graciously said "yes" and so I'll be sharing her posts again here to be sure that everyone gets a chance to read them if they missed them the first time.
Peggy just recently opened a 2nd blog here at HomesteadBlogger, The Simple Woman's Cannery. Since this is a new blog, there are only a couple of posts so far, but you may want to add her to your Friends list so that you can remember to visit in the future to see what else she has to share. She recently offered this information for us ... ENJOY!
Heat preservation of food in sealed containers was first developed in the 1800’s for Napoleon’s Army by one Nicholas Apart. Equipment and recommended procedures have evolved over time as technology and science-based research provided us with answers to why food spoils, which pathogens can cause human illness and how to ensure top quality food that is safe.
Interest in home canning has risen and fallen through the years.
Sadly today it has become a lost art because of several factors. Women working outside the home in large numbers, men not taking the time to work up a garden patch for their keepers at home, fear of canning or lack of knowledge and plain old slothfulness.
During the 40’s and World War II when food was in short supply, Victory gardens and home canning were patriotic and popular. Today’s “old time canners” remember canning in the 40’s and 50’s and passed on methods used then. Interest and reasons I mentioned above declined in the 60’s and 70’s as more methods such as freezing moved center stage.
Also, with freezing came a “taste lose” to many of the foods which were frozen like those cardboard green beans that I just do not think freeze well. I do love to freeze my corn, peppers and peaches though as they seem to taste just fine frozen, but little else.
Some of the “old-fashioned” canning methods recommended in the 40’s and 50’s by the USDA are no longer considered safe. Some other methods used by home canners have been identified as unsafe in light of what we know now.
Old canning books should be cherished, but replaced with current safe processes.
I want to begin a line of entries on the subject of food preserving or canning as my great grandmothers, grandmothers, mother and now I call it. I thought it best to begin with some very basics for our younger wives and for those who are new to canning.
If you are a veteran canner, perhaps you can just overlook this section or perhaps you will enjoy the recipes to come later this year or you might just learn something new as well.
The concept of canning is simple: When food is processed in jars at extremely high temperatures for a long period of time, the heat kills microorganisms and inactivates enzymes that could cause the food to spoil.
The heating process also drives air from the jar, creating a vacuum seal as the food cools. This prevents air, and the microorganisms it contains, from entering the jar and recontaminating the food.
There are two types of canned foods: raw pack-uncooked food put into jars and processed; and hot pack-food that is heated before it is put into jars.
Be thinking about your garden right now, making plans of seeds you will need, plants you will need later and exactly what YOUR family wants.
Remember that some things grow better in different zones and are best planted in cooler weather. In Pa. I am think of onions, peas, lettuce and then green beans to start. By the time these cooler vegetables come out, others will take their place thus saving room and allowing for more good things to be planted in their spots.
Just make sure you plant what your family will eat. IF Susie down the road grows the best acre of red beets and your family hates red beets, well then do not plant red beets.
Experience is your very best teacher ladies. Trial and error and yet some more. You take your time, self educate yourself and you will soon be a canning “expert”! I am always learning! Do what works for YOUR family!!
(I come from a long, long line of planters and growers as well as canning women. I have canned for the past 24 years and have been a certified Master Food Preserver for the past 11 of those. I pray these entries are a help.
(P.S. I will be posting around 20 or so entries. You are more than welcome to copy all of these for your personal reference.)
Peggy and her husband John, along with 6 children (ranging from young adult through four years) live along the Appalachian mountains range in Pa. Peggy enjoys mentoring women in home things and has written articles for various magazines in the past.
You can now find her writing at her main blog, Home Made Simplicity and at her preserving/canning blog, The Simple Woman's Cannery. In the next week she will be posting a new study series entitled, "More Than Dishes and Laundry" as well as introducing a new monthly e-zine entitled, "The Simple Woman's Gazette". You can also join Peggy at her yahoo group, "The Simple Woman".
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