Home Canning Safety Topics

Home canning is a safe, enjoyable activity that produces nutritious, delicious food thanks to all the modern research that has been done and the techniques that have been developed from it.

Through the Internet, all this modern knowledge is at our fingertips to guide us in preserving food in a way that lets us create for our friends and family a quality, safe product.

Sadly, some of the old, discredited ways that did the exact opposite have popped up too, so it’s important to understand the difference.

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1 Safety Articles

Safety Articles


 Botulism and home canning
In certain types of food preservation such as canning, an illness called "botulism" is a concern and the preservation techniques must provide a way to control for it.
 Botulism from Home Canning in the United States
A survey of the CDC literature available on documented botulism cases in the United States to determine how many cases were caused by home-canned foods.
 Dos and don'ts for home canning
Home canning is far more a science than an art. There are some practices that must be followed, and others avoided, in order to achieve a quality, safe outcome that you are proud of showing to others and letting them sample.
 Key issues in home canning safety
A summary of the core, fundamental, big bullet point issues that have to be considered for food safety when doing home canning,
 Mould on home preserves
If your jars of home preserved food go mouldy, should you just scrape off the mould and eat the rest?
 Safe Canning Police
Some people are so overly vigilant about home canning safety that they think they know better than the authorities who are actually credentialled experts in the home canning field. 
 Safe tweaking of home canning recipes
Here are some guidelines about what you can safely tweak in a home canning recipe.
 Should you boil your home canned vegetables?
If you have done your canning according to USDA standards, you do not need to boil your home canned food upon opening it.
 The old British method of just "bottling" preserves is known to be unsafe now
The old British method of just "bottling" preserves is based on older methods now known to be unsafe and to deliver lower quality products.
 The world of home canning is not 100% black and white
Home canning is not 100% black and white. 99% of it is recommendations that need to be followed, certainly. But there's 1% of seemingly grey areas that are important to understand.
 Unsafe home canning practices


The composition of a list of unsafe home canning practices will vary depending on who you ask, and how many people you ask.

There will be some major dangers on the list. No doubt, though, a committee could stretch the list to pages long with many...
 All jars of home preserves must be heat processed
All jars of preserves meant for shelf-stable storage require heat processing of the filled, sealed jar. No matter how much you sterilize a jar in advance, cook the food before, or how much sugar or vinegar is in your recipe.
 Cowboy canners
Cowboy canners will stick anything in a jar, close the lid, stick it on a shelf to fester, then feed it to people. They purport to trust in the "good old ways" of canning, take delight in mocking any caution or safety practices, and approach canning with...
 Do not use Mason jars as meatloaf grease grabbers
An Internet "tip" has emerged which involves using a Mason jar as a "grease grabber" to suck up grease out of meatloaves. Both Ball and Bernardin actively recommend against using their Mason jars for this.
 Fractional sterilization" or "intermittent processing
A bizarre canning method known as "fractional sterilization" or "intermittent processing" encouraged bacteria to colonize your jars of canning three days in a row.
 Home Canning Cured Meats (Bacon, Brined, Corned, Ham, etc)
Home canning authorities say not to home can cured meats. The issue is that curing changes the density of the meat, and that that changed density has not been tested for safety.
 Home-canned cake
You cannot safely home can bread or cake. If someone gives you home canned cake, assume it is unsafe to eat and discard it in a manner that not even animals can consume it.
 Inversion Canning
Inversion canning is not canning because no canning process has happened. Both open kettle canning and inversion have now been discredited and proven unsafe and are strongly recommended against.
 Microwave Canning
Do not attempt to use a microwave to do home canning in. The resultant product will not be safe. 
 Open Kettle Canning
Open-kettle canning is just putting hot food in a jar and slapping a lid on, with no further processing of the jars. It leads to a lot of food wastage and illness.
 Oven Canning


Promoted from time to time as a "new" home canning technique, "oven canning" is actually an old technique. It has been around since at least the 1920s -- and it has been discredited and advised against since the 1940s.

It involves "baking" your...
 Oven sterilization of Mason jars
Oven sterilization of jars for home food preservation is no sterilization at all, and is not safe. All food authorities including the actual manufacturers of Mason jars recommend against it.
 Why do you have to process jars of jam?
Some people ask why jars of jam must be heat processed after bottling, in either a hot water bath or a steam canner. Doing so provides a safer, higher quality product.

Comments

Alyssa

November 20, 2024 at 2:17 am

If I made tomato pasta sauce can I refrigerate it for 2 days and then can it?

Carol

February 28, 2021 at 11:02 pm

I HAVE MADE A PANTRY OUT OF THE STORAGE ROOM OF MY HOME. I AM EXPERIENCING MOISTURE ON THE OUTSIDE OF MY JARS. THE LIDS ARE STILL SEALED. WILL THIS CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR MY PRESSURE CANNED FOODS?

- Healthy Canning
  
  June 20, 2021 at 6:45 pm
  
  Just watch for the metal lids rusting and losing their seal on account of that.
  
Donna

May 05, 2017 at 1:21 am

Is it safe to can meat in an electric type pressure cooker I have been told several opions

- Healthy Canning
  
  May 29, 2017 at 8:06 am
  
  The National Center for Home Food Preservation is currently actively warning against using those electronic pressure cookers for any type of canning: https://preservingfoodathome.com/2014/11/25/can-i-can-in-a-multi-cooker/
  
  - Juls
    
    October 01, 2023 at 9:42 am
    
    Hello, is the main danger of open kettle jam making that the jars don’t seal? Or does the hot water bath kill bacteria in the sterilised jar?
    
    Does the ladle and funnel need to be sterilised as well to avoid introducing bacteria to any home made jam?

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