I was in my late teens the first time I participated in a home canning project. Following my mother’s instructions, I paid careful attention to the details of the tedious process. Amazed as I pulled pint, after pint, of salmon out of the pressure canner. I felt like an alchemist. I sat at the table and listened to the pops as they formed a seal that would protect the food from spoilage. I thought of the woman I knew who caught the fish and sold the lot to my family. At that moment I felt connected to the ecosystem and the women before me who turned a fish into food.
“Magic?”
“And science” Mama replied.
As my working life progressed, I found myself employed by a small organic farm and this resulted in me becoming intimately connected to my food as well as my food waste. In my piece about utilizing your food choices as a way to take personal climate action, I list reducing your food waste as one of three ways individuals can reduce their carbon food-print. Climate change was a motivational force that encouraged me to pursue farming. However, I was initially inspired to get into canning as an adult because I was being partially paid in produce.
What’s more, it was the most vibrant and delicious produce I had ever had! I wanted to hold onto the taste of each month forever, but the wheel of the year continues to turn, and the flavors decompose to make way for the gifts of each new season.
This to me is the magic of putting food by. When we can, freeze, dry, or preserve plant medicine through infusions, we are capturing the best of our regional abundance.
Before food blogs, and trendy holiday jam recipes people—mainly domestic housewives—would put food by because they had to. Specifically, home canning was heavily promoted in the United States and Europe during both WWI and WWII. Lawns were replaced with victory gardens, and women were asked to ease the burden on our national food system.
While I maintain access to the benefits of an industrial food system and my favorite convenience foods, I take great pleasure in the act of home food preservation. It allows me to stay in tune with the season and helps me feel more resilient in a world that often seems tumultuous. I have been practicing preservation in my own kitchen for about seven years now, and am currently witnessing a huge uptick of interest in my community.
If you are among those that have an interest in this skill, read on, or watch the replay of my first Instagram Live on the subject.
1) Understand the Preservation Process
Taking the time to understand the preservation process helps empower you to catch mistakes before they happen and prevent spoilage as well as illness. My very favorite canning reference book is called Putting Food By. The entire first chapter is focused on how foods spoil, how botulism grows, and how the canning process is designed to kill harmful pathogens. It is based on scientific know-how, but it was written for the home cook, so I find the language is accessible. I enjoy many recipes in the book, but more importantly this guide helped get me to the point of being able to determine the safety of other recipes. This is extremely helpful when I am working with odd amounts of produce from my garden or the farmers market.
For me, this rule applies to all preservation projects. Before embarking on a fermentation, or curing project, I familiarize myself with what bacteria or molds I could be inviting. This helps me notice when I have made a mistake and gives me language for asking questions that progress additional learning.
2) Don’t Underestimate the Impact of Mentorship
Let this Substack serve as a testament to the fact that the barrier to getting personal ideas and recipes out into the world is minimal. I for one am cautiously grateful to be living through an age of abundant information, especially when it comes to the home kitchen.
Home canning is an old art and in my experience, those who have the most practice aren’t writing food content for the internet. In addition, the recipes widely available online are frequently one size fits all with little information about nuance that is frequently present in the produce we want to preserve.
This doesn’t mean the internet isn’t a good place for information. I learned about pickling firming agents in a conversation and then turned to the internet to learn more about the different kinds. The USDA home canning guide can be found online, and the Ball canning website has great information about safe home canning practices.
Still, my food preservation mentors help push me beyond the basics. They remind me to slow down and stay safe. They tell me stories about bathtubs full of soaking cucumbers, alert me when there is a canning jar sale, and offer free fruit off trees they are too old to pick. I am humbled by this generosity of knowledge and they are amused by youthful enthusiasm.
If you are new to the world of food preservation please connect with me and folks at your local county extension office. With each connection ask if there are groups you can connect with so that you can tap into community support. It is invaluable.
3) Preserve Foods you Find Pleasurable
Prioritize your pleasure. After all these years I have finally given myself permission to not can green beans. I am grateful for the drive that aided me in learning about pressure canning, but I don’t like canned green beans! So I did a bad job of cooking with them. It seems so simple to say can what you love. However, sometimes we get caught up in the things we should preserve and forget that we need to eat what we preserve.
With the exception of raw packed meat products, it is a good idea to sample your product prior to processing it. If your jam isn’t congealing on a chilled spoon, or the tomato sauce is runny, it will remain liquidly post canning. If the pickle brine is too sweet, or your salsa isn’t spicy enough it will remain so post canning. If you don’t like pickled beets or mushy green beans—don’t can them.
Utilize your time to preserve your favorites so they bring you joy during the dark winter months. My favorites are canned peaches and tomato sauce.
Have you been canning this season? What is your favorite food preserve? Let me know in the comments.