Home Ec Projects: Canning Safety
Before beginning any canning project, it is very important to understand the step-by-step process. By following the safety measures, you can always be confident that you are doing your best to avoid food poisoning and will end up with a quality product.
One of the first things to do is to answer the question of why can foods in the first place. You will have to decide if this method of preserving is right for you and your family. Many families still can the majority of their food for the year, whether they have their own garden or buy their foods through cooperatives or at farmers’ markets.
The next thing to understand is how canning preserves food. Is it better to can foods, freeze foods, dehydrate foods, or only use fresh foods?
After you understand why you want to preserve food by canning and how canning does this, next you should consider safe and high quality canning procedures. These will be the important rules that you need to operate by when canning to avoid food poisoning.
You’ll need to research online about all of the equipment involved in canning foods:
jars and lids
canners
Then, you should take some time and learn about the step-by-step process of canning more indepth:
processing time
cooling jars
testing jar seals
how to reprocess unsealed jars
storing canned foods
how much should you can?
identifying spoiled canned goods
Different kinds of foods require different canning processes. For some it is a difference in their acidity levels, for some it’s the kind of texture they have, etc.
pickled and fermented foods
butters, jams, jellies, and marmalades
fruits and fruit products
tomatoes and tomato products
vegetables and vegetable products
poultry, meats, and seafood
Other sites that you should find very useful:
Homecanning.com
Ball Canning Corporation
Canning-Food-Recipes.com
