When you are planning to stock your food, you need a way to keep it edible for months or for years. These canning food preservation tips will help you to achieve this and to keep your food safe in the long term.
Follow this process, and be very cautious with each point. Any small failure will result in big time and food waste. So let’s go!
Canning food preservation tips:
1- Use a good material:
Always go for good quality canning jars, it should have a boundary between your food and the bacteria in the outside world. Jars can be recycled, but you will have to change the rubber or metal protection every time you make new preservation.
2- Fresh products only:
Use healthy and fresh seasonal vegetables and fruits. Ban any industrial, frozen or defrosted products. Always go for the best, you are going be grateful the day you need them.
3 – Wash everything:
Clean your hands and jars correctly. Use hot water and soap to make the material as clean as possible. Boil the rubber steels and metal protection for a few minutes to sterilize them. Give a good wash to your vegetables as well.
4- Cooking:
Before preserving your food, you need to cook it. In order to be satisfied by the taste of your foods later, use the seasoning you like and cook it in your way.
5- Filling your Jars:
6- Sealing the jars:
During the sealing process, be sure that the edges of the jar are well clean and in a position to stop anything from coming into the jar or going out from it.
7- Heat fitting:
Place your jars in a pressure cooker or a sterilizer, treat them for 10 minutes or more depending on the recipes. This will kill all the unwanted bacteria.
After the heat treatments, let everything cool naturally before removing the jars. Otherwise, it may pop-out the leads, the process may take time but it’s necessary.
8- The final test:
When it’s cooled, open the closing system only, the lid must stay closed after this action. If it doesn’t seem strong and you feel that there is no pressure holding it in place, you might have to restart the heating process.
9- Storage:
In order to keep your food preserved for a long time, do not readjust or reclamp the closing system. Grabe a thermometer in order to store your preserved food at a temperature between 8°C and 15°C and consume it in the 12 following months.
10- Keep an eye on your jars:
If you see that anything has changed in one of the jars, it can be the closing system that seems not as tight as the others, or it can be a bad smell in the air.
In this case, you will have to take off the bad jars from the rest and try to understand why it happened. Correct the errors and restart, you will have a better result the next time.
Keeping your food edible for a long period is indeed a difficult thing to achieve, but with the best training and following these canning food preservation tips, you can achieve your goals.
