Food Preservation

No canning of butter, cheese, cream, yogurt, etc. will produce a safe product.Aside from a very tiny bit of butter that may be used to reduce foaming when canning jams and jellies, there are no home canning recommendations for dairy products, including butter, hard and soft cheeses, milk, and yogurt.Many …

Should you process water for storage and emergency use? Experts recommend that households store at least a three-day supply of water per person to cover drinking and food preparation needs in the event of an emergency.  With a minimum daily recommended amount of one gallon of water per person per…

Be extra cautious preserving your own baby food. Want to preserve your own baby food?  High-acid fruits are the only food for which there are home processing recommendations for use as baby food. Unfortunately, there are no recipes for canning pureed or mashed vegetables, meat or poultry. …

Safety and quality depend on what you have in the freezer.If you’ve got an excess of produce that you don’t have time to process, can you store it in the freezer to can later? Yes, sometimes. The freezing process breaks down the cell structure of produce, which changes the density of the food. For this…

Applesauce isn't the only game in town! Turning bushels of apples into home-canned applesauce is a time-honored tradition for many folks. But why stop at plain applesauce, or even apples for that matter?  Many fruits can be processed as fruit purees, and fruits can be mixed and matched.  …

With very few exceptions, homemade chocolate sauce is unsafe for shelf stability. Homemade chocolate sauces are fun to make and are great to have on hand for quick dessert toppings or to give as gifts. It may be tempting to can your own sauces (or other types of spreads) that include chocolate products,…

Temperatures matter, from the beginning to the end of the canning process.Home canning involves more than just heating jars of food in a canner. There are many steps in the process, from food preparation to checking that jars sealed after processing – all of which contribute to a product that’s safe to eat…

Commercial juice is an easy and convenient option, but...Yes, you can certainly make jelly from commercially prepared juice (either bottled or frozen). It’s faster and easier than extracting your own juice from fresh fruit.  There are a couple of things to keep in mind, however. The juice should be…

Internet practice is not a recommended preservation method. Another preservation process making the internet rounds recently is so-called “dry canning,” in which dried foods such as beans, grains, pasta, nuts, flour, etc. are put into canning jars and then the jars are heated in a low oven. Some…

Dry canning vegetables doesn't ensure even heating. Another “homemade” canning method (in other words, someone made it up themselves) has been making the internet rounds recently, which involves pressure canning vegetables without any added liquids. The food, either cooked or raw, is simply put in a jar…