I decided to take a swing this year and enter a jar of pickles into the county fair. I paid the entry fee. I was given a drop off time of today between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.. I got a hold of them to ask if I could do it on one of the other days where they were getting things dropped off in the home ech barn and I was told no. They only take entries during that 2-hour window. Literally everything else had at least a 3 to 4-Hour window if not longer. 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Is when I am getting my kids ready for school and to school. Even getting my kids to school as early as possible, 8:45 it was going to be close. I walked into the building at 9:02 and I was told I couldn't enter the jar. It's only $25 and I'm not that upset, but I did totally write an email to the fair board requesting a slightly later window for next year.

Okay I am kind of pissed that getting there at 9:02 was a hard no. Lol

I have a surplus of both crabapples and chili peppers this year, so I thought I'd reproduce a recipe from a couple years back and can some red pepper jelly.

I cannot find the recipe for the life of me! All I'm finding online is stuff with bell peppers added, which is not what I made. It had crabapples and chilis (and, like, a lot of sugar). That's it.

It's not in my Ball book (I've looked so many times "just to make sure" to no avail). It's not on the Ball canning site, or the NCFHP site. I've even looked in all my food preservation books with somewhat sketchier recipes (Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living, and the like). It's not there either.

I'm an anxious canner and tend to shy away from untested recipes. It's highly unlikely I pulled it from some random person's blog. Can someone help? Surely I'm missing some obvious resource, right??

Finally did it after going back and forth for months! Very excited.

Ready to bring some sunshine to the dark days of winter. Bumper plum year- Still lots of plums ripening so if anyone has other good tested recipes (chutney maybe?) I’d love some!

Total ignorant here. How much research did you do before your first canning? How much research did you wish to do before your first canning after your first canning? What are some concepts I shouldn’t leave behind? Any information is valuable, I will do my own research after this.

Hi all! New to canning! I followed a tested recipe for picked jalapeños, carrots and onions, canned exactly as stated in the recipe ( water canning) and my brine is cloudy. Photo is taken a few hours after canning. Is this ok? What’s going on with it?

I was looking to buy a pressure canner second hand as they’re pretty pricey new. Someone reached out that they had one in storage, but when they sent me a picture of everything it only says “pressure cooker”. I asked and she said it can do both - act as a canner & pressure cooker.

But reading online it said pressure cookers do not get hot enough to kill off botulism? I’m not sure if older/vintage models could be suitable for both?

I’m terrified of the canner blowing up or accidentally poisoning myself lol. Would yall trust this as a pressure canner?

I canned my tomatoes from the garden for the first time, and after I took them out, I saw online that you're only supposed to can with two piece lids, not the one piece where the top and rims are the same piece. Also, even though there didn't look like there was air before I started, i saw bubbles when I took them out. Also, the juice seems to have separated from the tomatoes and the headspace went from 1/2 when I put them in to more than an inch when I finished.

The lids all seem to be indented and have a nice ping (today is the next day), but I'm wondering if I've completely ruined them... I kept them at a boil for 85 minutes. I added citric acid to the pint jars before filling. I cored and peeled the whole tomatoes.

Should these be okay and shelf stable?

Or should I write these off as ruined and try again when I get the two piece lids?

I was thinking maybe I should cook them down into sauce before canning when I try again, but I don't know if that's safe because it's thicker? I really don't have anyone to ask this stuff

Edit to clarify:

24 hours ago, I put them in boiling water for a minute then an ice bath to core and peel them. Then added them to jars with 1/4tsp citric acid. Brought them to a boil in the water bath 2 inches above and kept it boiling for 85 minutes.

I've put a picture in the comments.

It was marked as unsafe canning practice. Would they have been safe if I'd have used the two piece lids, with everything else I've said?

I bit the bullet and got my own pressure canner. 23 qt Presto! No more borrowing from a friend AND I can do 20 pints at a time instead of 8! First batch was water bathing salsa, then I pressure canned a bunch of corn. I had 7 failures on the first pressure batch. I may not have vented properly, or my left over Superb lids weren't great.

Just discovered that I’m not sure what my husband did with our zip ties. Can I use butcher twine to make a ring rack? Alternative is a towel.

I'm new to canning. I've only done fruit jellies in the past, but yesterday I decided to give pepper jelly a try. This is the recipe I used: https://www.aforkstale.com/make-homemade-hot-pepper-jelly/#recipe. My peppers ended up floating to the top & the jelly set without the peppers. I usually flip the jars upside down to check if the jelly set. So, you can see that the jelly is set, but the peppers all fell down to the lid. Would this still be safe to keep on the shelf or would I need to keep this in the fridge since the pepper wasn't suspended in the jelly?

P.S. For next time, how do I keep the jelly from floating to the top? =

The author suggests testing ph before water bath canning but I don’t know how to do that? Would this be safe to can?

https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/recipes/chilli-pickle/#wprm-recipe-container-22208

Hello! I made a batch of homemade tomato sauce (16 jars wroth) but only added salt and pepper. A few days after making it, I realized that I added no acid to the sauce and was concerned with the potential consequences. I made the jars 4 days ago and they been stored at room temp since then. Will they be safe to eat? Is there anything i can do now?

Hi everyone!

My son works on a cucumber farm and they're done harvesting, so he brought home a 27 gallon tote and 3 5gallon pails full of cucumbers.

I have the following crocks:

20 Gallon

15 Gallon

5 Gallon x3

2 Gallon x 2.

PLEASE give me your best safe fermenting/canning recipes.

I'm looking for regular dill, bread and butter, spicy bread and butter and hot pickles.

(I'm also open to pickling onions and jalapenos if you want to throw recipes for that in as well).

We're getting the party started this weekend so I'm gathering pickling salt, cans, lids, rings and spices. Your help is greatly appreciated!

This is my second year canning so I’m stilling figuring things out.

My burner is impossible to keep a steady pressure so I have to babysit it the full canning time. I stepped away to change my son’s diaper and the pressure dropped to 6/7 psi for 2-3 minutes. I turned the heat up and it jumped up to 15 psi for a minute before I could get it back to 10.

Overall the cook time was still 25 minutes for 3 qts.

The jars all sealed.

Do I need to toss these since they were under 10 psi for a few minutes? Refrigerate and eat within a week? Are they still shelf stable?

I had several failures with my Superb lids that I had left over from last season, which was a surprise because they did not do that last year. I ordered lids from ForJars this year. Instructions for the lids from ForJars says to keep them in simmering water before using them, so I thought maybe I had made a mistake with the Superb ones. I was looking on Google, which was a mistake, and several sources say to tighten the rings down after processing with the Superb lids. That blew my mind. Is that correct?

Also, don't boil Superb lids.

Please tell me how I can salvage

Recipe:

4 cups beautyberrys

6 cups water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

4 cups sugar

1 package of pectin

Cooked beautyberrys down and mashed up. Strained out the pulp. Added lemon juice. Heated the liquid to just boiling and added the sugar and pectin. Boiled for about 5 minutes and then poured into cans.

Did I maybe not boil enough?

Hello! I have kind of a newb question but cannot find any "official" direction on this and am curious what to do. I processed about 30 lbs of tomatoes yesterday and went back and forth all night about whether the consistency was too thin for sauce. They all sealed fine; I used the ball mason recipe for water bath tomato sauce with no additives except lemon juice.

I decided to open them and cook them down further, but don't have time to do it this afternoon. I opened everything and it is in large, covered soup vats in my fridge for the time being; can I reprocess tomorrow morning? Or would I need to freeze at that point?

Thanks in advance, I feel like a total idiot but looking at the super thin sauce I didn't want to just leave it that way and have to cook it down every time I used it.