Intro to (Small Batch) Canning with MistressJennie - An LC Community Class

[MistressJennie (Moderator - Jennie - she/her)]

Moving these comments over here, from the Zoom Class general thread.

@Edel

Cool. I have that. We don’t have canning supplies here as canning isn’t a thing. I’m guessing I could use regular recycled jam jars and metal life. Or these kilner jars with rubber seals.

https://www.kilnerjar.co.uk/

@Magpie

Ooh, safety is paramount in preventing illness. You have to be careful to use jars that actually seal to make something shelf-stable. If not, your results may be ok to live in the fridge for a limited time. Do a bit of research and see what folks near you may have figured out.
I can’t believe canning isn’t a thing somewhere, however was food preserved historically?

@MistressJennie

Magpie is right. Using jars and lids specifically designed for food presentation is vital. I cannot in good conscience tell you to experiment with alternate materials, and you should never reuse commercial food jars when canning at home.

My class will be sticking with materials and techniques deemed safe by the USDA. I really don’t want to be responsible for a recycled jar of boiling hot jam exploding in a friend’s face.

@tendstowardschaos

You need something like this or this.

@Magpie

Yes! & if you can reuse that sort of jar & ring from purchased products if the size is standard, you just need new lids that fit correctly. If those can’t be found, friends can send them to you

@MistressJennie

It looks like Kilner has a few types of jars. If you go with them, you’ll want the ones with the 2 part lid, a flat metal disk, and a separate metal band, because that’s what I’ll be demonstrating. They show the same basic steps for jam making that I’ll be going over, on their site with both the 2 part lids, as well as directions for using their their clip lids. I know the kilner clip lids are popular with some home canners here in the US, usually folks who have extra fancy blogs. Since I’m not a fancy blogger, and the 2 piece Ball lids are ubiquitous here, available everywhere, I just use those.

Here’s their basic jam making instructions with their 2 part lids and their clip lids.

https://www.kilnerjar.co.uk/making-your-first-preserve

I’ll have to do some more research about jar sizes for you. All the standard Ball jars here come in 1 quart, 1 pint (16 oz), half-pint (8 oz), and quarter-pint (4 oz) size. I’m not sure if those are exact equivelant to their sizes, or if they are off between Metric & Imperial.

@MistressJennie

It looks like if you were going to make the same strawberry jam recipe I’m making, you’d fill 3 of the .25 liter jars, with about 3/4 of a jar worth of jam leftover. You’d maybe get 4 full jars out of the recipe. (I sometimes get a little more leftover, that I usually just eat right away, but that might be just enough to fill that 4th jar for you.)

Since the jars do seem to be different standard measurements, you might want to just watch me make my jam, and then follow a recipe formulated for your standard size jars. Like this one. (Giant pet peeve though: that recipe doesn’t say how many jars it makes/or how many ml of jam it produces, meaning it’s hard to know how many jars to prep when canning.)