The Complete Guide to

Canning and Preserving

Food

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION

WAYS OF CANNING AND PRESERVING FOODS - BRIEF HISTORY

PRESERVE PERSONAL HARVEST

12

Bottling

15

Pickling

18

Pressure Canning

21

Freezing food

21

Dry food

23

Smoking, salting, and curing food

24

Jams and Preserves

28

Conclusion

32

Introduction
Weve kept talking about the high prices of the food and the
dangers we face when buying products from the market. You
never know what you buy, you never know exactly what you
put on your dinner table. So why risk the lives and health of
you loved ones?
For those of you who have decided to grow your own food,
youve taken a great decision. Whether it is a small vegetable
and fruit garden in your backyard or a few animals for meat,
there comes the time when you have to think about
preserving your food.
Of course you wont be able to eat everything at once,
besides its best to preserve some for the winter season. But
how do we do that? What are the best ways of canning and
preserving food?
Early man learned to preserve food, drying them or keeping
them at low temperatures. Evidence of procedures used
were found in Mesopotamian tablets and inscriptions on
Egyptian monuments dating back about 5000 years. It is

known so that in the third millennium BC, the Egyptians

dried the fish and meat. In Mesopotamia were discovered
large quantities of marine fish remains dating from the same
millennium deposits located at Lagash, so far from shore
that the only possible explanation is that the fish was taken
up there in salt or dry. The first written hint written about
salting the fish is in a tablet from 1500 BC.

In the first millennium BC, the Chinese practiced smoking,

salting and drying meat and fish. The vegetables were stored
in sand, the meat in fat substances and fruits in honey.

During the heats, the Greeks and Romans preserve meat in

vinegar or honey. They kept the fish in brine with herbs to
prevent it from fermenting. They also used snow brought
4

from the mountains and deposited in the wells. This is a

method practiced in many places until the nineteenth
century, when it began the manufacturing of ice for cooling.

Since 1790, Nicolas Appert, a pastry chef in Paris, after 10year study preserving food, put up for sale meat, vegetables
and fruits preserved in airtight glass jars. In 1809, Interior
Minister offered 12,000 francs for disclosure method. A year
later appeared "housekeeping book, the art of preserving for
many years any plant or animal". Appert's method, which
consists in the destruction of enzymes by heat after closing
food in sealed vessels, was improved by its inventor itself,
which replaced the glass jars with metal boxes.

By 1865, the U.S. market appeared frozen fish and birds;

meat followed by 1877; fruit in 1910; vegetables by 1930 as
a result of research conducted by Clarence Birdseye.

Ways of canning and preserving foods - brief history

Dehydration
In ancient times, the sun and wind would dry foods
naturally. Archaeological discoveries in the Far and Middle
East certifies that the people here dehydrate foods using sun
since 12 thousand years ago.

Recent civilizations have left more evidence of this. The

techniques and materials used for these populations are
differentiated according to local sources of food: fish,
venison, livestock, etc.

Freezing

Although the refrigerator was invented only a century and a

half ago, refrigerate food was made in antiquity as it is an
obvious method of food preservation especially in areas
where there were freezing temperatures and allowed
preserving even for a year. If the temperature was not low
enough to freeze food, they could be stored for a longer
period in cellars, caves or cool streams.

Fermentation

This

process

invented

but

was

not
rather

discovered. For example, it

is likely that beer has been
discovered accidentally by
inadvertently leaving some

barley seeds outside in the rain. The process of fermentation

is that some opportunistic microorganisms convert sugars
into alcohol from starch.
This process applies to fruits that turn into different
alcoholic beverages. Some anthropologists believe that
mankind began to grow barley for beer production since 10
thousand years ago. Beer was nutritious and divine. Alcohol
was considered a gift from the gods.

Fermentation was a very important food preservation as this

was not only advantage but also for creating nutritionally
rich foods. This process can create edible compounds from
less desirable ingredients because the microorganisms that
make this process possible, produce also vitamins during
this time. This produces a final product nutritionally richer
than its ingredients.

Marinating

Preparing food preservation process involves vinegar or

another acid. The vinegar is produced from the oxidation of
the alcohol with the help of bacteria and is acetic acid. It is
produced regularly in wine, beer, and cider.

Pickling food probably has its origin in experimenting with

ways to preserve them. So perhaps someone put food in
wine or beer because both have a low pH. Maybe wine or
beer turned into vinegar and the taste of food has become
interesting and so this was born. This method can only be
done in glass or ceramic dish as acidic content will attack
any metal vessel.

In the sixteenth century there was an explosion in the use of

this method in Europe due to new food trade. For example,
ketchup was a fish brine came from the East arrived in
Europe on trade routes and then in America where someone
thought to add sugar. It eventually evolved to the compound
in tomato sauce, who is known today.

Use salt and smoke

Salt has been used since ancient times for food dehydration.
Salt was used commonly and even culinary by using multiple
types such as sea salt, rock salt, seasoned salt, etc. In the
1800s it was discovered that some sources of salt meat
offering a redder color than the other, and customers
overwhelmingly preferred in the flesh. In this mixture there
nitrite salt, which was discovered in the 1920s as inhibitors
of Clostridium botulinum development. This bacterium is

10

known to cause food poisoning as the most famous being

botulism.

Jam and honey

Preserving food with sugar or honey was used since ancient

times when the fruits were kept in a typical honey. For
example, the ancient Greek quince mixed with a little honey
before they were dried and stored in clay pots. Later, the
Romans improved the process by boiling the quinces with
honey, thus achieving a solid texture.

The same enthusiasm trade with the Orient, which brought

pickles in Europe facilitated the introduction of sugar cane,
which was used immediately for the production of jams.

11

Metal used in food preservation

This process involves placing foods in cans or jars and

heating them to a temperature that kills microorganisms and
deactivates enzymes in food. Also the process of heating and
then cooling the jars creates a seal effective in warding off
other bacteria that may contaminate the contents.

Preserve personal harvest

It is becoming a less and less common, but in remote areas
some folks still can and preserve all summer long to
provide for their familys basic needs year round. As a
child, my family lived off the land for some years, and
stocking the cold room with peaches, sauerkraut and green
beans was essential to make it through the winter.

No commercially canned product tastes as good as locally

grown, harvested in season, homemade preserves! It is
deeply rewarding to select your own produce ensuring
12

top quality and to can it at its peak of ripeness. You can

bet your bottom dollar that the flavor of your homecanned product will mirror the quality and care that went
into making it.

Home canning foods, particularly fruits and vegetables,

has the great advantage of bottling seasonal produce and
making it available year round. Before the advent of
refrigeration, home canning was used in order to have
fruits and vegetables available during the dead winter
season. While modern imports and food trade make most
fruits and vegetables available year round, off-season
fruits are invariably expensive. Canning your own fruits
and vegetables as jam, whole fruits or pickles at the height
of their seasons ensures the availability of summer fruit
flavors during the winter.

13

Bottling this is a very

common practice and there are
various techniques of doing it.
Here is one way you can bottle
your vegetables and fruits.

Preheat the oven to 300

degrees Fahrenheit.
Pack your jars or bottles
with selected fruit and fill with water or brine. Leave an
inch of room from the liquid and fruit to the top of the
jar.
Place the lids on the jars or the bottles without using the
clips or bands. Place the bottles on a baking sheet and
them in the preheated oven.
Remove the bottles or jars from the oven after 30 to 50
minutes and secure the seal with clips or screw bands.
Pears, rhubarb and tomatoes will need to be processed
for 60 to 70 minutes. Let sit for 24 hours.
Test the quality of your seal by removing the clips or
14

screw bands and carefully lifting the bottles by the lid. If

the lid sticks, the seal is adequate. Reprocess if the seal
is broken.
Label your bottles or jars with content names and the
date it was bottled. Store
bottles and jars in a cool,
dry and dark place.

This type of canning can

even

be

decorating
simple,

used

as

item.

a
One

homemade

decoration that can spice

up

any

kitchen

is

homemade fruit bottles.

These decorative bottles filled with pretty pieces and slices
of fruit suspended in oil or vinegar offer a pretty addition to
any dcor. They can sit on shelves, on tables as centerpieces
or on sunny windowsills. You can make these decorations at
home with a few simple supplies.
15

The boiling water bath method is safe for tomatoes, fruits,

jams, jellies, pickles and other preserves. In this method, jars
of food are heated completely covered with boiling water
(212F at sea level) and cooked for a specified amount of
time

16

Pickling

Is the process of adding acid (vinegar or lemon-

juice) to

a low-acid food to lower its pH to 4.6 or lower. Acid foods

include all fruits except figs, most tomatoes, fermented and
pickled

vegetables,

relishes,

marmalades.

17

and

jams,

jellies,

and

Tips:
Produce must be fresh when pickled. Avoid using waxed
supermarket produce.
Select the most uniform, unspoiled produce.
Scrub food well. Be sure to remove and discard 1/4
inch slice from the blossom end of fresh cucumbers.
Blossoms may contain an enzyme that causes excessive
softening of pickles.
Use canning or pickling salt (not iodized table salt!).
Pickling salt has no additives. Iodized salt makes the
brine cloudy and may change the color and texture of
the vegetables as well as possibly leave sediment at the
bottom of the jars.
For the best results, use white distilled or cider vinegars
with 5 percent acidity. Use white vinegar when light
color is desirable, as with fruits and cauliflower.
For crisper pickles, put the vegetables (whole or sliced)
into a wide bowl and spread a layer of pickling salt on
top. Cover and let sit overnight in a cool place. Discard

18

the liquid, then rinse and dry the vegetables before

pickling or canning as usual. The salt helps to pull the
moisture out of the vegetables and makes them crisper.

Crunchy Dill Pickles

4 pounds small cucumbers
2 cloves garlic, peeled, for each jar
1 fresh sprig of dill for each jar
4 black peppercorns for each jar
2 quarts white vinegar
1/2 cup pickling salt
Soak freshly picked cucumbers in a tub of ice water
overnight. Remove and dry the cucumbers, then pack them into
sterilized jars along with the garlic cloves, dill sprig,
and peppercorns. In a large pot over medium-high heat, bring
2 quarts of water to a boil. Add the vinegar and salt and
boil for 5 minutes. Pour the hot brine over the cucumbers,
leaving 1/4 inch of headroom. Wipe dry the rims of the jars,
then cap each with a lid and screw band. Prepare a boiling
water bath and process the jars in it for 10 minutes. Remove
the jars from the bath and set them on a towel on the
counter. They will seal during the cooling-off process.
Place any jars that do not seal properly in the refrigerator
and use first.

19

Pressure canning is the only safe

method of preserving vegetables,
meats, poultry and seafood. Jars of
food are placed in 2 to 3 inches of
water in a special pressure cooker
which is heated to a temperature
of

at

least

240

F.

This

temperature can only be reached

using the pressure method.
A microorganism called Clostridium botulinum is the main
reason why pressure processing is necessary. Though the
bacterial cells are killed at boiling temperatures, they can
form spores that can withstand these temperatures. The
spores grow well in low acid foods, in the absence of air,
such as in canned low acidic foods like meats and vegetables.
When the spores begin to grow, they produce the deadly
botulinum toxins (poisons).

20

The only way to destroy these spores is by pressure-cooking

the food at a temperature of 240F, or above, for a specified
amount of time depending on the type of food and altitude.
Foods that are low acid have a pH of more than 4.6 and
because of the danger of botulism, they must be prepared in
a pressure canner.

Freezing food
Freezing foods is the
art

of

preparing,

packaging,
freezing
their

and
foods

peak

at
of

freshness. You can freeze most fresh vegetables and fruits,

meats and fish, breads and cakes, and clear soups and
casseroles.
The keys to freezing food are to make sure its absolutely
fresh, that you freeze it as quickly as possible, and that you
keep it at a proper frozen temperature (0 degrees).
21

Properly packaging food in freezer paper or freezer

containers prevents any deterioration in its quality. Damage
occurs when your food comes in contact with the dry air of a
freezer. Although freezer-damaged food wont hurt you, it
does make the food taste bad.

Here are three things to help you avoid freezer burn:

Reduce exposure to air: Wrap food tightly.
Avoid fluctuating temperatures: Keep the freezer closed
as much as possible. Know what you want to remove
before opening the door.
Dont overfill your freezer: An overly full freezer reduces
air circulation and speeds freezer damage.

22

Dry food
When you dry food, you expose the food to a temperature
thats high enough to remove the moisture but low enough
that it doesnt cook. Good air circulation assists in evenly
drying the food.
An

electric

dehydrator

is

best

and

efficient

most

unit

drying,
dehydrating,

the
for
or
food.

Todays units include

a thermostat and fan
to

help

regulate

temperatures much better. You can also dry food in your

oven or by using the heat of the sun, but the process will take
longer and produce inferior results to food dried in a
dehydrator.

23

Smoking, salting,
and curing food
Smoking

foods,

especially

meats,

adds

new

dimension of flavor to your diet. Smoking is a simple process

that infuses smoky flavors into ordinary cuts of meat.
Applying rubs and curing in brine, in addition to smoking,
increases the number of ways that your ho-hum meats can
become spectacular.

There are two types of smoking food:

Dry Smoking - Dry smoking uses indirect cooking with a
low, smoldering wood fire to slowly cook foods while
infusing smoke flavor.
Wet Smoking - Wet smoking, or water smoking, is more
commonly employed and uses a pan of water to maintain
24

moisture and tenderness.

Useful tips for smoking food:

Keep water pan full, replenishing as needed with hot
tap water.
The water helps to maintain temperature and adds
moisture to keep food tender.
Don't peek! Heat and smoke escape each time the lid is
lifted, sacrificing aroma and flavor and increasing
cooking time.
Start with small amount of wood to see if you like the
flavor, adding more for more intense smoky flavor.
Make wood chips last longer and prevent burning by
bundling wet wood chips in a foil packet with holes.
Place the packet directly on the coals.
Smoke only those foods that can handle the assertive
smoky flavor: beef, lamb, pork, poultry, oily fish, and
game.

25

For a more aromatic flavor you can add on the coals fresh
leaves, stems, or herbs, bay leaves, rosemary, grapevine
cuttings, fruit peel, or cinnamon sticks are examples of
aromatics.
Different woods add different flavors to your smoked food:
Alder, delicate: Pork, poultry, especially fish
Apple, delicate, mildly sweet, and fruity: Veal, pork, poultry
Cherry, delicate, mildly sweet, and fruity: Veal, pork,
poultry
Hickory, strong, hearty, smoky: Brisket, ribs, game, pork
Mesquite, lighter, sweeter: Most meats, vegetables
Oak, assertive, versatile: Beef, pork, poultry
Pecan, similar to hickory, more subtle: Pork, poultry, fish
Seaweed, tangy, smoky: Shellfish

26

Salting, especially of meat, is an ancient preservation

technique. The salt draws out moisture and creates an
environment inhospitable to bacteria. If salted in cold
weather (so that the meat does not spoil while the salt has
time to take effect), salted meat can last for years.
Today, salting is still used to create salt-cured "country ham"
found widely in the southern United States, dried beef
(which you can buy in jars at most grocery stores), and
corned beef and pastrami, which are made by soaking beef
in a 10-percent salt water brine for several weeks.
Salting Pork
Cut your meat into 4-inch to 6-inch slabs. Generally,
for every 12 pounds, use 1/2 pound of pickling
salt and 1/4 cup brown sugar. Coat all the pieces
with the salt mixture.
Sterilize a 2-gallon or two 1-gallon crocks. To
sterilize, wash and rinse it well with boiling
water.
Pack the meat tightly in the crocks (or jars if you
don't have a lot of meat to store), and cover
tightly with cheesecloth.
Keep the meat at 36F (no more than 38F; no lower than
freezing) for at least a month. Wrap the meat in
moisture-proof paper or plastic wrap. It will keep all
winter.

27

Jams and Preserves

Jams use mashed up fruit, while preserves use whole or
large pieces of
fruit. Both of
them,
however,

are

easier

and

more
economical to
make

than

jelly, since they

are made of entire fruits instead of just the juice, and can be
good either thick or runny. Both are also delectable when
homemade!

Here are a few basic secrets that you can follow to make
your own jams and preserves:
Wash and remove the stems or cores, if any. Peel if

28

necessary; cherries and berries do not require peeling;

fruit like pears and peaches do. Remember: for jams, cut
up or mash the fruit; for preserves, use whole or cut
into large chunks.
Make jam or preserves in small batches because this
way, the fruit will cook quickly and the color and flavor
will be better preserved.
For every cup of fruit you use, add 3/4 cup of sugar. For
example, four cups of fruit makes a very manageable
batch, so you would need 3 cups of sugar per batch
unless otherwise specified by the recipe.
If you are using ripe or particularly sweet fruit, add 1-2
tablespoons of lemon juice. The acid from the lemon
juice will help the jam or preserve thicken.
Scorching is more likely to happen to jams and
preserves, so in order to avoid that dilemma, stir your
mixture often for 15-40 minutes, depending on the fruit.
Scorching can ruin a otherwise delicious jam or
preserve, but is very easy to prevent.
To test your jam or preserve to see if it's done, take a

29

spoonful out of your kettle, and if it holds its shape after

about a minute, your jam or preserve is ready to jar.
Peach Jam
5 cups peach puree (10 to 15 large peaches)
6 cups sugar
Juice and rind of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon cloves (optional)
1/2 teaspoon allspice (optional)
Remove pits and imperfect parts from peaches. In
a large kettle, simmer peaches with just enough
water to keep them from burning. When peaches are
softened, put them through a food mill. Add
sugar, lemon juice and rind, and spices, and cook
slowly until thickened. Test for doneness by
putting a spoonful on a plate. The jam should
just hold its shape. Pour into hot sterilized
jars and seal with paraffin.

Not only fruits can be used to make jam. Vegetables are also
very delicious combined with the right spices.

30

Tomato Jam
To make these or any jars glisten, add 1 cup of vinegar to
a deep pot of boiling water and dip each jar in the
solution for 10 seconds. Then wipe clean with a lint-free
towel.
Yield: Makes about 2 pints.
4 cups ripe, fresh, Italian plum tomatoes, peeled and
coarsely chopped
2 oranges, sliced thin and seeded
2 limes, sliced thin and seeded
4 cups sugar
3 tablespoons peeled, chopped, fresh gingerroot
2 cinnamon sticks
Combine all ingredients in a large pot over low heat,
stirring until the sugar dissolves. Simmer until the jam is
thick and clear, about 1 to 112 hours. Toward the end of
the cooking time, stir often to prevent scorching. Remove
cinnamon; pour jam into sterilized jars and seal. Process 10
minutes in boiling water

31

Conclusion
Nothing compares to the fresh taste of local foods. And
theres no better way to safely capture those flavors than
home canning.
Home canning is not complicated. It is a simple procedure
that applies heat to food in a closed glass jar to interrupt the
natural decaying that would otherwise take place. The air we
breathe and all foods in their natural state contain
microorganisms, such as molds, yeasts, bacteria and
enzymes.

Food spoils when these factors are not controlled. Proper,

safe home canning procedures control the growth of
spoilage microorganisms allowing us to keep food beyond its
normal storage period.

The aim of preserving is to slow down the activity of

microorganisms and enzymes or destroy them altogether;

32

they cannot survive in acidic or dry conditions, in high

concentrations of salt and sugar, in alcohol, or in high
temperatures. A preserve will often employ different
techniques, for example jams combine heat with a high
concentration of sugar.

Rather than spending money on products on the market,

which you dont even know what contain, youd better start
home canning your vegetables, fruits and meat, especially if
you own a small garden from where you can harvest.

33