The thrifty way to preserve your jams and sauces

Let me start this by saying there are many ways to sterilise food by water bath.  This is how I do it and having been doing it for many years. I'm still here to tell the tale, but be warned, you need to do this carefully.

If you're a keen home cook and have ventured into making sauces, relish, chutney, bread and butter cucumbers or pickled beetroot, there will come a time when you might want to sterilise your jarred products so you can store them in your pantry  for eating later in the year.  I've written before about how we in the warmer climates tend to do less preserving/canning than our northern hemisphere friends - our gardens produce food almost all of the year, and here where I live it is quite easy to keep a kitchen garden going all year.  So instead of putting up our beans, carrots, soups and stews, we tend to eat our vegetables fresh, or if there is an excess, we freeze it.

Tomato relish and ginger beer.

Preserving/canning plays a part for us when we make a great pasta sauce or excellent relish, that is much tastier, healthier and cheaper than the store bought varieties, and we want to make a lot of it to use in the following months.  This is when we need to preserve/can what we cook.  Sauces, chutney and relish, in fact most foods with herbs and spices in them, will improve in flavour when preserved and left to develop flavour for a couple of months.  If you've never done it before, or only do a small amount each year, it's probably not financially sound to buy special equipment.  Here is a good way to sterilise your preserves in a water bath, without special equipment and by using what you already have in the kitchen.

Use modern recipe books for preserving|canning, or recipes from a trusted source, don't rely on very old canning books - some of the old methods of preserving|canning were unsafe.   When you first start doing this, use small quantities and small jars; when you know what you're doing, go bigger.  

You'll need a large saucepan like a stockpot, if it's not a stockpot, it has to be a pot big enough for all the jars to sit under the water.  I use recycled jars that have already been used for jam or honey.  You'll need metal lids that have plastic coating inside the lid to stop the food acids reacting to the metal.  Most of these lids have a little metal indent button that will indent when it's sealed correctly. Take a bit of time with the jars, they could be the difference between success and failure.  Check the rims by running your finger around the opening.  Make sure there are no chips or cracks and the lids are not dented or rusty.  Wide mouth jars are best because it's easier to fill them.

To sterilise your jars, wash them in warm soapy water, rinse, then place them in a low oven - 150C|300F for about 20 mintues.  You want to fill hot sauce into the still hot jars so do this while the sauce is cooking.

When you fill the jars, you fill it almost to the top, without spilling over the side.  You want a bit of what is called head space because some foods swell and bubble when they're heated and need this space to expand.  If you don't allow enough headspace the food might force the lid up and you won't get the jar to seal properly.  The general rule is  7mm|¼ inch for jams and jellys and 12mm|½ inch for tomatoes and fruit.

Before you fill the stockpot|saucepan, place either a round cake rack that fits well on the bottom of the pan, a folded tea towel or folded newspaper on the bottom of the pan so the jars don't sit directly on it.  Instead of using a wide mouth canning funnel, scoop the jam up in a medium sized jug to fill the jars.  Instead of canning tongs to lift the jars, you'll have to use the same jug to scoop some of the hot water out of the pot and when the jars are uncovered, pick them up with a tea towel folded a few times.

These are just some of my jars and bottles.  I never throw out wide mouth jars or interesting bottles and I buy some larger preserving jars.

When you finish filling your jars wipe them to make sure they're clean then, with the processing pot sitting on the stove, place the jars in the pot so they fit well without touching the jar next to it. Fill the pot with cold water, using a saucepan filled at the tap, then bring the pot to the boil - this will take 45 to 60 minutes. When it's slowly boiling, hold it at a slow boil for another 45 minutes for small jars and 1 hour for large jars. When the time is up remove the jars to sit on a tea towel on the bench to cool slowly for 24 hours. The prolonged heat will form a vacuum in the jars and you'll notice the lids will be slightly inverted, or you'll hear them pop as they cool down.

And that's it!  You don't need to buy all sorts of equipment, but like most things, if you really get into this you might want to expand on your utensils and equipment if you do a lot of preserving.  The important thing here is to try it and if it's a good fit for you, it's another useful and productive skill you have in your move towards a more sustainable life.

PLEASE BE AWARE: Low acid foods like meat, beans, carrots, peas, soup etc are not suitable for this type of preserving|canning.

Go here to read an older post of water bath processing.

ADDITION: Here our tap water isn't really cold and it's fine to use tap water on hot jars to fill the pot.  If you're in a colder place, you'll have to heat the water in the pot first, then place the jars.