Home Preservation Of Food By Canning

Food for Thought: Canning popular among all ages

"Listen for the pop. As a canner, you love hearing that."

The pop, Vera Massey explains, means you have a vacuum seal, and your batch of home-canned food is nearly finished.

This advice was a sampling of the instruction Massey, a University of Missouri Extension specialist, delivered to 25 students during a session of “Preserving the Harvest” in Columbia, Mo.

Massey, who has been teaching nutrition and health for 36 years, enjoys the home canning workshops because people learn safe and reliable methods.

"It’s exciting to see the interest again in home food preservation," she said.

In recent years, the type of people who attend has been changing.

"I would say, many years ago, it was mostly middle-aged people," Massey said. "But now it seems to be all ages."

Massey says the change could be because, in part, there’s an increased interest in home gardening and a desire to eat locally grown foods. Massey and fellow extension specialists taught more than 150 classes last year, which is a significant rise from the 64 classes in 2008.

As newer information becomes available, Massey says using current methods and knowing research trends are critical to health and safety.

"Grandma’s method could be wrong," she said, "so the best method to follow is ‘If in doubt, check it out.’"

Many of those old family recipes have made their way to the Internet and do not follow the current standards. Massey recommends home canners steer clear of those recipes and use tested ones like those from state extension services, which will have up-to-date instructions.

-- August Kryger/ University of Missouri Extension

Tip of the Week: Follow safe sanitation in your kitchen

Use these guidelines from the new Food Safe Families campaign from the Department of Health and the Department of Agriculture, which aims to get consumers to adopt four easy steps when preparing food:

Clean: Clean kitchen surfaces, utensils and hands with soap and water while preparing food. Chill: Chill raw and prepared foods promptly.

Home Canning | Cooking

Food preservation is an art that allows you to store food without any loss to its quality, edibility and nutritional value. There are a number of food preservation methods, which prevent the growth of any bacteria, yeasts or fungi on the foods. Other than maintaining nutritional value, food preservation keeps the texture and flavor of the item being preserved intact. In history there have been some old methods of food preservation, which drastically altered the character of items being preserved. Common ways for preserving food at home are dehydrating, canning, freezing and pickling.

Home canning is a way of preserving food in an easy and cheap way. With prices of canned food increasing, many people are considering canning food at home. By following a home canning recipe you can enjoy so many things from canned apple butter to zucchini. There are different home canning methods that you can adopt like pressure, water bath and open kettle methods. Without having to invest on any expensive equipment, you can easily do the canning at home. There are many home canning cookbooks as well to help you prepare a mouth-watering dish that everybody in the family is going to enjoy.

Preserve vegetables that you can get either from your garden or market at a normal price. This will allow you to use the preserved food items even when they are not available at their standard price or are very expensive fresh produce. By home canning you can cut down on cost and be sure off that you are serving your family a healthy meal. The local farming market near you will offer you lot of option in terms of locally grown organic food. All the seasonal grown food items are generally cheaper compared to the off-season prices. There are some sites which tell you what fruits and vegetables are in the season and available at lower rates in your area. Buying from the local farmer’s markets you will also be supporting the local vendors at the farmers markets and local economy of your area.

Local foods in season are the best to use for home canning. By buying local food in-season, you can stay away from any shipped processed food items that come from thousands of miles away.  Eating fresh, non-processed fruits and vegetables is a step towards Healthy Eating .

Home canning is the best way to preserve your garden gains. If you have your own garden or buy seasonal products in bulk, you can make the harvest lasts for months by learning the easy ways and recipes for homemade canning In today’s world with so much of food adulteration, it becomes necessary that we stay away from any such food items to stay healthy.

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