Food preservation has inspired countless works of art and literature since the Classical era, but what's so great about keeping food storage long-term anyway?
Say you live in climate that brings warm summers but extremely harsh winters. You have too many vegetables in the summer but where do you find food during the cold season when you can't grow or hunt it? Imagine being stuck in that pickle.
It's much better to already have a plan for food scarce situations. Cue the canning/pickling process! (Thank you Napoleon)
Pickled produce has a shelf life upwards of two years in a cool, dark environment so homesteaders to preppers to backyard farmers can benefit from this method. Turn your overabundance into a valuable asset!
Today we canned bush beans and strawberry jam!
Believe it or not, our garden is STILL overrun with beans remained unpicked...
Take a look! This is how we did it:
Important items: WIDE MOUTH JARS. We like to use the wide mouth jars because they allow for easier access to your produce when you're ready to use it.
The setup: a pressure canner for sanitizing & canning, boiling water for cooking the beans, and pickling brine in a sauce pan.
MOST IMPORTANT STEP: Sanitize the jars and lids.
If you don't, you risk deadly botulism. I read about a poor man from California who recently died from eating gas station nacho cheese contaminated with botulism. Don't risk it!
Pictured below: The Official Jar Grabber TM to prevent your delicate fingers from being boiled in the process.
The Official Jar Grabber in ACTION.
(Bonus background blackberry pecan pancakes! Yum!)
The bubbles mean it's working.
We left the jars in boiling water for about 15 minutes to make sure all microorganisms were taken care of... then we let them dry.
They're pretty jars, aren't they?
But the jars aren't the most important item in this endeavor...
Here they are in all their home-grown glory: BUSH BEANS; washed, cut, and ready to can. We grew lovely green and purple varieties this season.
We threw those suckers in a stock pot to cook down a bit. If you don't cook them first, they'll suck up a good portion of your pickling brine and you'll be left with half your beans uncovered!
When we cook them down, the purple beans lose their color. Such a disappointment, but they'll be just as delicious!
We strained the beans and transfered them over to the canning station where my husband used his super strength to stuff as many beans as he could into each jar.
He filled jar after jar after jar. What a trooper!
NEXT UP: Pickling salt! This adds flavor and acts as a preservative.
Then we filled the jars to the brim with brine...
...And added the squeaky clean lids and lid-rings (which hold the lids in place until they're sealed).
IT'S TIME TO PRESSURE CAN! We carefully added each jar to the canner, sealed the lid, and left it to pressurize for about 20 minutes to completely seal the jars.
Afterwards we moved the jars to a towel to cool.
The REAL magic happens when you start hearing a chorus of popping lids that let you know your hard work paid off and your canned goods are completely sealed!
Off to the pantry!
Thank you for reading! I hope you can try canning too. I'd love to see what you guys end up pickling this season!
Please comment below and tell me what you think!
Cheers~!
(All images were taken with my LG Stylo)
nice post
Thank you!
@calendula ur welcome
That looks like some yummy beans,Nice info on how to can things!Followed and resteemed!
They're so delicious! I'm happy you found it interesting~ Thank you very much for the support!
thanks for posting. I love canning but haven't had time the last few years. Enjoy your beautiful beans.
Thank you, I'm enjoying them very much. Yes, life can get in the way of things sometimes, let me know if you get around to canning again! I'd love to see what you're preserving.
Awesome to see each step of the way! I've only done pressure canning once with a friend. I need to get a big pressure cooker. Have you tried pickling beans?
Thank you for the feedback! How did you like the canning process? You can get a pretty good deal on pressure canners on Amazon, I highly recommend one because it takes canning to the next level. I guess I'd consider canning these bush beans as pickling beans even though I didn't use vinegar, just brine. Which kind of beans do you mean?
Canning was fun! I look forward to doing more of it once my fiance and I move our of our travel trailer. Looking forward to getting back our our dehydrator and learning as much as I can about fermentation and pickling. I've only recently learned to make sauerkraut but it was so fun. Stained my hands purple for a few days. :) I guess I was thinking of pickled beans in vinegar. In brine they would be more subtle, right? How do you make your brine? Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Wow that sounds exciting! Where are you guys traveling? I'm REALLY excited to get into dehydrating so I can make my own MREs, it seems like the food lasts longer that way. But yes, you're right, pickling uses vinegar specifically so I resend and say that I have not pickled beans haha. The brine I use is just boiling water and a couple teaspoons of pickling salt per pint jar.
Right on! We're actually living in our camper on our land we just got last year outside Asheville, NC. We lived in it on an urban farm we had in Austin for a couple years, took it to the Ozark forest and spent a year farming in the woods, and now we're finally putting down some roots. I can't wait to do lots of pickled peppers too. Have you checked out the book Art of Fermentation?
I do business in Asheville sometimes, it's such a beautiful place! I wish you the best of luck on your newly-acquired homestead. I haven't actually read the Art of Fermentation but I've heard nothing but good things about it! I'm interested in making kombucha and yogurt so I may add it to my library soon to get the ball rolling on that one.
It's very beautiful indeed. I was born in Austin, so these mountains are quite a change! My Dad actually brewed Kombucha about 25 years ago when very few people had even heard of it. As a kid, I thought it was so weird wondering what these weird floating mushrooms all around our house were. Haha. Now, I wish I could go back and have access to the unlimited supply of free kombucha! He taught me to brew it but it's been years, so I too need to get on that! Yogurt and Kefir would be awesome too. Enjoy the day!
I'm making fridge pickles today for the first time. Maybe one day I'll learn to can, you make it look fairly easy. I'm just too scared I'll screw up and poison myself.
Yum, congratulations on your pickles! You shouldn't be scared of the canning process~ Sanitizing your jars and washing all produce will prevent any bad bacteria from growing! ^_^ Let me know if you try it; I'd love to see what you end up canning.
Thank you, hopefully they turn out tasty! I will.
Great job, well done. I too do canning and freezing as I have a big garden every year. I love it!
Thank you for your complements! Will you post about any of your gardening/canning escapades? I always enjoy seeing what others are preserving and what methods they use.
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