The Motley Kitchen...: Canning for the 1st time...

I have always wanted to try canning, but have always been nervous...which I realize is the reaction most of us have when we don't understanding something or don't know how to do something we've never experienced or tried before. Well, I finally did and let me tell you, canning was actually pretty easy and I'm looking forward to doing it again.

For those new to canning, let me share a little bit of what I learned. There are two types of canning, canning with high-acidic food (tomatoes, pickling, fruits, salsas) and canning with low-acidic food (other non-pickled veggies and meats). When you do high-acidic canning, you can use a warm bath (which you can buy at stores like wal-mart for around $20)...and for low-acidic you need special pressurized canner (I think these are $80 plus).

Although canning is easy, it's very technical or precise...so having a 2nd person around is helpful (especially in the beginning) but it's not necessary. You need a lot of counter space or surface space, clean towels, kitchen timer, sterilized jars with lids, one of the canners mentioned above, ingredients planned out to go into your jars and something to do while waiting for the actual canning time :-)

My friend Margaret's mother is highly experienced with canning and is staying with her for a while...so she offered to help Margaret and me with our first canning adventure (thank you, thank you). Since we are both participating in the CSA farm share, we have extra veggie and fruits which make nice candidates for canning. We decided to keep it somewhat simple and target two pickling recipes (Pickles and Asparagus) and two jam recipes (Peaches and Cherries). We purchased new sterilized large and small jars in advance and some other ingredients that were needed in the canning recipes.

Here's what you need to get started:

Sterilized jars (you can buy these at most grocery stores or target, wal-mart, etc) - sterilize the jars and lids then lay out on clean towels to dry
Kitchen timer
Canning water bath
Canning Tongs or Heating pad to pull out super hot jars from canner
Ingredients for your canning recipes
Before you start, make sure all of the items above are done and laid out for easy access
Find a few easy recipes (you can search all over the internet for lots of recipes) to try, like the ones we decided to tackle: Pickled Cucumbers (these are pickles with fresh dill and garlic), Pickled Asparagus (includes fresh dill, onions, garlic and red pepper flakes), Peach Jam, Cherry Jam
Canning time according to your altitude - we learned that depending on your altitude you may need longer canning times (For Colorado - we had to add an additional 15 min to our canning time)

Water canning pot (can't remember the official name)

Once you have all the above items ready to go, you place your ingredients in your jar (whichever size meets your recipe), then place in the canning water bath (which is a big pot with a wire shelf that your cans sit on), cook the jars according to the time in your recipe and altitude, when finished you'll take them out and carefully place on a clean towel and let cool for approx 24 hours. During the cooling time the jars will "seal" and thus create your canned good...then you can store in your pantry for up to 2 years (most recipes I think will store that long unopened).