Canning Party

Two weekends ago, a couple of friends came over to my apartment and we had our first annual canning party. Wooo!

We made dill pickled cucumbers and beans (top photo with chicken looking on), tomatoes and pickled beets/onions (bottom photo), and peaches. It took a night of prep work (my friend was up until 3am roasting beets!), and 5 hours of jar sterlization, filling jars, making pickling juice and simple syrup, and boiling water canning. In the end, we had about 40 jars of all sizes and colours, ready for storage. But still, I kind of wished I made more.

You can find lots of instructions about canning on-line; I like pickyourown.org because they have step-by-step instructions and pictures. With the whole local food movement gaining momentum, there's likely to be a canning workshop close to where you are. In Toronto, Foodshare held a free workshop in August, and the Gardiner Museum has one coming up in September.

Hhere's a few tips I've learned over the last couple of years:

• Pack your jars as tightly as possible. The fruit/veggies shrink during heat processing; if you don't pack tightly enough, you'll have lots of liquid in your jars.
  
  
• Get the right tools for the job. Last year I used the largest stock pot I had, which only fit 3 jars, because I didn't want to buy specialty items (gadgets really annoy me). But it took 2 full days to finish canning. This year, I bought a basic canning pot with rack from Craigslist for $10. What a huge difference: it fit 7 jars, and the rack fits in so that you don't have to reach into the boiling water to pull out the jars.
  
  
• To keep pickles crunchy, minimize heat processing time and/or soak in brine the night before. Soft pickles are kind of gross.
  

And most of all, have fun! Turn up the music, invite over some friends, open a bottle of wine, and can, baby, can!