Marisa McClellan's Blog, page 132

Links: Pickled Okra, Lemon Balm Jelly, and a Kilner Pan Winner

I’m in Portland, OR for a week of family time (it’s my mom’s birthday on Friday). I flew out here this morning and after a long but uneventful day of travel, was greeted at the airport by my mom and nephew. I helped give Emmett a bath and then we wandering around the garden eating snow peas and a few of the first ripe blackberries of the season. It was heavenly and I’m excited for the week to come. Now, links!

Boozy sour cherry jam. I like a little bourbon in my sour cherry jam, but this amaretto version sounds nice too. 
Curious what 64 cumulative cups of apricot jam looks like? Wonder no more!
Tangy plum chutney. I made a similar batch last year and it is so good with cheese.
Blueberry and red currant jam. I wish, I wish I could get currants in Philly.
How to make lavender sugar.
Lovely lemon balm jelly. Must get my hands on some lemon balm immediately.
Quick pickled okra. Gotta use tiny okra pods for this one.
Lacto-fermented pea pods two ways
Strawberry rhubarb jam sweetened with honey. A nice twist on a classic.
Blueberry basil popsicles. I always forget about making frozen treats with my fruit.
Raspberry breakfast bars. I imagine you could make these with just about any summer fruit. I might try go gather enough blackberries from my parents’ backyard and make a batch.
And one wacky one. Who knew that Reddit had a canning page?

Now, the winner of the Williams-Sonoma Kilner Jam Kit giveaway. It’s #1723 (so many entries this time!), which is Michele Tebben. She said, “This is a new venture for me. I am learning about canning and preserving and I am about to begin purchasing all I need. At this time I am not sure what tool would be a favorite. I remember helping my Aunt can years ago as I stood on a chair at the stove to stir the berries while they boiled! Hot work on a hot summer day (no air condition)! But it was worth it! Good memories and yummy preserves!”

Michele, here’s hoping that these tools help you get started and become instant favorites!

 

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Cookbooks: Saving the Season

I discovered Kevin West’s beautiful blog, Saving the Season, soon after he started writing it in 2009. I was only a handful of months into this canning blogging gig myself and appreciated knowing that there was someone else out there with similar tendencies towards large scale fruit purchases (Local Kitchen and Hungry Tigress also appeared around the same time and gave me equal comfort).

Now Kevin’s book is available and I couldn’t be more pleased to add it to my shelf of canning volumes. Also called Saving the Season, it is gorgeous, hefty and impressively comprehensive.

The recipes are written in a tone that is clear, cool, and welcoming. There are more steps and stages than in the recipes I tend to write, but that is to their benefit. I have a nasty habit of streamlining things for results that are perfectly fine. Kevin’s recipes shoot for preserve perfection.

This is a text heavy book and it’s as much as joy to read as it is to cook from. Recipes come with stories and heritage. It is not something you want to scan quickly, but instead should be taken slowly and with great pleasure. It’s one that I predict will yield fresh inspiration for many seasons to come.

There are tales of his produce road trips and the canning he’s done in borrowed kitchens, along with photos of his quiet adventures. Makes me think that I’ve not done nearly enough traveling and canning.

The photography is both spare and incredibly appealing. Just look at that cauliflower. I also appreciate the sentiment in the first line of the headnote for his curried cauliflower pickle. He says, ” There should be more cauliflower pickles.” Kevin, I couldn’t agree more.

My only complaint about this book is that is has just a hint of text book. The cover reminds me ever so slightly of my 8th grade biology book and the interior photos are disappointingly small. I can’t help but find myself wishing that its design was as lush and generous as the stories and recipe it contains.

That said, I still recommend it entirely without reservation. It should be on the reference shelf of all home canners.

Related Posts:

Cookbooks: Fine Preserving, Salt Sugar Smoke, and Whole Larder Love
Cookbooks: Put ‘em Up Fruit + Giveaway
Canning Cookbook: Home Made by Yvette Von Boven

Canning 101: How to Substitute Pectin

During the time I was writing my first cookbook, I was something of a liquid pectin fan girl. I liked its ability to create a natural, not-too-firm set. However, as time has gone by, I’ve become more of an equal opportunity pectin user. I regularly use regular powdered pectin, Pomona’s Pectin, and even sometimes boost the set of my jams with some grated apple or ground lemon peel. I also make preserves without any additional pectin at all (thanks to the size of the batches, there’s not a drop of extra pectin at all in the next book).

I get a couple of pectin questions a lot. The first is, how do you choose the kind of pectin you use in each recipe? Unfortunately, I don’t have a really great answer for that one. I typically just reach for whatever’s closest in the kitchen. There’s no true formula. I do tend to use powdered pectin when I’m working with lower pectin fruits, but if there’s no powdered pectin around that day, I reach for the liquid. If I don’t have either kind of traditional pectin, I’ll use a splash of calcium water and a little bit of pectin from a box of Pomona’s Pectin.

The second thing I’m frequently asked is, how do you swap powdered pectin for liquid? Happily, I have a more concrete answer for this one. You use two tablespoons of powdered regular pectin for every packet of liquid pectin. The difference in usage is that instead of adding the pectin at the end of cooking like you do with liquid, you whisk the powdered pectin into the sugar before you combine it with the fruit. It responds better when you cook it the entire time and you avoid the risk of pectin clumping that can appear if you try and add powdered pectin at the end of cooking.

I’ve not come up yet with a perfect formula for converting full sugar recipes to lower sugar ones that use Pomona’s Pectin. The only tip I have about that pectin is that I always use about half as much as the recipes in the packet call for. I find that if you follow their instructions, you end up with a VERY firmly set jam. As someone who prefers a softer set, I find that using half as much gives me a satisfying outcome.

Related Posts:

New to Canning? Start Here: Boiling Water Bath Canning
Canning 101: Tall Jars for Asparagus, Green Beans, and More
Canning 101: Always Label Your Prepped Fruit

Honey Sweetened Apricot Thyme Jam at Simple Bites

 

This time of year, I get a little bit obsessed with apricots. I buy them by the half bushel from a local orcharding family (I get the seconds, which are cheaper but just as tasty) and make five kinds of jam, butter, preserved halves, mustards, and ketchups, all from apricots. I also eat my way through a small mountain of them plain, because there is nothing in the world so good as an apricot that ripened on the tree, traveled all of 100 miles and has never seen the inside of a cold room.

I’ll have a new apricot recipe or two for you guys soon, but also wanted to point you in the direction of a apricot post and recipe I wrote for Simple Bites that went live today. I dearly love this simple, small batch of honey-sweetened apricot jam, made herbaceous with a few fresh thyme leaves. It’s still lovely on toast, but really shines when served with a creamy wedge of cheese or some succulent tidbit of roasted meat.

The recipe is here. I daresay that it will make you want to leap up and find your way to the closest quart of sunny stonefruit to make your own batch.

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Preserves in Action: Apricot Jam on Ricotta Cheese

Urban Preserving: Pickled Fairy Tale Eggplant

Two years ago, when I was still writing a weekly pickling column for Serious Eats, I made a little batch of pickled eggplant to feature in that space. The recipe was just slightly adapted from one in Linda Ziedrich’s book The Joy of Pickling. I did not have particularly high hopes for that particular pickle, but I had eggplant to use and an approaching deadline, so I made it.

In the end, I was astonished by how delicious the pickled eggplant was, especially when removed from the jar, drizzled with olive oil and eaten on toast. I’ve made it several times and have even included a version of the recipe in my upcoming cookbook (of course, Linda is prominently credited as the inspiration).

In the past, the I pickled cubes from a standard bulbous eggplant (nothing fancy, it was just what I happened to have around). However, I’ve long thought that those beautiful, lavender-streaked fairy tale eggplants were an ideal candidate for pickling. Last summer, I bought them twice with intention of suspending them in vinegar, but each time used them up in summer braises instead. So, when I saw a few baskets of pretty eggplant at the farmers market last Saturday, I forked over $6 for a quart so that I could finally execute my pickle plan.

This pickle does have a few steps, but isn’t actually particularly complicated. You start by trimming away the stem end off a quart of fairy tale eggplant and slicing each fingerling into four or six wedges (use your judgement; more strips for larger eggplants, fewer for smaller ones). Place them in a bowl and toss them with two tablespoons kosher salt and the juice of one lemon (the salt draws out the liquid in the eggplant and the lemon prevents them strips from browning).

Once the eggplant slivers have sat for an hour or two, you dump them into a colander and give them a quick rinse. Then, using your hands, gently press out as much liquid as you can without entirely smashing the eggplant. While you are rinsing and draining, pour three cups of red wine vinegar into a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Put all the eggplant into the boiling vinegar. Once the vinegar returns to a boil, let the eggplant cook for just 2 minutes.

When the cooking time is up, remove the eggplant from the saucepan with a slotted spoon and place it into a bowl (keep the vinegar hot). Add 1/4 cup torn basil leaves, 1 minced garlic clove (I like to use a garlic press for applications like this one), and 1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper and stir to combine. Funnel the dressed eggplant into two prepared pint jars (half pints are fine as well). Top with the blanching vinegar, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace. Using a chopstick, remove air bubbles and add more vinegar if the headspace levels have dropped.

 

Wipe the rims of the jars with a damp paper towel (this removes any particulars that could interfere with a good seal). Apply heated lids and rings. Lower the jars into a small boiling water bath canner and process for 10 minutes (starting your timer when the pot returns to a boil). When the time is up, carefully remove jars from the canning pot and place them on a folded kitchen towel to cool. When they are cool enough to handle, remove the rings, check seals and (if seals are good), wash jars to remove any remnants of spilled brine.

These pickles need a little curing time for optimum deliciousness. Give them at least a week (if not more).

Related Posts:

Small Batch Black Velvet Apricot Jam Recipe
A Thimbleful of Jam
Small Batch Blood Orange Marmalade

Giveaway: Kilner Canning Tools from the Williams-Sonoma Agrarian Line

When I first started canning, the jars and tools available were basic. You bought them at a hardware store or off a seasonal display in the grocery store. The styles of jar lifters, wide mouth funnels and other jars didn’t vary between brands (though each line did have their own signature color) and it didn’t occur to any of us that there could be jars beyond Ball, Kerr, and Golden Harvest.

But then, things started to change. As interest in canning grew, more people were looking for sturdy, high quality tools. And the cookware stores took notice. One of the first stores to respond to the demand for canning and preserving tools was Williams-Sonoma. Last year, they launched their Agrarian line, which featured a variety of tools, jars, equipment designed for canning, curing, preserving, and other DIY food endeavors.

One of the best things that’s happened as a result of the Agrarian line is that it’s brought a great deal more variety to the US canning jars and tools market. It’s now easy to get canning equipment made by Weck, Kilner, and others. This isn’t to say that the tools already available here aren’t perfectly good, but it’s always fun to try out other stuff.

Recently, I had the opportunity to use a few things from canning tools in Williams-Sonoma’s Agrarian line. For the last six weeks, I’ve been using the Kilner Stainless Steel Jam Pan and the Kilner Stainless Steel Funnel in my preserving, along with some of the 1 liter Kilner Preserve Jars. The jars are perfectly nice, though not significantly different from those made by Ball/Kerr/Golden Harvest, but the jam pan and wide mouth funnel are now two of my favorite canning things.

The funnel is great because the portion of the funnel that fits into the jar is a bit smaller than the conventional ones. This makes it easier to use with jars with smaller mouths. The lip of the funnel is also quite wide and shallow, which minimizes splashing. It’s a very well designed piece of equipment.

I’m also totally in love with the Kilner Jam Pan (this design is also known as a maslin pan). It’s got an incredibly thick base, the belled shape is perfect for quick evaporation, and the measurements up the side make it easy to determine exactly how many jars are going to be necessary to can up the batch you’re making. I’ve not burned or scorched a single batch in this pot, but if it were to happen, thanks to the stainless steel surface, I could scrub away until the burnt portions were gone.

Thanks to the nice people at Williams-Sonoma, I have a set of these Kilner canning tools to give away. The winner will get the jam pan, wide mouth funnel, and a set of four 1 liter canning jars. Here’s how to enter:

Leave a comment on this post and share your favorite kitchen tool you use in your canning and preserving. Do you use your grandmother’s jar lifter? Or have you jerry-rigged your own lid wand? Maybe your jam pan was purchased with money saved from recycling soda cans. Whatever the story, I want to hear it!
Comments will close at 11:59 pm east coast time on Friday, July 19, 2013. Winners will be chosen at random (using random.org) and will be posted to the blog on Sunday, July 21, 2013.
Giveaway is open to US residents only.
One comment per person, please. Entries must be left on the blog, I cannot accept submissions via email.

If you don’t want to leave it to chance, right now all of Williams-Sonoma’s canning and preserving tools are 20% off (and there’s free shipping all day Monday).

Disclosure: Williams-Sonoma provided me with the tools pictured in this post for photography and review purposes. They’re also providing another set of the same implements and jars for this giveaway. They did not pay for placement and all opinions expressed are my own.
Related Posts:

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Links: Rose Petal Preserves, Garlic Scape Vinegar, and Winners
Free Canning Demo at Williams-Sonoma at the Bellevue

Canning Classes: Brooklyn! Portland! Boston!

 

Hey canners! Just a quick Monday morning reminder about my upcoming classes. There are still a bunch of spots left in the Portland class and I’d love to see some of you PDX-ers there!

July 18 – Apricot jam two ways at The Brooklyn Kitchen in Brooklyn, New York. Class runs from 6:30 – 8:20 pm and costs $65.Click here to sign up.

July 20 – Come learn about jam making and boiling water bath canning with me at Longview Farm Market in Collegeville, PA. We’ll be making a batch of low sugar plum jam using Pomona’s Pectin. The class runs from 11 am – 1 pm and costs $35 to attend. Click here to sign up.

July 23 – Low sugar plum preserves in PORTLAND, OREGON! Class runs from 7 – 9 pm and will be held at the Subud Center in NE Portland. Class costs $40. Click here to sign up!

August 1 – Come learn to pickle your garden produce at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in Wellesley, MA. This class will walk you through the steps of pickling and boiling water bath canning in this two-hour hands-on Dilly Bean workshop. You’ll learn how to tackle a mess of beans and have the opportunity to ask all your burning preserving questions. The class runs from 6 – 8 pm and costs $55 ($50 for MassHort members). Click here to register.

August 2 – Free canning demo and book signing at the Hudson Public Library in Hudson, MA. The demo starts at 2 pm. There’s no sign-up required and I hope to see some of you there!

August 3 – Two classes at Create-a-Cook in Newton Highlands, MA. From 10 am – 1 pm, I’m doing a boiling water bath class featuring plum jam and pickled green beans. It costs $68 and you can sign up here. Then, from 2 – 5 pm, I’m offering a pressure canning class. I’ll talk about how to safely preserve low acid foods such as chicken stock, beans, and other vegetable products and will demonstrate how to make and preserve a batch of caramelized onion jam. That class is also $68 and the sign up page can be found here.

August 7 – Plum jam two ways at The Brooklyn Kitchen in Brooklyn, New York. This session features both demonstration and hands-on components and all participants go home with multiple jars of jam. Class runs from 6:30 – 8:30 pm and costs $65. Click here to sign up.

August 10 – Pickles at Indy Hall in Philadelphia. A deeply hands-on class, students will make quick cucumber and preserved green bean pickles (both vinegar based) and will take both varieties home to compare and contrast. Class is from 11 am – 1pm and costs $50. Leave a comment or email me to sign up.

August 15 – Tomato canning with the Fair Food Farmstand! We’ll preserve pints of whole peeled tomatoes in a boiling water bath canner. Participants will take home a jar of tomatoes and the knowledge necessary to do it at home. 6 – 8 pm in the Rick Nichols Room at Reading Terminal Market. Click here to signup.

August 17 – A massive tomato canning workshop at Blooming Glen Farm in Perkasie, PA. I’m going to set up a bunch of burners and we’ll can enough tomatoes for everyone to take home 2-3 quarts (final yield will depend on how much we’re able to get through that day). It costs $75 and will be a sweaty, fun, productive day with a potluck lunch. Click here to sign up.

August 18 – Canning demo and book signing at Wyebrook Farm, with a few tastes of preserves from my pantry. I’ll make a batch of spiced plum jam and will have books to sign. The event starts at 2 pm and a sign-up link is coming soon.

August 20 – Spicy Tomato Chutney at Greensgrow in Philadelphia. Class is from 12 – 2 pm and costs $35. Click here to sign up!

August 24 – An all-inclusive tomato canning class at The Brooklyn Kitchen in Brooklyn, NY. Students will receive a demo on how to safely can their own fresh tomatoes and receive a take home kit that include detailed directions, a case of wide mouthed pint jars, and a flat of canning tomatoes. Class runs from 2 – 4 pm and costs $85. Click here to sign up.

August 25 – Plum jam two ways at The Brooklyn Kitchen in Brooklyn, New York. This session features both demonstration and hands-on components and all participants go home with multiple jars of jam. Class runs from 2 – 4 pm and costs $65. Click here to sign up.

August 26 – An all-inclusive tomato canning class at The Brooklyn Kitchen in Brooklyn, NY. Students will receive a demo on how to safely can their own fresh tomatoes and receive a take home kit that include detailed directions, a case of wide mouthed pint jars, and a flat of canning tomatoes. Class runs from 6:30 – 8:30 pm and costs $85. Click here to sign up.

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Upcoming Classes: Boston! Brooklyn! Bucks County!
Upcoming Canning Classes: Brooklyn! Phoenixville! Philly! Portland!
Upcoming Classes: Brooklyn! Phoenixville! Portland!

Links: Honey Sweetened Preserves, Apricots, and a Winner

Last Sunday, I picked up a half bushel of apricots and a flat of sour cherries and then proceeded to spend every spare minute throughout the rest of the week trying to turn them into an array of jams, butters, sauces, and preserves. I lost a few of the very ripest apricots, but by sheer determination, managed to get everything else put up before time irreparably took its toll. I’m heading to Portland in just a week for a little family vacation, so I’m avoiding large fruit purchases and focusing on getting ahead in my freelancing work and blogging, in the hopes that I can focus on my parents, sister and nephew. Fingers crossed that the plan works! Now, to the links!

A riff on the cantaloupe jam with vanilla bean that’s in my cookbook! 
I am always looking for easy salads for quick summer lunches and this one with white beans and parsley looks like it would fit the bill (though I’d probably fancy it up with some slivered grape tomatoes and some minced red onion).
A very large batch of strawberry jam, sweetened with honey and set with Pomona’s Pectin.
Looking for more honey-sweetened preserves? This one for blueberry butter sounds awfully good.
Just one more! Sour cherry jam sweetened with honey.
Spicy lacto-fermented mustard. Just the thing for a soft pretzel!
These roasted vegetables sound incredible.
Another Russian preserve, this time apricot halves in syrup.
Speaking of apricots, these bars look like they deserve a place in my baking roster very, very soon.
This post made me wish fervently that I could somehow get my hands on some black currants.

Now, a few links either by me or about me…

On the FN Dish front, these roasted apricots with mascarpone are easy and ridiculous good and this green panzanella is one of my new favorite things. 
Over at Table Matters, I made a few more things from Edward Lee’s Smoke and Pickles (those jasmine pickled peaches!) and whipped up some burgers.
I wrote a bunch of easy, kid-friendly canning recipes for Parents Magazine last winter and now they are live!
The July edition of the Mrs. Wages newsletter is up and it features some of my favorite tomato recipes.
Finally, there’s a new canning podcast out there and I was a guest. Tune in to hear me talk about good starter recipes and my favorite canning tricks.

 

Big thanks to everyone who took the time to enter the OXO berry pack giveaway last week (thanks are also due to OXO, for sponsoring the giveaway. They are too nice over there). It was so fun to read about all your favorite OXO products. The winner is #730, Rachel C. She said, “My favorite is actually my OXO can opener. The grippy handles are absolutely AMAZING for getting the screw tops off of bottles with sticky contents that sit too long in my fridge.”

Make sure to check back in on Monday, because I’ll have another fun giveaway up that I think you guys are going to like!

Related Posts:

Links: Apricots, Sour Cherries, and Homemade Ketchup
Links: Rose Petal Preserves, Garlic Scape Vinegar, and Winners
Links: Kimchi, Cherries, and Winners

New to Canning? Start Here: Boiling Water Bath Canning

For years, there has been a something missing from this site and that was a post that detailed the basics of boiling water bath canning. I didn’t do it in the very beginning and then, as time went on, I felt a little embarrassed about writing that kind of post so late in the game. Whenever people would ask me for it, I would refer them to other websites. However, I’m happy to finally be filling in that gap with this post here today.

So, a little disclaimer to start out with. I’m going to detail my particular canning workflow. This might not be exactly how you do it in your kitchen and that’s okay. We all find ways to make it work with the tools, equipment and space that we have. In the end, the most important things are that you get your jars hot, that you fill them to the proper headspace, and that you process them for the amount of time prescribed by your recipe. There’s a good deal of flexibility in the rest of the details.

As I mentioned in the first post in this series, any pot can be your canning pot as long as it’s tall enough to hold a rack and your jars, and that it allows the jars to be fully submerged in the water. I like this one, but the best pot to use is the one already in your kitchen. Once you’ve picked out your pot, position a rack in the bottom. I have a silicone trivet pictured here, but any round rack, collection of old canning jar rings or a hand towel will work. Then put your jars in the pot.

Then, fill up the jars and pot with water. I like to use the hottest tap water available, as it speeds up the boiling process a bit to start.

It’s a little hard to see in this picture, but at this point, I only fill the pot enough to just barely cover the tallest jar I’m using. This should be more than enough water for the processing stage, because once you lower your filled jars in the pot, they will displace enough water to sufficiently cover the jars (sometimes, you need to remove a little water from the pot to prevent overflow. If this becomes necessary, use something heatproof, like a Pyrex measuring cup so that you don’t burn yourself).

It is always a good idea to pour a generous glug of white vinegar into your canning pot before you start heating the pot. This will prevent any minerals present in your water from depositing on your canning pot or jars. I don’t live in a place with particularly hard water, but I still do this because it keeps my pot in good shape and makes it easier to clean.

Now the pot is ready to go on the stove an come to a boil. I do all of this before I ever apply heat to my preserves. That way, the canning pot has a head start on my product and the jars will be nice and hot when I’m ready to use them.

Here’s where my practice diverges a little from what the  canning books will tell you. Almost all instructions (even those printed in my cookbook), will instruct you to take out a small saucepan, place the lids in it, cover them with water and bring it to a very gentle simmer. While this is good in theory (you don’t want to over soften the sealing compound), I rarely do it in practice. Instead, I watch my heating canning pot. When it reaches a boil, I turn it down to a simmer and drop my lids in. Everything stays nice and hot until I need to use it. The sealing compound gets to the perfect level of softness and I am a happy canner.

When the product is ready to go into the jars, I slide the canning pot off the heat and pull out the jars with a handy jar lifter. Just a note: These jars are hot, but not sterilized, because I turn the heat down to a simmer as soon as the pot boils. This works because the filled jars get boiled for at least ten minutes (and often longer) during the processing step. However, if your recipe calls for a processing time that is shorter than ten minutes, you either need to increase the processing time to ten minutes, or you need to actively boil your jars for at least ten minutes before filled, to ensure you have sterilized jars.

Now you fill up your jars.

 

Before applying the lids and rings, wipe the rims with a damp paper towel (I use the hot water from the canning pot as my dampening water, as the heat helps remove any stubborn sticky spots). Then, center a lid on each jar and secure it with a ring. Don’t over tighten the rings, because there needs to be enough space for the oxygen in the jars to escape. The term for this level of tightening is called “finger tip tight” meaning that you only tighten as much as you can with the tips of your fingers. I always tell my canning students that you turn just until the ring meets resistance.

 

Once all the jars have lids and rings, lower them into your canning pot. Make sure the jars are fully submerged and are covered with about an inch of water (you need that much to ensure that they won’t become exposed during boiling). Turn the burner to high. When the pot returns to a boil, set a a timer to the prescribed amount of processing time. You do want to maintain an active boil throughout the processing of the jars, but make sure you control your boil. If the pot is madly rolling, the chances that you will burn yourself increase. Turn it down a little, to minimize splashing and injury.

When time is up, turn off the heat. If you have an electric stove that stays hot for a while, slide the pot off the burner. You don’t want the water to be rolling when you reach in with your jar lifter. Then, lift your jars out of the pot and place them on a folded kitchen towel to cool (if you have countertops made from marble, granite, stainless steel or some other surface that stays cool, the towel is really important so that you don’t shock your jars).

 

Once the jars are out of the canner, leave them alone and let them cool. Hopefully, you’ll hear a symphony of popping and pinging lids. This is good, it means that the seals are being formed. However, don’t freak out if you don’t hear those noises. Jars sometimes seal slowly and quietly. Once the jars are cool enough to handle, remove the rings and test the seals by holding onto the edges of the lids and lifting up an inch or two. If the lids hold fast, the seals are good.

Sealed jars should be stored in a cool, dark place without the rings. If the jars are at all sticky after processing, make sure to wash them before you put them away. Any sticky residue can attracts ants and other pests, so make sure your jars are squeaky clean.

Related Posts:

New to Canning? Start Here: Equipment
Canning 101: Tall Jars for Asparagus, Green Beans, and More
Canning 101: Always Label Your Prepped Fruit

Introducing BNTO! New Product From the Makers of Cuppow

Fun news, jar lovers! Today, the folks that make the Cuppow have released a new product that I predict will have a giant impact on how we use canning jars to tote meals and snacks. Called the BNTO (a nod to the Japanese bento boxes that served as inspiration), it’s a 6 ounce cup made in the USA from recycled and BPA-free plastic, that nests into a wide mouth mason jar.

What it does is give you the ability to stash both wet and dry ingredients in a single jar. This means that your granola won’t get soggy, you can keep your peanut butter off your apple slices or crackers, and you can even pack up chips and salsa in a single container.

It’s designed to work with a canning jar lid and ring. The rim of the BNTO has raised strip which nestles into the sealing compound in the lid and creates a leakproof seal. You’ll notice that the ring doesn’t tighten quite as far as it does with just a lid, but there’s still plenty of space to ensure security.

For more on BNTO, click over to the Cuppow website. There’s a video here that will give you a peek at all BNTO can do.

Disclosure: The folks at Cuppow sent me a couple of samples of the BNTO to try out. They are also a sponsor of this site. Even if I had no relationship with them, I’d still think that this was a super cool product. 
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