Unorthodox Canning Method: starting with cold jars?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rachel Hoff on September 8, 2011 at 11:23am

I totally get how what you want to do makes sense. Maybe they are thinking that you want to put the cold jars into already boiling water? That would be bad because it could break the glassware, but if it's put into cold water and then all of it is brought up to boiling I don't know how that wouldn't work. It's like when using a pressure canner, you put the jars in and then bring them up to temperature, not the other way around. 

 

Though I'm not an expert...Maybe check the USDA information.

Permalink Reply by Aliza Ess on September 8, 2011 at 12:02pm

Thanks Rachel! Haha, yeah I've definitely made the mistake of putting jars that were too cool into hot water... :)

Permalink Reply by Pat Johnson on September 8, 2011 at 6:01pm

The cold-pack- in-cold-jar then water-bathed process does not nessessarily sterilize the jars (pressure canning does).

Still, the jars need not be hot when packed as long as they've been sterilized beforehand. In fact when using a cold-pack recipe they should not be hot for reasons you mentioned. You could sterilize the jars and place plastic wrap over them until ready to pack or put the rings & lids on loosely to kkep the contaminants out.

Packing them and placing the rings/lids on the sterilized jars the night before is probably OK for pickled items containing vinegar (high acid content) but the raw packed items are not sterile and might contaminate an otherwise sterile jar if the vinegar where not there to protect the ingredients.

Ball will never go out on a limb and say its OK unless it's 10000000% safe to do so (same with the county extension offices). So....you rolls the dices and takes your chances;-). Our parents and millions of us did things in the old days that are supposedly not right but it's all about risk management and your tollerence for that risk. Stick with the most current rules and your odds are as good as they could get. Stray from them and you'll likely be OK but you will have slightly worse odds. I take some of those risks but know enough about what I'm doing to know if the risk is big or ever so small. Unless you know what the deal is, its always best to listen to the experts and even then its a good idea! A big part of the reason the average life expectancy is longer than it used to be is that we are constantly learning to improve the odds in one way or another.

Permalink Reply by Aliza Ess on September 9, 2011 at 9:24am

There was no way I was going to re-pack all those okra and peppers.. ended up just boiling the pints for 45 minutes, so I'm sure everything got up to temperature. I did lose some pickling liquid at the top so it's not a recommended method, but I'm just glad I got those suckers canned and am done with it :)

Permalink Reply by Pat Johnson on September 9, 2011 at 9:37am

I hear ya. You'll be fine.  With the vinegar/acid content your pickled Okra could have been waterbathed for less time as long as the time was started after the boiling began. The Vinegar will be the preservative.

Permalink Reply by Aliza Ess on September 9, 2011 at 9:40am

Thanks Pat! The feedback helps :)

Permalink Reply by Bonnie on September 9, 2011 at 4:20pm

Here's what I've been told (from the local Extension Office): if your jars will be boiling for more than 10 minutes for processing, then you don't need to heat them up first. What I have experienced with cold jars, however, is that sometimes the  old ones will break during processing (it's a mess, hope it doesn't happen to you!). I would just pay attention to your jars if you want to skip a step. I'm with Pat, the vinegar should protect everything.

Permalink Reply by Pat Johnson on September 10, 2011 at 9:30am

I generally sterilize my jars by simply heating them along with the water in the canner. If I do additional batches I try to dump some of the previous water and add some cold to make the water very warm but not hot enough to break the jars (cuts down on heating a whole new batch with cold water). You can also warm the vinegar till it's pretty hot so that you could pull a hot jar out of the boiling water, add the Okra, pour the warm vinegar mixture over it and then put it right into the boiling water without breaking the jars. With the caning club we try to cut the time so we can do multiple batches in the same canners. Another way to get the jars hot so they won't break is to put a little water in them and put em in the microwave for a couple minutes to get them hot so they won't break.