Canning for Beginners: What You Need to Know Before Starting Home Preservation

This guide to canning for beginners lets you in on must-know tips so that you can safely preserve your food for your family.

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Canning food is a way to keep your summer’s harvest even longer. It aids in self-sufficiency, helping you to rely less on the grocery store and more on your own hard work. But, if you’re a beginner just learning the ins and outs of home canning, there are some mistakes you could make that could cause serious illness to your family and potentially even be deadly.

Don’t let that stop you from starting, though! I’ve had so many people reach out to me and say that they wish that they could can their own food, but they’re so afraid that they’re going to hurt their family. Nonsense! Canning for beginners does not have to be scary. If you can follow directions, take care and precaution, and are intentional with your decisions, your family will be safe and their bellies will be full of your own garden’s produce all year long.

In this post, I’ll cover some inside tips from experienced canners that will offer some insight to canning for beginners so that you can feed your family safely all year long.

Table of Contents

• 1. Use One of Two Types of Main Canning Methods
  • Water Bath Canning
  • Pressure Canning
  • Which food preservation method should I use?
• 2. Make Sure Your Jars are Prepared
• 3. Warm the Lids
• 4. Wipe the Jar Rims
• 5. Place Hot Canned Items on a Towel After Removing Them
• 6. Screw on Rings Tightly- But Then Back a Bit
• 7. Wait for the Seal
• 8. Get Your Necessary Tools
• Final Thoughts
• Check Out More Posts

1. Use One of Two Types of Main Canning Methods

There are two main types of canning methods. There are other, unconventional methods out there, but like I said before, it’s best to stick with canning methods that have been approved by the USDA in order to keep your family safe.

Water Bath Canning

Water bath canning, or boiling water canners, are the best way to start canning for beginners. This type of food preservation method involves submerging sterilized, filled jars of food in water and boiling those jars for a certain amount of time to create a seal.

Water bath canning should be used for preserving high acidity foods. These foods include things like jellies and jams, pickles, sauerkraut, and many fruits. Tomatoes also can often fit into the water bath canning category; however, they often need to adjust their pH value just slightly by adding lemon juice. Your recipes will let you know exactly how much to add to make sure water bathing your tomatoes is safe.

You can purchase a water bath canner on Amazon. If you do small batches of food at a time, a very large and tall stock pot can also work too. That is what I did at the beginning! The main thing is that the jars will need to be covered. A wire rack is also fairly important, as the jars can sometimes break with direct contact to the bottom of the pot.

Pressure Canning

When you’ve started to feel comfortable with water bath canning, you might consider canning more food from your garden with pressure canning. Pressure canning is a food preservation technique for low-acid foods including green beans, corn, carrots, potatoes, and meats. This process involves placing your sterilized filled jars of food into a pressure canner with typically a few inches of water, sealing the lid, and allowing pressure to build by using a weighted gauge to build a heated pressure. Food is pressure canned for a specific amount of time, then left in the sealed canner to cool.

You can find pressure canners for sale on Amazon. They are a big investment! I actually got my pressure canner from a garage sale, which is another option for you if you’re not ready to take the plunge and purchase your own. If you do buy one used, though, make sure that all of the parts are there and that they are in good condition before using it to preserve your food.

Which food preservation method should I use?

The best way to know if you should use water bath canning or pressure canning is to look for a scientifically tested recipe for the food you are hoping to preserve. That recipe will let you know which canning method will be safest to use.

Another way to know is by looking at the food’s acidity levels. High acidic foods are going to have a pH level of 4.6 or lower. Lower acidic foods are going to have a pH level higher than 4.6. The high acid levels prevent the growth of heat-resistant spore forming bacteria that can cause a deadly disease caused botulism. Pressure canning destroys the spore forming bacteria, which therefore makes the food safe to can.

If you are looking for a helpful recipe book designed for canning for beginners, this is the book that I recommend. I was gifted it with my first water bath canner from my mom, and have used it time and time again to make sure I know exactly how to preserve the food for my family safely. It identifies which foods to preserve via water bath, which to preserve via pressure canning, and it provides safe recipes to follow.

2. Make Sure Your Jars are Prepared

If you’re just getting started, there are a few tips to know about your jars before you start the canning process.

• Be sure your jars don’t have any nicks or cracks. We always do this by running our finger along the jar rim and feel for any imperfections. If you feel one, you won’t want to use that jar. It could prevent the lid from sealing, meaning all of your hard work could be wasted!
• Sterilize your jars. Having clean jars is different than having sterilized jars. To prepare your jars for canning, you can submerge them into boiling water or run them through the dishwasher. Sterilized jars protect your processed foods from being contaminated with any potential bacteria.
• Warm your jars before adding to any hot water. Any drastic temperature change, such as a cold jar to a hot water bath, can cause the jar to break. Warm the jars by sterilizing them right before you use them for your food processing.

3. Warm the Lids

Warming the lids in simmering water helps to soften the rubber on the jar lid to help make a good seal. We always keep our lids in a pot on the stove on the lowest temperature and then remove them right before we place them on the jars.

4. Wipe the Jar Rims

After you’ve packed your food into the jars, you’ll want to wipe the jar rims with a clean, damp towel to remove any food that may have dropped there. This will help make sure your jars seal well.

5. Place Hot Canned Items on a Towel After Removing Them

After you’ve finished water bath canning your items, you’ll want to place the hot jars on a towel. The towel both helps protect your counter top from any damage from the hot jars and also helps protect the jars from breaking because of a shock of cold from the counter top.

6. Screw on Rings Tightly- But Then Back a Bit

During the canning process, it is necessary for air to escape the jar. With this in mind, you’ll want to screw the rings around the jar tightly and then back just a bit so that it’s not too tight. This makes sure your food is secured inside, but air is still able to safely escape.

7. Wait for the Seal

After you remove your jars from a water bath, you may hear them start to pop loudly. This pop is the seal forming completely as the lid is sucked down to curve downward. After the cooling process has been completed during pressure canning, all jars should have the downward lid. You can test the seal of a jar by pressing down in the middle. If it goes down, it is not properly sealed. If the lid doesn’t move and is already pushed down, the seal is there. Never push the lid down to be downward and believe that the seal is good. If the jar does not have a seal, you should refrigerate it and use it quickly; it is not shelf stable.

8. Get Your Necessary Tools

There are definitely some tools that you will want for your canning process. These are the tools I recommend you add to your supplies (in addition to the canners of course!)

• Jar Lifter: This helps you to lift out the hot jars from a water bath canner without burning your fingers.
• Canning Lid Wand: This nifty tool allows you to grab the lids from the warm water just before you place them on the jars.
• Funnel: A good funnel helps to make sure you get all of the food into the jars easily without making any mess.

You’ll also need the staple supplies:

• Jars- Wide Mouth and/or Regular Mouth: Our favorite overall is wide mouth. They’re easier to pack and remove from the jar. Regular mouth works just fine, though, if that’s what you have. We prefer to use wide mouth for most of our vegetables, and we use regular mouth for our maple syrup, jams, and jellies.
• Canning Lids and Rings: I always try to buy Ball or Kerr, as I’ve sometimes had bad luck with off-brands creating a good seal.

Final Thoughts

There is great pride that comes from opening up a jar of green beans to serve your family. It is a special joy to eat strawberry jam in the middle of winter from strawberries you picked in the warmth of summer. Preserving food is an opportunity for you to provide for family, using your own two hands, and to build a connection between farm and table. It’s a lot of work to put up your own food for winter, but it truly is so worth it to know what exactly went into the jar that is going into your family’s bellies.

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