Canning Question

[dooleysm]

I started to post this in Jim's garden thread, but didn't want to hijack that thread so here goes...

Like Jim mentioned, we like to eat our small potatoes with green beans as well. We decided to try to save a step and can some potatoes and onions with green beans last night. It did not work well. Anyone ever try this? We had no luck though. We did 3 cans of the potato/onion/bean mixture along with 4 cans of just beans. The plain beans worked fine, but in the other cans over half the water either boiled off or was absorbed by the potatoes and the lids did not seal.

We've never canned potatoes before so we're not sure if they're any different. My grandma used to can potatoes, but she past on almost 2 years ago, so we another reason to miss her. Anyone ever do this or have any thoughts or suggestions?

 

[Bird]

I don't guess we ever tried canning the potatoes and beans together; always canned them separately, then combined a can (actually jars) of each when we heated them to eat. When I was a kid, I remember sitting all day under a shade tree with a washtub full of little new potatoes and water, scraping the skins off the potatoes for mother to can. In later life, my wife and I found that it's much easier to just thoroughly wash the potatoes and can them with the skins on. Then later when you open the jar, it's very easy to remove the skins at that time and we avoided the slow hard work of scraping them.

 

[dooleysm]

Do you do anything different when canning potatoes vs. green beans? Like cook them longer/shorter, more/less pressure, pre-cook potatoes?

I'm completely stumped as to what happened to all the water that was in the potato/green bean jars.

 

[jimg]

The manual I got w/ my canning cooker gives guidance on times, things to do and not to do, etc. You should consult that for your cooker. I suspect though you might also get some good infos from your county agent...theyll have pubs for this sort of thing. Another good source would be websites mfg website for the various canning cookers and perhaps jar makers too.

Ive never tryed canning mix vegs ever and, in the case of potatoes, keep them in the cellar until wanted. It seems cooking times for beans and potatoes would be too dissimilar to turn out right to just dump them all in a jar together and maybe also the potatoes would get sort of water logged and nasty over time. I think you may have to experiment some to get it right.

 

[dooleysm]

We definitely got it wrong this time, that's for sure!

I was hoping someone on TBN had done this before, surely I'm not the only person that liked potatoes and onions with his green beans and had the idea to can them all together.

 

[jimg]

Youre certainly not the only one who likes that combo b/c I prefer it. Just never thought to do it all together. Guess thats b/c Ive had canned whole potatoes once or twice and they were very unappealing in flavor/texture. I guess youre not the only one who has trouble getting the 'recipe' just right. The only way Ive ever deviated from the norm is canning in chicken broath rather than plan water.

 

[Bird]

Do you do anything different when canning potatoes vs. green beans? Like cook them longer/shorter, more/less pressure, pre-cook potatoes?

I'm completely stumped as to what happened to all the water that was in the potato/green bean jars.

I think the canned potatoes are my favorite kind of potato; in the green beans, with a white sauce, sliced and fried; just the best flavor and texture to suit me no matter what the final preparation for eating.

As jimg said, you should probably consult the manual with your pressure cooker. In our case, we have a Mirro pressure cooker and my wife says she just used their instructions, even when she was using the much bigger antique pressure cooker we got from my mother. So . . .

Green beans, 20 minutes for pints, 25 for quarts at 10 psi.

Potatoes, 35 minutes for pints, 40 for quarts at 10 psi.

Now the manual recommends boiling the beans first for 5 minutes OR pack raw in jars and cover with boiling water (which is what we did).

And it recommends boiling cubed potatoes 2 minutes, whole ones 10 minutes, drain, pack, and cover with boiling water. We did NOT boil ours first, but did cover with the boiling water.

And for either one, leave a 1" head space, and of course we added salt before sealing the lids and processing.

 

[shaley]

I just happened to see this over on the NC State site.
"Thoroughly wash fruits and vegetables before canning even if they will be peeled. Garden soil contains bacteria. NOTE: Potatoes must be peeled before canning. Potato skins contain a high bacteria count increasing the chance of botulinum toxin formation during storage"
I don't know if this is true or not.
Canning

 

[Bird]

NOTE: Potatoes must be peeled before canning. Potato skins contain a high bacteria count increasing the chance of botulinum toxin formation during storage"
I don't know if this is true or not.

I don't know if it's true or not either, but we sure canned a bunch without peeling them, I ate'em all and enjoyed'em all, and never got sick. Maybe I was just lucky. Of course they were very thoroughly washed before canning.

 

[dooleysm]

We ate half of the ones that didn't seal last night. They were delicious. I'm definitely going to try again, although I'm still not sure what caused the loss of water in the jars.

When you all pressure can, how much water do you put in the canner, relative to the height of the jars? Do you cover the jars with water? My wife has always filled to the top of that outer lip on the jar when pressure canning or just boiling in hot water. I've seen elsewhere to cover the jars, which makes more sense to me, but she swears that the water will leak into the jars and mess with the seal. No matter how many times I turn a water bottle upside down as proof that you can easily get a water tight seal by hand tightening, she won't believe me.

 

[Bird]

Never heard of anyone covering the jars with water. Even your wife is using more water than we ever did. We put just enough water to get about half way up the sides of the jars. We didn't have many jars fail to seal, but when we did, we just put those in the refrigerator (after they cooled good, of course) and used them first. Sounds like you did about the same thing.

 

[jimg]

In my experience its a combination of trapped air and lack of head space. Not sure what each contributes and this is just a seat of the pants guess. However, your cooker manual should discuss all this.

When I can beans the recipe calles for and inch or 2 of head space...cant recall exactly how much. It also says a wooden spoon should be worked gently around the inside of the jar (once its packed) to bring trapped air to the top. Not sure but I also think head space depends too on what youre canning. As I said though your cooker book should talk about all this...its a good read for sure.

 

[mjfox6]

My pressure canner has a line about 3 inches from the bottom of the canner for filling the water. It is very hard to see.

The lids are supposed to expand during the canning process to exhaust the excess air as it expands, that is why the lids snap down and seal when they are cooling and the air contracts. That is also why you are only supposed to tighten the bands "finger tip tight."