No blog of mine would be complete without at least one Top 10 list. This year we celebrated the 4th of July with a three-day weekend filled with family, friends and the season’s first berry picking extravaganza, so I decided it was time I share some of my hard-earned canning/preserving wisdom. I was reminded as I canned this season’s first round of jam of all the tips/tricks and do’s and do not’s and decided to share them with you here. I present Farmgirl Chic’s Top 10 Tips for Successful Home Canning/Preserving:
10. Start with a jams and jellies. They are so easy and super hard to mess up and trust me, you will mess up.
9. Canning/Preserving is not something you squeeze into a busy day. You need at least 3 hours. Maybe more if you are making salsa. Words to live by: If you have to be somewhere in the morning; 8 PM is too late to start canning something.
8. Use only trusted and reliable canning recipes. Just because great-aunt Bertha’s magic relish hasn’t killed anyone yet doesn’t mean that it won’t. Try the Ball Book and/or website for some great recipes.
7. Sterilizing jars in the dishwasher: Good Idea. Canning in the dishwasher: Bad Idea. Also canning in the oven is not the right choice and neither is flipping the jars upside down after filling them with hot liquid in the hopes that they seal. A Boiling Water Bath Canner (BWB) or Pressure Cooker are the only right choices (see photos below to see the BWB I use)
6. Never stop stirring the jelly while it is cooking. EVER. Unless you have a hankering to spend an entire afternoon scraping hot and sticky jelly from your stove-top, just take my word for it.
5. Pepper burn is a real thing. When working with hot peppers wear gloves. Don’t pretend that you are tougher than the pepper. You are not. Take it from someone who spent an entire afternoon with her hand in a bowl of milk to make the burning stop. As a side note, wash your hands before you touch your eyes even if you wear gloves.
4. Don’t reuse the lids. They are for one use only and they are dirt cheap. I am a person who sees botulism around every corner so I want to make sure that I have done all I can to keep my preserves fresh and safe and using new lids each time is part of that process.
3. Don’t try to “jazz” up the recipes when you start out, especially if using the BWB method. Acidity percentages are very important in this process. This is my 3rd season making my own preserves and I still feel like I can’t doctor the recipes.
2. Canning should be done when fruit and veggies are at the peak of freshness. When you can’t decide if they are sprouting mold or just have natural fuzz, you have missed the window. Go ahead and throw them away.
1. Canning sounds mystical and overwhelming, but in truth it is fun and nothing is cooler than providing your family and friends with delicious homemade goodies that allow you to enjoy the tastes of summer all year-long.
Below I have attached pictures of the process as it looks in our house. Happy Fourth of July Everyone!!
We're Jamming, Jamming, Jamming. I hope you like Jamming Too...
The Sterile Field
Squishing the washed and stemmed berries
Just Keep Stirring, Stirring, Stirring
Checking For Sheeting (which means I can finally stop stirring)
Boiling Water Bather in Action
The finished project. Yum!!!
Adventures in Farmgirl Chic 
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