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Canning season is right around the corner and this post will explain exactly how to get ready for my favorite time of year. These steps will help you be ready for canning season and all the bounty it brings. There’s nothing worse than coming into a bargain quantity of produce and not having what you need to preserve it. Let’s get ready!  

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Why in the world do you need to worry about getting ready right now? As you learn more about canning you will see that lots of canning happen in an unplanned fashion. Once you have the equipment and a general idea of how it works, you will likely happen upon a quantity of products that you want to can up right away. Produce should be canned when it is at its peak, and you don’t typically have time to waste. Furthermore, I have found that once friends and acquaintances find out that you are a budding canner, they will surely offer up free or cheap quantities of berries or peppers and because you will have read this post, you will be ready to preserve them. This post will detail exactly how you can get ready now and you’ll be ready to go whenever preserving opportunity knocks.

Want the quick version of this post? Download your 1 page canning season prep checklist here!

1. Look in your pantry. Check out your shelves and think about what you cooked all year long. What did you run out of (home canned or not) that you wished you hadn’t? What staples do you go to on busy nights or for fun meals with friends? In my home, I doubt I will ever be able to can enough tomato sauce. Pasta is a kid and husband pleaser, the tomato sauce I make counts as a vegetable when I’m too rushed to fix a green one, and it is supremely versatile. I can over a hundred pounds of tomatoes every year and run out by early summer (100 pounds isn’t THAT much- it is several flats. Don’t be too impressed. Tomatoes are heavy).
2. Make a wish list. Think about the recipes you would like to try, the fruit or veggies you wished you had canned but never got your hands on, or the thing your loved one would truly appreciate to be given. Flip through a canning book or the Start Canning section of this site for inspiration.
3. Think about seasons. You may have to use a canning cookbook or the google machine for this part but consider what time of year you are reading this and what fruit and vegetable will be ripening in your area. Many canning cookbooks are arranged by season for this very reason. I might be excited to can apple juice this year, but I need to know that there is a while to wait since apples aren’t ripe in my area until October. Very generally speaking you can expect these few example items to be ripe in the following seasons:

Spring: Strawberries – Asparagus

Summer: Berries – cucumbers- peppers- tomatoes

Fall: Apples- Pears

Winter: Citrus

4. Take stock of your equipment. I wrote a super thorough post about the equipment you need to start canning here, and you should absolutely read that one next if you haven’t already. You might need to get some teeny jam jars if you plan on making special jam to give at a bridal shower, or some quarts if you want to make a glut of apples into juice, for example.

5. Buy your non-perishable grocery items.

Because I’m pretty much perpetually canning or making shrubs, I go through a lot of these items and purchase them in large quantities. You need to have on hand the following items:

Store bought lemon juice. Store bought lemon juice is actually very important because when you buy your lemon juice from the store, it is sold at a standard acidity- probably 5% or more. I explain the importance of acid & canning in this post here but the main thing you need to know is if a recipe calls for lemon juice it is probably to bring the acid of a recipe up (and the pH down below 4.6) and a plain old lemon that you squeeze yourself might not be acidic enough to do so. If the recipe you want to try calls for a “squeeze of lemon” or “zest of a lemon” then they mean you can use a whole lemon as the source. If it calls for a specific measurement of juice, use bottled.  

Vinegar. Buy vinegar that is of better quality than the cheap while you might use to wash windows or descale a faucet. If the recipe calls for a specific acid level, get it. If you are not sure what recipes you will be trying exactly or you are just getting started, buy a gallon of white vinegar that is advertised as “delicious” or some other food-specific descriptor and a bottle of apple cider vinegar (useful in shrubs and lots of other applications). I find the stringent tasting, good for cleaning vinegar on the bottom shelf of the supermarket and it usually has a plain label. It isn’t like the bottom shelf variety will harm you or your pickles, it is just the better the quality, the better the end product will likely taste. You want your cucumbers to taste pickled, not like vinegar.

Sugar. Buy a quantity that you can comfortably store and bear in mind making jam, syrup, jelly, etc takes a large quantity and most times, cutting back on the sugar in the recipe is a no-no. Sugar is a powerful preservative and as such, it is pretty darn important that you follow the recipe. Once I get my large sack home, I usually dispense it into half gallon mason jars and screw the lids on tightly because I have ants. You also can store it in the freezer to avoid pests. I buy white, plain old granulated sugar. Some recipes call for brown but if you are short on space, get just white. You don’t want powdered, confectioner’s sugar.

Salt. Pickling salt is labeled as such because it lacks the additive that will make your pickle juice cloudy. I wrote a blog post about the differences between pickling salt and regular salt here!  That post will help you decide if you need to pickling salt or not. If you are the kind of person that frets about cloudy pickle juice you might be comforted by purchasing pickling salt. I just use the regular Morton (or whatever is on sale) iodized salt because I don’t care about cloudiness and my jars usually have a mineral-y, hazy film on the exterior because I often forget to pour a glug of white vinegar into the canning pot which would prevent the lime in my hard water from clinging to the jars. I don’t actually make many batches of pickles per year, so I haven’t found that more than a couple of the cylindrical containers of salt to be more than I need. Also, note that a recipe might refer to the salt + ingredients as “brine.” That just means salt+water+whatever else liquid and it will likely be combined, boiled, and then poured over the vegetables.

Citric acid. Here’s another store-bought item that you readers might be surprised to see my list. I’m all about homemade but this is another purchase made for safety sake. I discuss acid & canning at length here but citric acid is a way to bring the acid level of tomatoes in particular (and some other veggie recipes) to a safer level. It is preferable to lemon juice because it is flavorless. It is a white powder and you usually need about a teaspoon per pint jar. I have never gone through more than one container in a season.

Canning Lids. You need NEW lids to can with. Use those used lids for cute projects like this one here and for storing dry goods. Buy the size (regular or wide mouth are the ONLY sizes there are; hallelujah!) that matches the jars you have. I usually buy a lot- 5 or more boxes of each size- when I see them at a good price, but I can pretty steadily from about June to October. I’d say start with 2 boxes of each size if you haven’t acquired jars yet. That will be enough to get going. Get the complete canning equipment list here. You’ll be surprised to find that you already own most of this stuff already!

If you are a person who prefers video, I recorded a video showing you all the best tools you’d need as a beginner on my YouTube channel. Watch it here!

That is it, Wildflowers! By following the list, you will gather what you need and will be ready whenever you happen to have the time + produce to can.

Click to print your canning season prep checklist and planner here!

Ready to take the next step? Want to learn how to can delicious, healthy foods you can give to friends & family? The canning course for busy beginners, Start Canning is accepting students! Learn STEP BY STEP in premium video lessons here! 

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Many canning recipes call for pickling salt, and curious canners want to know: Do you need to use pickling salt? I’ll explain what pickling salt is, when you should use it, when it is okay to skip, and you’ll want to dive into canning immediately because salt is salt, Wildflowers.

Pickling salt is regular salt that has NO anti-caking agent nor any iodine. Salt that you and I buy typically has a few additives in it that make for a cloudy brine.

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The word “additive” has a negative connotation and it shouldn’t because not all additives are bad. An additive simply means it is added. Without those additives, the salt in my Morton container would be rock hard. This post aims to clarify the role of these additives when they are in the pickling process.

Do You Need to Use Pickling Salt?

Watch the YouTube version of this post below if you prefer.

Pickling salt is officially recommended by the USDA because by having a clear brine, a canner can see what their pickles look like. I’ll be the first to admit that cosmetics aren’t a priority to me in my canning pursuits (I rarely strain my juice and I don’t remove seeds from my jam, for example) but cloudy brine isn’t problematic from a visual standpoint.

If you can’t SEE what’s going on inside your jar, you won’t be able to identify if perhaps you’ve forgotten an ingredient or if your jar hasn’t sealed and your pickles have spoiled. True, when you opened the jar, there are lots of clues (odor, texture, color, and more) that would tell you these things but a clear brine helps a canner see what’s going on in the jar. You might enjoy reading my post, What Happens When You Forget the Lemon Juice because I explore in depth some sealed jars absent of the acidifying ingredient. It’s not pretty, but it is really fascinating 🙂

I’ve said many times that one of the wonderful things about canning is that mason jars are clear- literally and metaphorically. You can SEE what is going on inside. So, if you choose to make Pickled Pearl Onions or Carrot Pickles for example and you use regular salt, you won’t really be able to see inside as well as if you used pickling salt.

How cloudy will your brine be? Well, if you don’t use pickling salt, it will vary based on the recipe but it won’t be dramatic. Pickling salt brine will be very clear (hello County Fair entries and Instagram photo ops) and regular salt  brine will be just a bit clouded, not completely opaque.

I confess that I rarely use pickling salt for my personal preserving. When I see pickling salt on sale, I buy it, but only when it is as cheap as regular salt. This is a personal choice based on the fact that I’m confident in my ability to discern if something has gone awry inside a jar (almost never) and that my jars almost always seal (truly…I can’t think of the last time I had one fail). I also don’t pickle as often as I jam or make tomato sauce or other sauces. This might be because I don’t have a garden (shocking, I know!) and don’t grow hoards of tiny pickling cucumbers but I DO have access to tons of wild berries and stone fruit on the family ranch, for free. Canning is a practice of penultimate practicality.

As you become more experienced, you might opt for regular salt in a pinch and preserve cloudy pickles but proceed at your own risk. Just like driving with a dirty windshield, it will be harder to see what’s on the other side of the glass.

Flaked salt (like sea salt) varies in density and flake size and shouldn’t be used for pickling. So, avoid using “fancy” salts for canning.

If you’d love to learn more about canning, I want to invite you to my FREE Canning Basics course where I teach beginners all about how to get started with this fun, practical way of cooking quickly in advance! Join me here!

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What Happens if You Forget the Lemon Juice? In many canning recipes, it is required that you add an acidifying ingredient like bottled lemon juice, citric acid, or vinegar. What happens if you forget? This post will explain. Spoiler alert: it ain’t pretty.

Canning works and is an effective means of food preservation because of several elements. One element is the inside of the jar is sufficiently acid. That is to say, it is too acidic for spoilers (bugs that would make us sick and decay our food) to grow.

This post contains affiliate links. 

The magic number on the acid scale that canners care about is 4.6. Any less acid, or higher a number, and the recipe is too alkaline, or not acid enough to be safely water bath or steam canned.

This is why green beans (an alkaline veggie) are preserved with acidic vinegar into the delicious Dilly Bean we all know and love today. Same with alkaline carrots- we make Carrot Pickles by acidifying them with vinegar.

You can print off the Acid & Canning Chart- for FREE- right here!

 

Because the vinegar in pickle recipes is so great in volume and makes the brine that the pickles are submerged in, it’s less likely that you’d forget that ingredient, but much more likely you might forget a little quarter cup of bottled lemon juice or the seemingly unnecessary teaspoon of citric acid.

At the end of the last canning season, I made a batch of roasted pineapple salsa from a trusted source. Pineapple is somewhat acid but varies significantly from fruit to fruit, and the recipe called for onions (not acid), garlic (also not acid- those tasty alliums never are), cilantro, and other veggies that make it necessary to add bottled lemon juice.

I’ll note here the importance of using BOTTLED LEMON JUICE as opposed to a romantically squeezed fresh lemon. A lemon you squeeze might be 5% acid, and it might not. The trusted canning recipe you are using is calling for bottled lemon juice because it needs that acid to bring the overall acid level up (and acid number down) to a safe level so spoilers can’t survive in the canning jar.

Also, note that plenty of trusted recipes call for fresh lemon juice. These recipes need the lemon juice for the flavor, not for the 5% acid.

Back to my roasted pineapple salsa. I made it, canned it, cleared my tiny countertops off and saw my new bottle of lemon juice sitting there, undisturbed. I hadn’t even opened it. I completely forgot all about the lemon juice, which was absolutely required for safe canning in this recipe.

The salsa that I had just prepared and canned was delicious and safe to eat if I put all the jars in the refrigerator (even though the lids all sealed) and ate it in about a week, just as I would any other leftovers. So, that’s what I did- we had tacos for 3 nights in a row and we ate most of it all up.

Except…I saved 2 jars, marked them well, and stuck them way up high on my pantry shelf, just for my Wildflower blog readers.

Fast forward 6 months, and I opened the jar. This is what happens when you forget the lemon juice.  

The Color:

Normal salsa (or any preserve, for that matter) retains much more color than that of this non-acidified salsa. It was indeed an ugly pale brown. All the ingredients were nearly the same color. The red bell peppers were still reddish…but everything else looked very unappetizing.

The Texture:

The spoilers had begun to act upon the food and started the decay process; the salsa was absolute mush. The peach, pineapple, and onion pieces were barely identifiable and were very easily smashed flat with very little pressure from a fork on a plate. True, canned salsa is always a little less crisp than fresh salsa, but this is completely different. This was nearly baby-food consistency with a little agitation.  

The Smell:

It didn’t smell like poison, but it definitely didn’t smell good. The odor was musty, stale, and old smelling. It didn’t smell like something you’d want to pour on top of your chips. However, it is important to point out, that it did NOT stink to the High Heavens. You might accidentally dump some on your plate if you weren’t aware.

The Disposal:

Because spoilers (germs that could make us sick, probably with diarrhea) are almost assuredly at work in this salsa, I took care to dispose of this salsa carefully. I threw the lid away, and I used bleach to clean the jar. The contents of the jar went into the garbage carefully- not where a kid or pet would accidentally have a snack. It is worth noting that while food poisoning is serious, it would likely not be lethal to anyone in my family as we have healthy immune systems. I don’t want anyone throwing up or having a tummy ache and God knows I have enough laundry already. If for some reason you uncover a jar of very old canned food (say, you’re cleaning out Grandma’s cellar) I’d dispose of the contents and clean the jars the same way.

The Takeaway:

I wrote this post to simply educate a curious reader – canner or not- what would happen if you were to forget the acidifying ingredient. I don’t advise doing this on purpose, and I hope to answer the question of what to do IF you do what I did: Eat it up, store in the fridge, and be more careful next time.

Learn MORE:

If you want to learn more, I have a FREE Canning Basics Course that I invite you to try- you’ll learn more about canning, how it works, and how it is most delicious salsa all year round 🙂 Sign up here!

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