Whether it’s Y2K worries or just planning for the winter,
more people have returned to
the art of home canning this summer. But University of Georgia
experts urge canners to
take great care before pulling out the Mason jars.

“People don’t realize that when home canning equipment
sits in storage for years,
it needs to be inspected before it’s used again,” said
Elizabeth Andress, an
Extension Service food safety specialist with the UGA College
of Family and Consumer
Sciences. “Rubber gaskets can become dry and brittle, and
pressure gauges can lose
their accuracy.”

Check Equipment
Thoroughly

Andress said water continually dripping from under the
pressure canner lid, for
instance, is a sure sign of a faulty gasket.

Three U.S. companies make pressure canners for the home and
offer replacement canner
parts. Be sure you replace parts not in working order.

If you haven’t had the accuracy of your canner’s pressure
gauge tested, call your
county extension office.

“Many county extension offices have workshops for
checking gauge accuracy,”
Andress said. “If they haven’t set up a workshop, your
county agent can usually get
the testing equipment in a matter of days.” Hardware
stores and farm supply stores
also sometimes offer to check gauges, she said.

Whatever you do, don’t just plunge into canning.

“Inspect your equipment,” Andress said. “Get
your clean jars and new
lids ready. Make sure you have all the ingredients you need
for
a recipe. And then select
your fresh food. You’d hate to have a bushel of ripe peaches
ready to can and then
discover your canner isn’t working.”

Select the Proper
Foods

Getting your equipment in order is just half the canning
battle. Selecting the proper
foods is vital.

“Foods used for canning should always be high
quality,” Andress said.
“It’s not wise to can food that’s overripe or starting to
decay. People tend to eat
the good-looking peaches and can the ones that were on the
ground. That’s not the best
thing to do.”

Andress said using low-quality foods not only results in
low-quality canned foods, it
can produce unsafe foods. “If you use food that was too
ripe and near spoiling, you
may create a contamination problem,” she said.

County agents often hear, “How long do I can this or
that?” What concerns
Andress most about questions like that is that some foods
should never be canned.

The Peril of Not
Knowing

“If you don’t have tested canning directions so you
know how long to can a food
item and you don’t heat it long enough or hot enough, you
could
be cooking up food safety
trouble,” she said.

“It’s not as big an issue in high-acid foods like fruit
jams, jellies and
pickles,” she said. “But it’s a very big issue with
low-acid foods. Mixing
low-acid foods like meat and vegetables can result in botulism
if not canned
properly.”

You can’t always can any mixture you come up with.

“We can’t recommend canning procedures for foods like
Brunswick Stew and beef
stew, because these food blends haven’t been researched for
home canning,” Andress
said.

‘So Easy to
Preserve’

“The canning time has to be long enough to kill any
harmful bacteria, and we don’t
know the proper times for some foods,” she said. “It
would be extremely
dangerous to guess for these low-acid foods. So we can’t make
recommendations.”

Older recommendations have changed as scientists have
learned more about food safety
and spoilage. “Always use up-to-date, tested
information,” she said. “And
be very careful about adding creativity to many types of
foods.
Your family’s health is
much too important to take chances in canning.”

Your county
Extension Service office
has several fact sheets on canning. You can also order an
excellent manual, “So
Easy to Preserve,” through your county extension
office. Or check out the FACS Food
Safety and Preservation
section.