Don’t Let Canning Become a Recipe for Disaster

August 11, 2005

Don’t Let Canning Become a Recipe for Disaster

Your garden is producing a bumper crop this year, so you’d like to pickle or can some of that bounty.

Don’t let your experience become a recipe for disaster.

The first step is to use a recipe the U.S. Department of Agriculture has tested and approved, recommends Julie Garden-Robinson, a food and nutrition specialist with the North Dakota State University Extension Service.

A lot of recipes are available on the Web, in old cookbooks and from friends and family.

“The trouble is that most of those recipes haven’t been tested for safety,” Garden-Robinson says.

Home-canning vegetables improperly can lead to the growth of bacteria that may cause botulism, a potentially deadly form of foodborne illness.

Listeria is a particularly bad type of bacteria. It can be found in raw vegetables, milk and meat, soft-ripened cheese, poultry and fermented raw-meat sausage. It grows at refrigerator temperatures and can survive in acidic conditions.

“Heat kills Listeria, so proper canning will inactivate this type of bacteria,” Garden-Robinson says. “However, Listeria, could survive and grow in unprocessed refrigerator pickles without the proper level of vinegar.”

Most bacteria are hard to remove from food surfaces, according to experts at the National Center for Home Food Preservation. They say that washing fresh food reduces bacteria levels only slightly, but that peeling root crops, underground stem crops and tomatoes cuts bacteria numbers significantly. Blanching vegetables also helps, but the best bacteria control is using proper canning methods, they say.

That’s why following canning or pickling recipes exactly is vital, Garden-Robinson says.

“Canning is a science, while cooking is an art,” she adds. “There’s not a lot of room for creativity when canning. Altering ingredients and proportions can result in a deadly mixture. Pressure canning is essential when canning vegetables.”

Here is some more advice from the experts:

Select fresh, firm fruit or vegetables that are free of damage.
Measure or weigh ingredients carefully.
Use canning or pickling salt because other salt may make the pickling brine cloudy.
Use white distilled or cider vinegar with 5 percent (50 grain) acidity.
Process canned products in a pressure canner or boiling-water canner, depending on the acidity of the food. Foods with enough acid can block bacteria’s growth and destroy bacteria more rapidly when heated.
Use standard canning jars and self-sealing lids.
Store home-canned products in a cool, dark place.
For best quality, use the products within two years.

For more information on safe home canning, check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation’s Web site at www.uga.edu/nchfp/index.html or the NDSU Extension Service Web site at www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/food.htm.

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Source: Julie Garden-Robinson, (701) 231-7187, jgardenr@ndsuext.nodak.edu
Editor: Ellen Crawford, (701) 231-5391, ecrawfor@ndsuext.nodak.edu

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