Hi all,
I would like to get into canning but I'm a little bit scared of poisoning myself or alternatively blowing up the house. I would mainly make jam & pickles and preserve fruit and tomatoes, so if I stick to only those, would a waterbath be sufficient?
The reason I ask now is that I've seen a second hand electric water bath for sale for a really good price, it's a whole kit including a dozen pint size ball mason jars and lots of other equipment for AU$80. The ad says 'used once'. I like the electric option because I can put it outside and not heat the house.
Cheers
Yes, absolutely. With a couple exceptions all fruit is high acid so safe to waterbath can. Tomatoes as well, though because some low acid varieties exist, here in the US safe canning guidelines recommend adding some acid (typically people use powdered citric acid, as it’s very flavor neutral compared to lemon juice or vinegar) to ensure pH is fully below the threshold.
In general, fruit (as long as it’s a high acid fruit) you can really be inventive with canning and be completely safe. You don’t have to stick to established recipes. Zero sugar, lower sugar, a certain amount of spices, a bit of alcohol, etc.
NWEdible.com is a good resource for learning about safe canning practices. Another good one is here:
http://nchfp.uga.edu/ Note that the official US safety guidelines are probably the strictest official canning guidelines of any country. There are approved recipes in Europe and elsewhere that aren’t considered safe here, so YMMV.
If Canning for A New Generation is available there, that’s a fun book that gives you some very different recipes compared to the ones you’ll see on Ball’s website or the NCHFP linked above. NWEdible also has some very cool stuff, Erica is a very inventive canner.
@deborah does a lot of canning, maybe she can chime in for an Aussie perspective.
Don’t be scared of pressure canning if you get hooked on canning, but it’s best to learn waterbath canning first anyways :) Please ask away with any follow up questions!