I just read this article by Marisa from Food in Jars, which is a quick rundown on some canning techniques which are considered unsafe, and I thought that it was important enough that I should do my own version of it since I've seen these techniques and more used by friends and family. And of course because it is that time of year again and lots of people are hauling out their canners. I will not go into the full details of the techniques which are considered safe, so please do not treat this as any sort of "How To". In fact, one thing I always say to people over and over again, is that if you have never read a good modern book on home canning, you should absolutely not be doing it! And like Marisa says in the article I linked to, I also tell people that you should never, ever, ever learn home canning from a previous generation, because they almost certainly use techniques which are no longer considered safe today. Do not get me wrong - I love my mom, rest her soul, but I would never can anything the way she did. Same goes for my wife's grandmother - the dear sweet woman that she is.

What is Safe?

First let us take a look at what is considered safe. Basically, 2 techniques - one is called "boiling water canning", and the other "pressure canning".

Boiling Water Canning

With this technique, you have a large pot that is a fair bit taller than the tallest jars you want to use. You fill the jars with your preserves, put them into the pot, and then fill the pot with water so that the jars are submersed with at least an inch of water over the top of them. Then you boil - or "process" in the vernacular - the whole thing for a given period of time as specified in your recipe, and according to the size of jars you are using - larger jars requiring more processing.

This method is only suitable for high acid (low pH) foods. The reason is that one of the key nasties in home canning is botulism, and while the live bacterium is killed by boiling water, the spores are not. But high acid (low pH) does denature the spores such that they are not a risk.

Pressure Canning

With this method you fill your jars with the preserves, then put them into a pressure canner. A pressure canner is basically the same thing as a pressure cooker except that it is typically larger, and has a pressure guage on the lid so that you know exactly what the pressure is inside. The books I've read say that if you do not have a guage, you should not use it for canning. Unlike the boiling water method, you do not need to cover the jars with water because it is the pressure that is doing the work for you. So typically you put in enough water so that it will not boil dry while processing - typically an inch below the lids of the jars. With a tall enough pressure canner you can even put a trivet on top of the bottom layer, and stack more jars on top.

Then you turn on the heat, and once it starts streaming steam out the top you time 7 minutes before affixing the "pet cock". Once affixed, the canner will come up to pressure - either 5, 10 or 15 psi according to your recipe. Once at pressure, you start timing. Once done, you allow to come completely down to room temperature before opening.

This method is safe for all foods - even those which are high pH (low acid) because the high pressure denatures the botulism spores, as well as the bacterium itself. However, you may not want to use it for high acid foods because the high pressure can create a texture in the finished goods which is not as appealing. I personally use pressure canning for all my preserves just because I find it easier to always use the same technique.

Often when I am brewing I save a few jars of wort for use in making yeast starters for future batches. Some folks save it in the freezer, but I prefer canning it since I can then just store it indefinitely on the shelf. Technically speaking, beer wort is not a low enough pH to reliably can it with a boiling water canner, so you have to use a pressure canner.

Guerrilla Canning is the term I use for when I want to can something, but cannot find a recipe for it. I've done a lot of reading on canning in the 15 years I've been doing it, and one thing you read over and over again is to only use proven recipes that come from reliable sources. Which works great for a very wide range of foods - just about everything anyone will ever want to do, they will find a recipe for online. But by my nature, I like to push the limits a bit, and like to do things that are out of the ordinary. So I've found a number of different things I really wanted to can up, but could not find a recipe for. In these two videos I am doing up some organic brown rice - I like to have a large stock pile of it for lunches at work. Just open a jar, toss it in the microwave for 3 minutes, and fluff it out onto a plate. It is absolutely fantastic!

I also do meat pie filling this way, so I can just open a jar and put it into a pie shell. Also pea soup in-the-jar, and also an east indian lentils and rice recipe - the latter two of which I put the raw ingredients into the jar and cook it in the canner, much like the rice in this video.

I want to be very clear that most experts in canning would probably consider what I am doing to be unsafe, so it is not at all something I can recommend to others. But I am firmly of the belief that a lot of modern canning books are written half by the experts, and half by the lawyers. And that someone like me needs to push the limits so that one day there will be "known-safe" recipes of these sort out there for people to use. I do not recommend you try this unless you've done a lot of reading on canning, and really understand the ins and outs.

We had our pickle party on Sunday, and it was a huge success! There were 7 or 8 different people making pickles and sauerkraut, I had the smoker and grill running all day, and another friend made a huge scoff of Sausages and Sauerkraut that was eagerly gobbled up as well. In this picture you can see a bucket of cabbage that has "the pickle up" as my wife's grandfather taught me - after a good deal of stomping, the cabbage juice comes out. You have to stop until you have enough juice to cover the cabbage.

We started off in the side yard sitting around a makeshift table, cutting our cabbage and cleaning our cucumbers. Some people chose to chop their cabbage coursely and quickly, while others chose to do their fine and with a great amount of detail and attention. We started out the evening using a big (full) juice can as a stomper, but I quickly realised that this was far from ideal, so I grabbed the chainsaw and a piece of applewood that I'd had set aside for making a stomper, and cut away until I had something workable, with a built-in handle. In the end, everyone was able to use this to stomp-up enough of a pickle to submerge their kraut.

I spent yesterday processing and canning 40lbs of roma tomatoes, and decided to make a video while I was at it. The tomatoes cost me $30, and I got 31 x 500ml jars.

Here is a two-part video I did on rendering fat. Fat gets a bad rep, but the fact is that our bodies need a certain amount of it because some nutrients are fat-soluble and not water soluble. And animal fat is not necessarily unhealthy if used in moderation, and if you are getting lots of exercise like I do.

In this video I render fat from pork chops with fat from my home made bacon, so as to give the fat a bacon flavour. This fat can be canned in mason jars for long term storage, and has all sorts of uses in applications where you want to add a bacon flavour to something. And who doesn't want everything to taste like bacon?

My wife and I were just discussing our plans for this year, so here they are so far. Of course we've done a number of things so far, but the cheap stuff is just about to start now at the market, so we have to set our priorities to get things kicked into high gear! If you are doing this yourself, don't forget the golden rule : only can what you will eat!

This year promises to be our biggest year yet, probably by a longshot. And the number one thing on our list is of course tomatoes - both just canned up on their own, and also done up into both pasta/pizza sauce, and salsa. We still have not gone back to review our notes from last year to estimate how much we'll need, but I'm sure it is going to be 7 or 8 bushels at least.

OK, we've set the date. Stay tuned to this article for updates. For anyone in Ottawa interested, on the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend we'll be hosting a party where we show you how to make fermented ("kosher") dill pickles, and sauerkraut, probably starting at 14:00

Right now is the first weekend at the Parkdale Market where they have the pickling cukes. You are best off to order yours ahead of time and if possible pick them up first thing on the Saturday morning and store them in your fridge til Sunday, or a cooler with a bag of ice, since very few of the market vendors get deliveries on Sunday. You need to order #1 (number 1) Cukes. Call these guys to order : Claude Roy & Denis Roy : 613-323-4538. 1/2 bushel is about 30 lbs, and makes about 20 litres of dills. This amount takes 2 people about 90 minutes to prepare.

Cabbage is not such a big deal - can just pick it up on the Sunday at the market. It is currently $1.50 per head with the people I usually get it from. Per huge cabbage you get about 5 litres of kraut, and need 1/4 cup salt.

Last year I wrote about root cellaring carrots. Now here is a video on both dehydrating and canning them. Both are really easy to do. These particular carrots took me longer than normal to process because they are young, sweet carrots, which are pretty small. But I enjoy it, so no big deal.

My dehydrator is the Nesco unit that I bought from the Costco website. It has temperature control, which is really important in a dehydrator. I'm very happy with it so far.

We got our first CSA basket this week, and as always early in the season it was a fairly small one.

• 398g beet greens
• 456g garlic scapes
• 400g bok choy
• 202g radish

So I figured I'd try an experiment with the garlic scapes, and can them up! Last year what I did with them was puree them in a food processor with a fair bit of oil, and then store the moosh in a jar in the fridge to use sort of as a flavoured oil for frying in a fry pan, or in place of garlic or onions in just about any recipes. This year I decided to can it up so that it would last longer on the shelf, and take up less room in the fridge.