Welcome back to the Sis Spell Podcast. It's that time. Come on up. Grab a chair.
Sis Spell. Welcome back to the Sis Spell Podcast where we laugh continually and unending and make ridiculous fools of ourselves. And this is probably the third take that we've tried to start this episode because Crystal got up and we all need to drum them in because she was moving all over the place. And she found out a new secret.
And she found out a new secret. Yeah. And she found out a secret and secret is don't make friends. So, um- Secret's not my friends, but you're not supposed to talk about this on podcast, Justin.
Well, it's a secret that I don't know about. So I can talk about that. So, anyhow. So today we are talking about gear.
So by gear, you know, just like some of the way I said gear, but what do we need supplies? You tend to equipment equipment. So we got to talk about what do we need? Because if we're going to do food preservation, we don't just, you know, take off and go.
So I'll kind of kick us off here. The favorite thing that I get typically every summer from somebody that is new wanting to do food preservation is I just bought this pressure cooker. How do I can it? You don't.
I mean, do you all get that question? All the time. Yes. All the time.
And so, you know, it's one of those things that the pressure cooker is definitely not for canning. It is for other uses. I don't know. Have you all been asked about instant pots yet?
Because I haven't, but I assume it's coming. Yes. I have not had a question, but I have seen lots of stuff on the Facebook about canning in your insipite and how it's so easy and convenient. Stresses me out folks stresses me out.
So obviously USDA does not recommend processing in a pressure cooker. So ladies, what do we actually need if we're going to do any food preservation? We're going to do pressure can, not pressure cook. I mean, what are we looking for?
So we're talking about pressure canning. Like we're not starting on water bath. If you want to. Correct.
So low acid foods. Low acid foods. Like what would y'all say is the most popular low acid food that you get questions about that we need to be pressure canning. Green beans.
That's a month. Green beans. Yeah. Okay.
So if you're going to can green beans, you're going to have to have a pressure canner, not a cooker pressure canner. There is a difference. There's a big difference. Yeah.
Presto is a main brand of that. And I think you need to decide how much are you going to be canning and how often because I know when we were putting our kits together for pressure canning, we got a regular size canner and then we realized, hey, we need a double canner that we can get our batch done all at once. So we went and got a double canner too. So just decide in what kind of amount you're going to be canning, depending on what size of pressure canner that you're going to get.
And then there's also two types. Right, sis? There are two types. So you have your dog age pressure canners and you have the weighted gauge.
And if you're like me growing up, we didn't call them a weighted. What do we call them? The rocker. We call them the jigglers.
We call them the rocker at our house. We have the jigglers or the dial gauges. But keep in mind that we do their pressure canners. It's a little bit of an investment.
So like Megan said, you really want to research and decide what you're going to be canning, what you're going to be using it for because you want to make the most of your purchase. Listen, my favorite memory growing up, I hate, listen, I think we talked about this in one of the previous episodes or off the air, but I hated gardening growing up because my parents always did what seemed like a 40 acre garden and like five miles of green beans and popping beans for the rest of your life. And I think you have to say every episode. Good.
I just want to make sure I think I'll be consistent and say I'll be consistent. But I'll never forget it because it was like clockwork. I'd fall asleep on the couch and that stupid rocker jiggler would go to bananas and mom would go somebody get up and turn it down on medium and it just sits there and does that you know for how long the process time is. I don't know if I'm going to drop my head and you're just like this is terrible in every way.
But now I think back about it. I'm like, oh, yeah, memories. We're not going to do that. I feel like a jiggler is the background music of my childhood.
My childhood summers. I feel like during the summer it was a constant noise. Yeah. Other people have summer mix types and the rest of us are like, yeah, we listened to the pressure caner go on summer long.
We listened to the pressure caner. But the thing about your weighted gauges, they're good. You're pretty solid with them. If you have that kind of jiggler or rocker.
But if you have a dial gauge, they need to be checked for accuracy because any kind of boats or anything, you know, they can kind of get out of whack. So they need to be checked for accuracy. And where can you do them check that? So you're at your local Extension office by appointment right now because of the company that you know.
And you also want to call your local Extension office because some of them may or may not have the actual equipment to test it. So just FYI, don't show up and be like, what's up? Let's test this. So myself, I did not grow up here.
I'm feeling a little cheated by childhood right now. I did not grow up here in that jiggler because I guess I was a tomboy. So I was out in the high field in the kitchen. I don't know what's worse.
Throw in higher here in the jiggler. That's like option double C on both of them. So I did not grow up with that experience of the jiggling going on. And maybe because I told the soup story before, I mean, you might not have pressure can any of you might have just wanted to have it all.
But because I'm not, I didn't have that experience, I am way more comfortable with the dial gauge because I can see like a number, like we know, if it says process it, 12 pounds of pressure, I can see the 12 pounds of pressure. So I think that if you're inexperienced, that's something to think about too, is you may want that dial gauge to legacy. Yeah. And see, I'm on the flipping to that Megan.
I much prefer the weight gauge. Maybe it's because of the soundtrack of my summer like crystal said, but I also feel like I don't have to come back and keep watching the gauge. You don't have to do it. You don't have to babysit it.
Yeah, I just want to start rocking. I turn it down a little bit and keep a good steady rock and we'll just keep rolling. Rock and roll. Oh, it was turned it down.
Yeah, folks on the number. I guess that's just a personal preference. Yes. Another thing that I think that folks need to think about is what are you know, we've said what are you going to be kidding if you're like, I want to do jelly and salsa.
That's the things I'm going to focus on. Can you need a pressure can? No, no, fairly. Yeah.
Water bath caners a lot cheaper than a pressure caner. If you're just going to be doing things like that, then you may not need a pressure caner. Yeah. Now, before we talk about the water bath, one of the other things that really interests me, I mean, I don't know that it's like a nerdy interest or anything, but just when we talk about the equipment or the gear, when we talk about that.
One of my favorite things, my first summer in extension, I started on, I graduated college on May 24th or 5th and then I started working in extension on June 1st and then on June 3rd, I went to 4-H camp. So that was like crash course in extension right there and I'm still here nearly 11 years later. And so with that, I come back and then it's food preservation season and I do nothing about that because I don't teach you that in college. They just, it wasn't a part of family studies.
And I go to Morgan County, Kentucky, because I worked in Kentucky for a couple of years and I'm with a lady who's worked for 25 years and this woman brings in her, I mean, it's an old pressure caner. I mean, it is old. It's like, like, screw down? No, it wasn't the screw down.
It's still twisted on. We have the screw down in our cannery and those are great. It was just old. You could tell it was old.
And the agent went to flip the lid and check the seal inside of the lid of the pressure canner to make sure the seal was good and not dry rot. And there was a snake skin that had dried to it because it had been in the attic and that agent threw the pressure canner lid and screamed and ran out of the building. It was the greatest thing ever. That's like one of my worst luck.
No. That makes me think when you see somebody coming in the office with a jar or a bag, I usually hit the door off the other end because I know it's going to be in that jar bag. Can y'all tell me what kind of snake this is? You remember when those guys brought that snake in and a reusable shopping bag?
Can I just tell you something about that? This is like a shopping bag. Yeah. So the moral of the story, Crystal, is you know, use the work in Morgan County, Tennessee and Morgan County, Tennessee, Morgan County, Kentucky, not a whole lot of different.
Same thing. Thank you. They're sneaky. They're sneaky.
I feel like this could lead into a whole other podcast series of what extension agents have seen or what? Snakes in an extension office featuring Samuel, him, Jackson. It's like a lifetime, the Ocho. You know, if there's like eight different ESPNs, it'd be on the eighth version of a lifetime.
That's where that would be at. But one of the big things out of that though is checking that seal because if you don't, if that rubber gasket's not good, then your whole process is kind of up a creek. I was just making it say I call it a gasket. Yeah, I want to leave me alone.
Oh my gosh. We're on the words again. You know, I get confused easily. Leave my semantics alone.
Let's get back to talking about gear. Yeah, let's talk about this year. What else do we need? So, so your gasket, you can replace them.
They're like five bucks. Yeah, they're cheap. Yeah, I mean, they're not much. These are your local hardware store co-op.
Yeah. Yeah, they're cheap. Yeah, I mean, they're not much. These are your local hardware store co-op.
Yeah. You can even order them online if you want to. If that's your way to go. A little bit harder to find though, because you guys make sure you got the part number correct.
If you go to local hardware store, then probably look at it and say, oh yeah, here it is. A little bit for you. So, is there anything else we need to cover about pressure canners? We talked about the gasket.
We talked about the valve gauge. We talked about the weighted gauge. We talked about it can't be a pressure cooker. Do we need to talk about the top of the surfaces that we can put them on such as?
Good, yes. Such as our cooktops. Hey, that's actually a really, really good point. Because how many of us have smoked up?
You guys have smoked up at home? I do. I do unfortunately. Unfortunately.
See mine, if you look at your manufacturers book with there, you can see and actually our stove went out back in the fall. Everything just burned up as I turned it off and it was annoying as I'll get out. I was just like, what the heck, man? Like literally, I turned the knobs and they started smoking when I turned them off.
Pop in a fire. And I was like, holy crap, the stove is done. And so we went and got a new one. And one of the things I looked at was, hey, can we can on this if we wanted.
So there are some that can and some that you cannot. Do you all remember the story that we learned? We teach Ken in college, but we also go through Ken in college to be trained. Do you all remember the story of the, and I don't know, I think it was in West Tennessee, the extension office that before that was a known that you can't pressure can on some of the glass tops and it was a brand new glass top stove and it shattered the shuttered it.
It shattered the top of it in the office because I'm pressure canning on it. Because there's different reasons why you can not possibly and that is one of them. It could shatter it. Another one is it hates kind of, it can hate and consistently.
Well, yeah, because you know, the old burners, they just slide on. And the new burners fluctuate to regulate temperature. But also if you move it around, you can scratch it. But even if you're a manufacturer, you know, if they say, hey, it's good to go, fire it up and can't all deal you want.
Green beans or, you know, pick your poison. No, don't pick your poison. This is about not having botulism. Don't pick your poison.
But you got to think all that weight on that glass top from your water, your jars, your produce. If you move that around too much, number one, you're probably going to get scratches that you can't get out. And then number two, you could, like we said, crack that glass and that that's no bueno, right? No bueno.
No bueno. You can, if you have a flat top, an alternative is you can invest in a hot plate, but I say hot plate. Not a traditional hot plate that is flat. That's why I was wondering.
Like you've got to make sure that you, you had too long of a pile of people were going to stop the podcast and run to Walmart and get a hot plate. Get a pile of hot plate. So you have to sneak into your dorm room. You're just getting the audio here, but I actually acted like I was running like everybody in the ROCency, but just making a Christmas.
Yeah. Yeah. And again, just like how you have to do your stove is you've got to look at the manufacturer, do some research to make sure that you get one and it's okay to pressure can on. That's one alternative if you have a flat top so we can't can on.
Yeah. And then if you did choose to do like a gas burner outside, you could do that, but you better have plenty of gas, right? Because if you're doing like a little, if you have a long process time, because you got to remember your process time doesn't start and we'll talk about this in further episode, but your process time doesn't start to jiggling or until you get up to pressure and you get that on your dial gauge or if you say like me, your rocker starts rocking. Not off your rocker, but your rocker starts rocking.
So that's when your process time starts and if you're water bath and it doesn't start until you come before bull. Yes, full bull. That's rolling bull. Rolling bull.
I'm glad nobody said oh she did it. I'm glad nobody said boy and then she did it. I know, but I don't typically. Not be you L.L.
for those of you, our friends from above the makes and dicks in line. We're going to do a whole episode one day on dialects and words of Marty decided. It's going to happen. It's coming.
I reckon it should. I was uncle you in the Christmas white church this past year and where's about Jim's room was my favorite line. Yeah. What was it we say?
Oh, I was talking about one of my exit lines was like granny's hog jowls cornbread and collard greens really twings my buds and I walk off laughing and there was somebody. What? And my. My.
My. You must have picked that up in Kentucky. No, it was in the street. I didn't have a lovely elder couple from.
Michigan asked me. They said, what is twang twang your buds mean? I said, you taste buds. Okay.
Anyway, so we talked about pressure. We talked about pressure canning. So now we kind of shift our focus to water bath canning, which most people are much more comfortable with because they've heard the horror stories of grandma's green beans exploding, the lid busting like a, you know, an explosion in the house and shooting green beans everywhere. All that good stuff.
Well, can I talk about my green beans story? No. So in a county college would have been. Or something happened in process and a green beans.
And so we know that if they don't seal and they're not processed correctly, that you've got 24 hours to reprocess. Right. Right. So that's what we were doing.
We were reprocessing the green beans. So there early before crowd came and I had been watching, you know, I just talked about how I like to watch that dog age. What's it was not moving? I'm like, what is wrong with this thing?
Like, why is it not something is wrong? Right? What is so something is wrong? Well, then after this is went on for a little while, just a little small boy said, from maybe when you dropped that gauge and the plastic, you just pop the plastic back on.
Well, what happened when I pop the plastic back on is I meant the arrow of the gauge. So it was stuck. So I took it off and I pulled the arrow out. It went all the way to the, I'm fixing the blow mode, like just right straight over.
So what's our pressure caner today? There is a safety valve. So it would not have blown up and put green beans all over the place. But yeah, you got to be careful with this.
I was actually about to say something very similar about how any more your new pressure caners won't blow through the ceiling. What they would typically do is lock down. And that's what happened in one of my classes. Well, actually, I'm not training.
We had pressure caner full of green beans and the lid lock down and they never could get it off. Dr. Barney, who y'all will meet eventually, actually took it back to UT, had engineers working on it. They had to throw the whole caner and everything in the garbage to never get the lid off.
A lot of them have that little rubber piece. It's just like it looks like a little black dot on the side and it'll blow out so that the pressure relieves. Yeah. There's a lot of safety measures.
It just lost that. Never could get it unlocked. Isn't that crazy? Yeah.
So that's why most people feel more comfortable doing the water bath because you have boiling water rolling bowl as opposed to, you know, taking mom on your stove. At least that's what people say. And then we all as extensionates say, whoa, whoa, whoa, take a breath. It's all right.
It's not going to happen unless you're in Crystal's class and then it will happen. It won't happen. It'll just lock down. Especially if you just want to get started in Canon, I definitely say start out with water bath and get your feet wet.
But what if I want to do green beans? Then start with a pressure caner. So, you know, everyone loves to make a jammer jelly because you can have very quick success with your first time. Caning something y'all know my jamming jelly tip, don't you?
Don't do it. I don't know. If you're making jam and jail, you better have hot biscuits for the leftovers that you can. Yes.
Oh, y'all. This made me think that's the best way to do the class is to have biscuits and then whatever jam is left that doesn't make a full jar have everybody share. I mean, it wins people. So good.
Research this peach sauce that we talked about in episode two. We did. The North Dakota peach. It is what we thought it was like you poured on ice cream and on desserts like that.
And then that also triggered another memory of mine of having a peach jam fail and it was liquid. And so technically I have made peach sauce because we didn't reprocess. We just use it to pour on ice cream when I changed it. So what do I need?
If I'm going to if I want to go upstairs right now after well, not right now when we're done with this. If I wanted to go upstairs and make some strawberry jam, what do I need? Just any old pot with any old lid? Whether it's not?
Well, I know I need strawberries. A big pot. So you could per se use a big pot and you could get an official water bath. They're pretty inexpensive.
Yeah, they're pretty inexpensive. So I would say get the water bath painter if you can, because it has the rack in it that sits down in it because you don't want your dar's to be just sitting on the bottom of the pot. Yeah. I don't want to sit there wherever they are.
I'm doing a Justin. I'm using my hands to explain myself and nobody can see this. So I mean, what are best painters are pretty? I think they're like $30 or less.
Yeah, it's not terrible. And then one of my favorite things for canning both pressure canning and water bath. Now we are not endorsed or financially supported by ball, but ball has a pretty nice little kit that has like a magnetic grabber and a jar. It's like a store kit.
Yeah, inexpensive. It's got a good spice measure. I mean, all of the funnell. Yeah, it has the jar lifter.
It is the best $9.96. If you're canning, it's amazing. Yeah, it's wonderful in every way, in every single way. So really, you don't just need the pressure canner or the water bath canner.
That's not all you need, right? Because we're going to have a pot to prepare whatever we're going to do. So whether we're hot packing green beans or we are prepping some kind of jam or peach sauce. And then of course, our lids, we need to get them in warm water so that the seal on the lid is soft, right?
So essentially we're going to have every island. So burning. Pretty much. So let's let's talk through this strawberry jam.
You're going to go next to a very jam. Oh, it's delicious. I like Dr. Jamie Barney who we will have on as a guest and she's going to live stream via Facebook with us.
It's going to be awesome. She's going to answer common questions. But hers is a strawberry Kiwi jam and I am hooked on that's the one she doesn't in class. You all remember that?
Yeah, that is it. Yes, there we go. Let's talk through. Let's talk through our strawberry jam.
We need our water. Very Kiwi jam. Sorry. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. Kiwi jam. Okay. I can't wait.
I can. Wait. For the sauce pan. For our flats.
I call them a pot crystal. I call them a sauce pan. Whatever you want to call it. Um, look at the verbage.
Depending on what my kids are doing, it might turn into a way up who knows. We need a another kind of pot something for cooking. Our strawberry Kiwi jam down. Right, Megan?
Yes. We need a python. Yeah. We're going to do that.
And that's what I look at your recipe. How much is it going to make this strawberry Kiwi jam make? Six half-part jars. That's not a man-age jar or a pickle jar that you emptied this week because you can pick one man-age sandwiches An apple tail a quick story on my sales Megan I don't make pickle and man-age sandwiches I'm just coming to my mind She was like I can't listen to crystal.
What did he just say? Um, it was great. Oh, we made an orange orange something. I can't remember It was a it was a tested recipe.
Um, but we got the wrong size jars, but I didn't realize we got the wrong size jars And it did not sit up because I used I was we followed the recipe that I thought I was following, you know, correctly, um, but using the wrong size jars to do that correctly It's the orange jelly that you can make from frozen concentrated juice. It is It's amazing. Put that on some cream cheese. It would crackers.
Oh, it's good. Okay. Um, but anywho, sorry back to our story. Okay.
Um, We ran our jars. How many jars we need? We need six half-pound jars and I'll tell you the ingredients here Um, there's more to it. So if we were just making strawberry jam, we would need two quarts of crushed strawberries and six cups of sugar That's it for this recipe and I'm in the so easy to preserve But from the University of Georgia extension that we kind of refer to as the kin Bible because it has everything in it.
Um, so strawberry kiwi jam Here we need three cups of crushed strawberries three kiwi peeled and diced one tablespoon of lemon juice because that's our acid Uh, one tablespoon of minced crystallized ginger One package of powdered pectin and five cups of sugar. So that's our ingredients list on this one. Uh, you said sugar on me Correct. I was here thinking, you know, um, with my strawberry jam.
I also use pectin I like to use the pectin recipe It just makes it a lot quicker. Hey, but in the real deal, let's say that I have a family member who might have a health issue Uh, maybe they're diabetic. Um, I do have a family member that is diabetic and so I don't want, you know, 74 cups of sugar in this recipe I think I'm gonna modify it. I can't do that.
No, but but they can have all that sugar Well, then you need to find a tested recipe. Um, splinda has some That uh, that can be used for uh, low sugar dams and jellies or no sugar dams and gillies But you can't just do it yourself. You see what we just did there. You see what we did there.
You can't do it the way my mom did it Uh, which I appreciate the way my mom did it, but you can't it's not a dabble do you kind of deal, you know, it's uh, you know We're trying to make sure that we're keeping everybody safe and clean ourselves and our families though So there are tested recipes for that though, Megan and they are delicious. Yes, they are Sure are so back to our strawberry kiwi jam. We're going to put all of our stuff strawberries kiwi lemons you ginger and pectin in a large sauce pot Bring it quickly to a boil stirring frequently. Thanks with jams and jellies as you can't go off and leave it right or you will have a burger It's gonna make up to the bottom also So this is not in this recipe, but this is about the time you won't start your biscuits in the oven just saying Well They're saying more my like to put my doors in the oven to keep a more now.
Does that sterilize them? No No, it's not how do we sterilize doors guys? Uh some dishwashers have a sterilize function or you can boil film Boil and so here's the cool thing about this recipe in any recipe if your recipe calls for 10 minutes a more processing time You don't have to sterilize your jars. It's going to happen in the canning process You do wash them though You can wash them with soap and water or in the dishwasher But there's no need to sterilize them separately because this recipe is going to process for 10 minutes Now if we were just doing plain strawberry jam eight processes for five minutes So that's not long enough.
So 10 minutes or more depending on your altitude Yeah, depending on your outfit And so if you've never can before or if you've never really followed followed all regulations you're probably stressing out right now Because we're all like but if you do this or if it's this way Or if it's rainy on Sunday, you know But this is all all to be safe when we do this Any of your any of your good tested recipes actually will say all of this So after we've got all those ingredients to a boil we're going to add our sugar stir until dissolved return it to a rolling boil And then bull hard for one minute. And that means it is like It's a blow you can't start down Okay, then we're going to remove it from heat we skim the foam now the foam's not necessarily bad Or you just doesn't look pretty in the jar So if you're putting it in the pantry for the winter doesn't really matter But if you're taking it to the county fair you ain't gonna win because I ain't gonna put you in first place Like you've got foam on the top of your product. Yeah, they say no good They don't make it look all quality And you're going to ladle the hot jam into hot jars and that is why I have my jars of the oven to keep them where because What happened when you put a hot product into a cold jar? Break it from the oven Been there done that had this beautiful batch of peaches off so one time And it didn't burst it immediately but when I went to take it out of the water bath Like I pulled up a jars without bottoms like it was that hurt my failing I hurt my feeling bad Okay, so we're ladle it into the hot jars using that funnel that came in that kit and a ladle that we didn't supply you earlier with Yeah, leave a fourth edge a headspace.
You can use a ruler but man that little stairs that thing I wish we could show you right now. I know this is a podcast It's a perfect head what a headspace measure We'd like to A little Real technical here today Now this I think is making James and jellies is one of the most Absolutely important steps that people tend to skip You know get in my headspace and figure out what it is. Yeah, they don't walk up on the jar Yes Why after you put him before you put that ceiling wipe down that jar to make sure there's no jelly there or jam because it's going to keep that From ceiling properly if there's sticky stuff there. I don't know how many fair entries We have found that have not wiped down or that wasn't sealed properly so then I can tell you I can tell you Will Go ahead.
Sorry, Justin will absolutely like what's uh just push it to the side. Uh, be like I'm not even judging There was a sauerkraut that didn't go by this base recommendation and it I went to check the headspace and I Uh, they didn't they didn't use headspace right and they didn't walk down Uh the rim of the jar and um crystal and Megan were both there. I stumped because as soon as I turned that ring All over me and I was hot that fermentation gotcha And I just want Claire nails approval that year to judge canning for the first time Hey, snunk the high head and he did think the high head but being a good extension agent extra short in color There you go. Oh, he's prepared So after you put your flats on and you just put that elit on a finger tip Tuck and then you process it in your boiling water bath for 10 minutes Like this and says you don't start your timer until uh, you've got a rapid bull going So there it is folks.
So we can go down and just run them all over the place Just move them all over. No And be sure when you don't tip them over I was gonna sit on that side down. I was gonna say you missed the most important part You take the biscuits out of them and you dip it in the excess jam Yeah It will change the way you do canning college in Cumberland can we come back? At least I'm totally on board.
I just think you're gonna possess Anyhow, any of the things if I what you're saying the jam that you have left So but so I go to fill up my door and it doesn't make the house only have half a door So you know enough biscuits to get rid of it right? That's what you're talking about you got to have enough to get up to that whatever ice cream But can I put it in a fridge for a couple days? Absolutely. Yes.
I just can't I just can't save it for you know The process is it for Her It's not sweet a chef stable And again, they were hand motions by everyone So before I control and we all turn into muppets We'll ask you to come on back based on I