Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Frugal Food- Canning Corn

Last year my sister in law showed me how to can green beans. I was excited to try to can on my own, and this year I was given a pressure canner from my husband's step mother. I have been waiting for enough food to come in this year to make it worth canning, and then all of my father in law's corn came in at once and they were gracious enough to share with us.
I pulled out the canner and inspected it, and since it had already been inspected by the local extension office I felt pretty confident using it. However I was still nervous as I have heard horror stories of the canners blowing up, but with instruction manual in hand I was going to give it a try.
It took a long time to get all the corn off the cob, and I am pretty sure I hurt my hand doing it. I would suggest if you try to can corn that you enlist help of others for this part, if nothing else to give your hand a rest once in a while. Also, lots of corn ears make a small amount of jars of corn. I had a normal size roasting pan half full of fresh corn kernels and I got 8 pints of corn out of that. Above is the corn before processing.
I thought I followed my instructions properly the first time, but I had not allowed the water to boil enough before putting the weight on and the canner just would not come up to pressure of any kind. I thought for sure I had failed. I let it sit to cool down with the intention of pulling the corn out of the jars when they cooled, draining and freezing them, but my husband being the great man that he is convinced me that maybe together we could figure out what went wrong and we tried again after resealing the cans. It really was something as simple as the water was not at a full boil before putting the weight on, but it was my first time canning alone, and I did not know that. So lesson of the day for me would be canning has a learning curve like any other task, and this will just take practice.

Here is the corn right out of the canner still hot. Do you can your own vegetables? Do you have any tips to share for a novice canner like myself?

This post is shared at the Homemaking link up

3 comments:

  1. No advice, but good for you! While I'm not new to canning, I am new to pressure canning. I just got my pressure canner and canned a batch of chicken stock last week. There is something fulfilling about seeing those jars of YOUR OWN food, isn't there? :) Have fun!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, I want to try this! Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for visiting! I am excited about trying chicken stock as well. I have to make some tomorrow anyway, so I guess I will get to give it a try.

    ReplyDelete