 Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Julie Garden Robinson, and I'm your host for today's Field to Fork webinar. This is brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. In fact, this is the ninth year we've offered this series, and we're really glad you've joined us today. And as of today, we've topped 1,400 live participants. That's a record. We have archived all of the webinars from the previous years, and the link is on our Field to Fork webinar page. And I want to give a shout out, special welcome to our watch parties. We are providing certificates of attendance on the website. This slide shows the upcoming webinars, and we hope you join us for these as well. The next slide shows the webinar controls. And because there are many of you on today's webinar, we invite you to post your questions and comments in the chat box. So let's practice finding the chat box. You can ignore the Q&A box. Click to open the chat and type your city and state where you are. It's always fun to see people from all over the place. The next slide provides an acknowledgement. As you work on typing in your city and state, I have a special request that follows today's webinar. This program is sponsored in part with grant funding from the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service through the North Dakota Department of Agriculture. I will ask all of you to complete a very short online survey that will be emailed to your inbox right after today's webinar. And as a thank you, we will continue to provide prizes to the lucky winners of the random drawings. Be sure to include your complete address. And remember that you will need to scroll down a bit to today's date and speaker because we are combining our data from 2023 and 2024. So you will see the 2023 speakers first. Scroll down. Again, our next slide shows our topic for today. And I am pleased to introduce today's speaker, known her for many years. Karen Blakesley is the coordinator of the Rapid Response Center and she is co-director of the Kansas Value Added Foods Lab with Kansas State Research and Extension. She has a bachelor's degree in food science and a master's degree in food and nutrition from Kansas State University. Prior to her extension career, Karen worked in food manufacturing and one of her many roles in teaching food safety is teaching about home food preservation. So thank you for being with us today, Karen. Thank you. It's great to be with you all again. This is how many years I've been doing this now? It's probably three or four. So many years. Yeah, it's fun to do this. So I'm pleased to be here again today. Well, welcome, everybody. We're so glad that you're able to join us today for this webinar. As Julie mentioned, I do teach a lot about home food preservation and try to get the word out about doing this whole process safely. So today we want to talk about a new publication that we've put together at the North Central Region Food Safety Extension Network about doing some safe changes to tested canning recipes. All of us that work in extension in this subject area, we seem to get a lot of questions about what can I tweak? What can I change? Can I add this? Can I leave this out? Those kinds of things. So we went ahead and put together a publication on this topic. So that's what I'm going to talk to you about today and give you some ideas that maybe you would want to add to your products that you preserve at home. Okay. Start here. There we go. So what you want to do in all of this is provide your family and friends safe food. Now, this little video here shows you what can go wrong. I don't know if you can, you probably can't hear the audio on this. That's okay. There's no talking. All I wanted to do was show you this little, I know it went fast, so I'll play it again here. Let's see here. Get that to go again. And the idea is for you to get an idea of what could happen if something goes wrong. This has happened to be some under processed salsa. And it was only 24 hours after it was put in the jar that it started doing this. And it's under processed. And so there was some kind of bacteria in there that just allowed it to grow. And it was under the right conditions that it could do that. So you always want to make sure that you're using good safe recipes to start with. And make sure that you follow those recipes and do the best you can to provide the safest preserved food that you make at home. Okay. I think you all get the point on that one. So I want to talk about some risks. Now, there's a whole lot that goes into home food preservation and making sure that it's done properly. And there's a lot of safety behind this. It's not just putting food in a jar and putting a lid on it. There's a lot of safety steps that have to happen in order for the product to turn out safely in the end. And it's also not just knowing that the lid sealed on top of the jar. The safety of all these home canned foods depends on the acid content or what we refer to as the pH. It also depends on the density and the thickness of the food, the size and the shape of the food pieces, the temperature of the food when it goes into the jar to start with, whether it's a hot pack method or a raw pack method. That can make a difference on how the product is actually processed in the end. The size and shape of the containers in some recipes, it may be the same processing time for a pint in a quart, but in other recipes it might be a different amount of time between a pint and a quart. So those are important things to pay attention to. The type of heat processing method and the two methods that we use in home food preservation is either water bath canning for high acid foods or pressure canning for low acid foods. So those are the two that need to be used, whether depending on what kind of food you're wanting to reserve. And in some cases a pressure canner can be used for some high acid foods. For example like peaches. I know there's pressure canning processing times that could be used to can peaches, but it's also done in a water bath canner. And then the recipe that is used. We always encourage you to use good tested recipes and always get the question, what does that mean? Well recipes that we have it in your state extension programs or other resources such as the Ball Blue Book, resources such as that. The Ball Company does a really good job about putting out really good recipes. Follow them and you should have a lot of good luck by using those recipes. So I want to start to go through some of these topics that we put in this publication and I'm going to go through what could be some safe changes and then some things to be cautious about. So I want to start with fruits and fruit sauces. Some things that you can do when canning fruit. You could replace half of the sugar with honey. A lot of people like to use honey as a sweetener, but using all honey can really overpower the food that you're preserving in that jar. Honey has a very distinct and somewhat strong flavor. And if you use a lot of it, that can really change the outcome of the product that you're canning. In a lot of cases you can reduce or even just eliminate the sugar. So for example, if you're canning peaches, you could just can those in plain water if you wanted to. The thing to remember that however is the quality tends to suffer when you do this. Sugar does have a preservative quality to it and it helps protect the color and the texture of the food. And then when you start reducing that or taking out the sugar completely and leaving it as just plain water, then you lose that protective aspect of using sugar and the quality of the product can be reduced quite a bit. Of course, if you're watching your sugar intake and you've got family members that need to watch their sugar intake, it is an option just to do water or you could do that and then you could add your own alternative sweetener when you're ready to eat it. So that's an option to do. You could also use a fruit juice in place of water or a sugar syrup. So for example, if you're canning apples, you could use apple juice if you wanted to use that. You get a little bit of sweetness out of that but it's not overpowering like a sugar syrup can be. So some cautions to keep in mind when it comes to fruits and fruit sauces. Right now we do not have any good recommendation for canning elderberries. I know this is a popular fruit especially in this part of the country where there's lots of elderberries that are grown. There's been some recent research done on elderberries to show that they actually are in low acid food. Their pH is above that 4.6 level. In some cases they even get into the 5 pH range. That really is a low acid food. So there's very few recipes out there. If you scan this QR code that's on the right, it'll take you to our North Central Region Food Safety Extension Network newsletter. And we did an article about elderberries in that particular newsletter and it'll tell you what to do if you want to can elderberries. And I believe there's a jelly recipe in there that you could use. But I will tell you the ball blue book, they took any reference to elderberries out of their ball blue book. They just came out with a new addition. They did remove that. And then we as an extension program, we just don't have any other official elderberry recipes that could be safely used. But take a look at that newsletter and that could give you a couple options. Just make sure you follow those directions in order to do it safely. Things change and that's kind of why we look for new research to see if there's any changes that happen with different types of foods. White peaches is another one. White peaches are actually a low acid food. So if you do can white peaches using the directions for yellow peaches, you're going to end up with problems. In fact I had a person call me and they had canned peaches. First she just said I've canned peaches yesterday and now my lids are popping loose. And so in visiting with her, I got to ask in her what kind of peaches she can and she said that she used white ones. And that was why they are actually low acid food and the directions for the yellow peaches are just not sufficient to properly and safely can white peaches. So same thing with white nectarines, if you want to can those, that's not an option. We just don't have any researched recipes for canning. You could absolutely freeze them, you can eat them, but canning or even making a jam or jelly out of them, any kind of canning, we do not recommend using those. Canning fruits with any sugar substitutes such as sucralose or stevia, we just don't have any good information on using those kinds of artificial sweeteners. A better option would be safer peaches as an example, can nose and water and then add your artificial sweetener later if need be. I find that peaches are sweet enough on their own that you just don't need to add a whole lot of sugar or any kind of sweetener. So those are the cautions to think about when it comes to fruit. All right, let's talk about jams and jellies. So some safe changes that could be made on these. If you wanted to add an herb flavoring or a vanilla, say you wanted to add vanilla to a peach jam and give it that warm vanilla flavor, go with about a teaspoon or less. Sometimes when you heat up herbs or flavorings, the flavor gets really strong, so you don't want to get too heavy handed on using those. So a teaspoon or less would be a good option if you wanted to add that to say a peach jam or any other kind of jam. Again, you could substitute peaches for nectarines or even apples for pears or vice versa. You can do that substitution. If you have frozen fruit, it's best to have it unsweetened or if you're buying fruit buy unsweetened to make a jam, thaw it out and then use that in place of the fresh fruit. Save the juice. You may need to use that for the liquid. You don't want that to go to waste. If you're buying pectin in bulk for regular pectin, six tablespoons equals one box of standard pectin that you can buy. So you can keep that in mind when you want to measure out how much pectin you need to use. And again, going back to the honey I mentioned earlier, using honey to replace sugar in jams and jellies can be a little tricky. If you do want to add honey, you can replace one cup or the total sugar amount with one cup of honey. If you start adding more honey to this, you're going to end up with a real syrupy product because you're adding liquid to it also. So if you add too much, it's not going to set up right. So be cautious about that. So I wouldn't go over one cup of the sugar and replacing that with one cup of honey. Again, the flavor can be affected too. So keep that in mind. Some cautions about jams and jellies, these do need to be processed in a boiling water canner or a steam canner. And that really helps prevent any chance of mold forming in the end. If you skip this step, that can be a problem. Use the type of pectin that's stated in the recipe. Liquid and dry pectins are not interchangeable. They work differently. How they form a gel works differently. How they're used in a recipe is different. Dry pectin is not just liquid pectin that's rehydrated and put in a pouch. They really are two different products and they do have different functionalities. So when a recipe does say to use liquid pectin, that's what you need to use to have the best success. Another tip is to not double recipes. If you try to do this more likely than not, you're going to end up with a fruit syrup in the end. And that's probably not what you really intended to have. Now, it'll still be edible. You could certainly use it as an ice cream topping or pancake syrup or something like that. But it's not going to spread very well on your toast. So doubling recipes really doesn't save a whole lot of time. It takes too long to cook the mixture when you start doubling recipes and then it just doesn't get cooked out right. So save yourselves a grief. Only make one recipe at a time. That's really the best way to go. You can use pint jars when the recipe states that. And I'll talk more about jars a little bit later. But most often jam and jellies are in the little half pint jars. But if there is an option to use pints, you can certainly do that. Right. So let's talk about meat. There's a lot of people that like to can meat, whether it's beef or chicken. I've even taught a class to can bison and venison. You can those just like you would can beef. Some safe changes that could be made. And there's not a whole lot. But you could add some seasoning or onion or garlic to these. And here you can see the recommendations on how much per pint and per quart. Again, if you start adding more too much of this stuff, you really do kind of overpower the flavor of the meat. Because it does get intensified during the canning process. So also think about how you're going to use these. When you start making changes to different things, how how are you intending to use these in the long run? When you start adding different things, then that really can kind of limit your choices. I guess my theory is keep it simple. Can things plain like beef by itself. And then that's more of an ingredient that has more versatility and can be used in different recipes. So some to think about. Plan it out on how you want to intend to use this in the long run. Some cautions about meat. First of all, meat must be pressure canned. There is no option to can this any other way. You have to use a pressure canner because it is a low acid food. It is not a good idea to add meat to any other recipes unless the recipe says it's an option. For example, in the vegetable soup recipe, you could use a beef broth or a chicken broth. You could also add some pieces of the chicken or beef to that. So that is an option for that. But to add beef to a tomato sauce and you're just using a tomato sauce recipe, that is not advisable at all. So make sure you pay attention to that. The other thing to think about is not adding thickeners such as flour or corn starch or rice or pasta or barley, any of those kinds of things to recipes. Unless it's already developed in a recipe that was tested with that in it, then it can be done. But there's very, very few recipes for that. I get the question a lot about making like a vegetable soup. I'll go back to that. Adding the pasta or adding the rice to it and then canning it. We have no recommendations to do that. The canning process is really intense and those types of products can really fall apart. And it changes how the heat goes through the jars too. So it's best to add those kinds of things when you're ready to use that vegetable soup. And you heat it up and add the rice or the pasta or whatever. That's the time to add those kinds of things. Adding extra fat can also change the safety of the product. You really want to try to use lean meat as lean as possible. It's going to have some fat still in it obviously of marbling and things like that. But trim off the extra fat as much as you can. The fat can, during the canning process, it can interfere with how the lid seals in that area where the jar rim is and where the lid sits on there. And that can affect how it seals or even holds a seal. So be cautious about the extra fat. In this picture here, this is chicken. The ones on the very right, those are the raw packed method of canning chicken. And the ones here in the middle, these are the hot pack method. The raw pack, you can see the yellow liquid that is fat from the chicken itself that does come out of there. Again, you try to remove as much fat as possible, but it is going to have a little bit in there. And then with the hot pack, you're adding liquid to it. So you want to try to, again, remove as much fat as possible so you don't have any problems in the end. All right, let's talk about pickles and relishes and some safe changes that could possibly be done with this. So if you're making a quick process type pickle, these are the ones that are not fermented. You could reduce the sugar or the salt in these. Now that's going to change the flavor of it. It can also affect the quality of them too. So be mindful of that when you start reducing sugar or salt. If you're making fermented dill pickles, the salt is important. You really have to use the amount of salt. Same thing in sauerkraut. You have to use the amount of salt that's called for in order for those to ferment properly and safely. That salt is a critical component. So you cannot reduce the salt in your fermented products. You can substitute apple cider vinegar and distilled white vinegar, one for one. The difference between the two, obviously apple cider vinegar has that apple flavor and also the browner color. So if you want a brighter color in your pickles, use the white vinegar instead. And that will give it a little bit of different flavor and nicer, brighter color. The thing that came out here in social media last year or so was the concern about the acidity content in vinegar. And it seemed to be a new concept that there was a 4% vinegar out there. 4% vinegar has been out there for a long time. All your pickle recipes in today's recipe world, they have to use 5% acidity. Make sure you read the label. Make sure it does say 5% acidity on there. That is what you need to use for today's pickle and relish recipes. So there's cleaning vinegar. That's a 6% vinegar. That's going to be pretty strong. So look for that 5%. There's a lot of them out there. And be careful about the store brands or off brands of vinegar. Those are the ones to really pay attention to to make sure that you're getting the right amount of acidity in the vinegar that you're buying. You can add a clove of garlic or a small dried hot pepper to each jar to give it some zing and some extra flavor. You can substitute zucchini or summer squash like yellow squash for cucumber in relish recipes if you wanted to do that. That can and actually I know that the University of Georgia at the National Center for Home Food Preservation, they actually have a relish recipe that's made from zucchini and summer squash. It's really good. I've made that a few times and it tastes just like cucumber pickle relish. It's really quite tasty. Another option is to add calcium chloride to add some crunchiness to your pickles. Calcium chloride is used in making commercial pickles. If you look at the ingredient statement on the jars, you will often see calcium chloride on the ingredient statement. That is a crisping agent is what that's technically called. And it helps make your pickles crunchy. So it comes there's Mrs. Wages has one. It's called extra crunch and then a ball sells one. It's called pickle crisps. The directions are on the bottles use the amount that it's called for. Don't use any more than what it's called for per jar and because too much is not always a good thing. It can really change the flavor. So follow those directions and you just add that amount per jar and it'll help make your pickles crunchy and you can do that for cucumbers. You can do that for pickled okra, pickled green beans, things like that if you want to add a little crunchiness. If you are looking for some recipes for special diets, the University of Georgia, if you click scan this QR code that will take you to their website and they have some recipes that are using Splenda as an alternative sweetener in pickles. And so take a look at that and maybe that would be a good choice for you. All right some cautions about pickles and relishes. Again don't change the salt amount in any fermented recipe that I and I already mentioned this once. What you can do is when you're ready to use those fermented pickles or the sauerkraut for example you can rinse rinse the product with some water to help rinse off the sodium excess sodium that could be still in the product. So just rinse it with some water and that will help reduce the sodium content because again you do not want to alter the salt content in fermented products because that's important for safety and for proper fermentation. Use the vinegar that's stated in the recipe and again you can change although you can change out apple cider vinegar and white vinegar. There's a few recipes out there that use balsamic vinegar that's specific for that recipe. I wouldn't use that as an alternative for anything. It's a very unique vinegar. Some recipes use vinegar and water. There are some recipes that only use vinegar. Use the amounts that are called for. Don't alter the amount of vinegar or the water. Those amounts are there based on the type of food that's being pickled and so that balance of the vinegar and water is important to get it pickled safely. There are some vegetables that are pickled with vinegar only. There's no water added so pay attention to that and don't alter those amounts. In using cucumbers to make like pickles like spears or slices it's best to use pickling varieties of cucumbers. Check with your local horticulture agent for your state what pickling varieties grow best. Now's the time to get that figured out as you're planting your gardens. The English or grocery store what people call grocery store cucumbers those long dark green cucumbers they can be used but the quality in the end is really not very good. They tend to get a little too mushy and so but if you wanted to grind them up and use them in a pickle relish that's probably the best way to use them if that's something that you have but for making like spears or slices or things like that it's best to stick with the pickling varieties. If you have favorite recipes that you want to make a quick pickle refrigerating is really the best way to go and you can refrigerate those for up to two weeks so if you have your favorite mixture of vegetables that you want to pickle just put them in the refrigerator and they'll be just fine in there. All right let's talk about salsa. Salsa is very popular it's probably one of the most common things that people like to can it's probably a close second or probably even above tomatoes so it's very popular so here's some tips of things that you can do when making salsa. The peppers to use you can substitute sweet peppers like bell peppers for hot peppers or vice versa the the key is to use the amount that's called for in the recipe so if it calls for for example two pounds of hot peppers you could split that up between bell peppers and hot peppers you could use jalapenos you're going to use habaneros just as long as you use the amount of peppers that it calls for same thing with the onions and you can use red yellow or white onions doesn't make any difference they are interchangeable. In most vegetables you can leave out the salt and same is true in salsa you could leave out the salt if there's sugar in it you could leave out the sugar that's just for flavor both of those it really doesn't affect the safety of the salsa product in the end same thing with tomatoes plain vegetables you can leave the salt out and then just have plain vegetables to use it's just for flavor you can reduce the amount of onion or peppers or celery just don't increase them that's the key on it don't add to it but you can reduce it so that's another thing to keep in mind you could substitute tomatillos for tomatoes tomatillos are really acidic their their ph runs around 3.8 tomatoes run around 4.5 even in some cases around 5 so tomatillos can be substituted for tomatoes if that's something that you have you can use any variety or color of tomatoes just treat them all the same as if they were all red tomatoes even some people think that heirloom varieties of tomatoes are more acidic than others it's not true not research we've I've seen lots and North Dakota state has some good information on different ph levels and different varieties of tomatoes and I'm pretty sure they looked at different heirloom varieties and they found that a lot of them are really around that 4.6 and some are even above 4.6 which makes them a low acid food so so treat them all the same and the thing about salsa is it does need some kind of acid added to it whether it's vinegar or lemon juice or lime juice you can replace the vinegar if you don't like vinegar in your salsa you can replace the vinegar with bottled lemon or lime juice in the same amount so if it calls for one cup of vinegar you can use one cup of lemon juice bottled lemon juice do not use fresh lemon juice or fresh lime juice the acidity of fresh lemon or lime juice is inconsistent and that's why we strongly encourage you to use bottled lemon juice or lime juice because it has a constant acid content it has a standardized acid level and so that's the best choice on that now you cannot go vice versa going from lemon juice to vinegar vinegar is not as acidic as lemon juice is and you would have to use a lot more vinegar so it's not a good choice to go the other direction but you can go from vinegar to bottled lemon or lime juice and you'll notice in newly updated publications such as the ball blue book they took out any reference to fresh lemon juice or lime juice and replaced them all with bottled to make sure that we're all saying the same message and that you're using a safe product and a safe ingredient all right some cautions about salsa some things not to do don't thicken your salsa before canning you don't want to add any kind of flour or starch or anything like that that changes how the heat penetration goes through the jar so it's not recommended you do that if you want to add you know go ahead and make your salsa and if you want to make it a little thicker when you're ready to serve it then add a can of tomato paste for example and that'll thicken it up do not add corn or black beans to any recipe or substitute those ingredients for the peppers and onions corn and black beans are real low acid foods and I think there's a couple I think ball has a couple recipes that use corn in them but I don't know off the top of my head any that use black beans again the best thing to do is make your salsa add that corn and black beans when you're ready to serve it that's that's the best choice and the safest choice you don't want to reduce any amount of acid that's in a recipe so if it calls for a cup of vinegar or a cup of lemon juice that's what you have to use do not cut back on that you don't want to increase the amount of herbs and spices now the thing about this is you get too much in there and that can really muddy down the texture of the product again that can really slow down how the heat goes through the jar and you also don't want to reduce the amount of tomatoes in there either use the amount that it calls for and there are many really good salsa recipes out there and I know everybody thinks likes to think they have the best one try these recipes there's some really good ones out there and they're safely done follow the directions and you should have really good luck with those another thing we get asked about a lot is why is there no salsa recipes canned in courts well quite simply nobody's done any research on that it's only pints or below you can't use any jars larger than that if you do you're guessing on how long that should be processed it's a larger volume and it changes how the heat goes through the jar so please don't use quarts and stick with the pints if you're looking for a tomato that tomato salsa that does include tomato paste University of Georgia has one so if you go to scan that QR code there on the right that'll take you to that recipe so that recipe has been tested and it already has the tomato paste added to it so check that one out hopefully you'll like that one all right tomatoes in general some things that you can do I kind of mentioned this a little bit already you can add a little bit of sugar to the to each jar to kind of counterbalance that the flavor of the added acid you'll either use bottled lemon juice or citric acid or vinegar this little chart here gives you the proportions per pint or per quart so this is for like tomato juice whole tomatoes crushed tomatoes things like that and again you can also eliminate the salt you don't have to have the salt in there it's just for flavor I often get asked which one of these ingredients here is the best choice now the lemon juice it's going to add a slight lemony flavor to it the citric acid adds hardly any flavor at all but the vinegar is going to be pretty strong because you have to use a lot more of it compared to lemon juice so my my suggestion is to use citric acid it's the least flavor it adds the least amount of flavor to it yet you get the proper acidification done and again you want to use this amount whether it's one of these for a pint or a quart and you add it to each jar and I would put it in the jars first and then put your food product in afterwards that way you remember get it out of the way first before you before you get busy filling the jars with all your food okay all right some cautions about tomatoes don't add any other ingredients unless it's stated in the recipe for example onions or peppers or things like that it's not recommended and again no thickeners get I get asked a lot about making a tomato soup my best recommendation is to make a tomato sauce and use that as an ingredient to make whatever tomato soup you want to make that would be the best choice because if you it's really hard to find a tomato soup out there recipe and I think the ball blue buck has one but I know in the extension world I don't I'm pretty sure none of us has any kind of tomato soup recipes so that's why it's best to have the tomatoes on hand and then you can use them in a variety of recipes including a tomato soup and again do not skip that acidification step whether you use lemon juice or citric acid or vinegar do not skip that if you do skip skip that I will tell you I have seen jars of tomatoes that will start to ferment on their own without that because it's the pH of the tomatoes runs right along that dividing line between a low and a high acid food and if it's more on the low acid food side they're probably going to end up fermenting in storage and you don't want that to happen so please please don't please don't skip the acidification step all right vegetables all vegetable plain vegetables they do need to be pressure canned each recipe has its own processing time and they'll usually give you the processing pressures for whether using a dial gauge or a weighted gauge canner so if you want to create a vegetable mixture like mixed vegetables for example and create your own each vegetable that you use must have its own instructions to start with so for example in this picture I've got peas carrots corns green beans potatoes and asparagus so what you can do if you want to combine all of these you can and then you use the processing time with that has the long for the vegetable that has the longest processing time and in this case that is corn corn is processed for 55 minutes now what this does it can tend to reduce the quality the overall quality of all the inner vegetables in there but you do have a mixed vegetable product you could add a clove of garlic per jar if you wanted to and again you can reduce or even leave out the salt it is just for flavor all right some safety costumes on vegetables again don't add any thickeners any rice pasta starchy ingredients add those when you're ready to use them and do not can any vegetable that does not have any kind of testing behind it for example we don't have any instructions on how to can a mashed pumpkin or mashed winter squash there used to be instructions for that but it's really hard to duplicate the testing and getting a consistent processing time with a mashed product because it is so thick the best choice on if you want to preserve a mashed pumpkin is to freeze it that's the best option you can can chunks of pumpkin or winter squash and then you can mash it later if that's what you want to use it for so please be cautious about that all right and these are potatoes by the way they turned out pretty good I have to say all right some other tips on jar sizes I kind of talked about this a little bit along the way here so I mentioned earlier in talking about the salsa to not use any jars larger than a pint so recipes will tell you what jar sizes are recommended for those recipes you don't want to go any bigger than that you can go smaller so if a recipe say like a jam or jelly calls for half pint jars you can use these little four ounce jars just use them like they are a half pint so use the same processing time same thing with pint jars there is these 12 ounce jars if you can find them I know they're getting a little hard to find but these are a nice in between between a half pint and a pint treat these like a pint jar so use the pint jar processing time for that and then there's the 24 ounce jars these are in between a pint and a quart and I've heard these are getting a little hard to find but if you have some treat those like a quart jar so use the quart jar processing time and I know that ball has made some other styles of jars that are like a 28 ounce again use those like a quart jar a quart jar is a 32 ounce so pay attention to that you want to use the jars that are designated in the recipes the colored jars that have been out the ones that are made by ball are perfectly safe to use for canning now if you go to your local craft stores and you see some other colored jars I know I've seen like some red ones those are not for canning those the the red color on those is probably painted on and it'll probably come off and that's not something you want in your food but all these ball colored jars such as the blue ones the green ones the purple ones they've also had the amber colored ones and some that are kind of a aqua or turquoise kind of color and the rose colored ones that's the most recent ones all of those are safe for you for use in canning so they're really fun they brought some of these back to celebrate the and 100th anniversary especially the ball blue blue jar and the green jar so it's kind of fun to use those and especially if you want to give your products away as gifts add some nice color all right those are the topics that I'm that I'm covering for today I do want to give you this QR code here to take you to this publication that I talked about today again this was developed by the North Central Region Food Safety Extension Network which is a group of 12 states from Kansas up to North Dakota and then over to Ohio and back down through Missouri we work together on this and we've we've got some other publications too if you go to the North Central Region's Food Safety Extension Network website it's on the Iowa State University's website or yes Iowa State University's website if you do a search for NCF SEN that should take you right to that link and we've got some other publications that we put together over the years such as on different types of pressure canners the canning jars and lids and things like that so take a look at those and if you have any questions about any of this please give us a shout out send us an email contact your local Extension office and we'd be glad to help you any way we can okay Karen thank you very much very interesting um if several questions for you okay so how do you about 12 minutes or so yep I'm gonna ask fast okay how do you know if recipes have been tested for safety and they cited food in jars and I won't name the author but um yeah so how do you know it's been tested well and that's always a good question and I will tell you if you're if you're getting recipes from a university or if you're getting them from the ball folks we know those have been tested and any of the recipes that are put out by universities those have been tested if you buy any kind of cookbooks any other cookbooks that are out there there's really it's really hard to tell um and it's really hard for us to know too and so be cautious about those it's kind of buyer beware um and I also know that there's some counterfeit well I don't know if I'd call it counterfeit but there's some recipe books out there that claim they have the ball that say they had the ball name on them but they do truly do not come from the ball company so be cautious about those um uh and again going back to you know um family recipes church cookbooks you really have no idea uh if those have been tested for safety at all so the best choice is to start with us any of your state extension programs they'll have lots of resources um or honestly going to the ball folks um Julie and I both are on an advisory committee for them and so we keep we do our best to keep them honest and make sure they're following that we're all playing in the same sandbox and that we're all on the same page because they want they're one of the leaders I think in this business and so we want to make sure that the message they're pointing out is the right message hey your next question's about you mentioned adding a teaspoon or less and a couple people wanted to know what size of a batch would that be a teaspoon or less for um I think it was for jams and jellies that oh yeah that that was for the jams and jellies I would put it whatever batch you're making um a teaspoon or so less so you know if it makes seven to eight half pints I would stick with that one teaspoon um it may be possible that you could add a little bit more down the road once you try it the thing is you don't know what it's going to taste like until you got the finished product and you try it um because you don't want that flavor truly overpower everything else that's in there so I would start out with whatever whatever recipe you're using and then try adding a teaspoon or less to it and most of the jelly and jam recipes are not that big no no they're not um question about powdered pectin how long can you store that well it does have an expiration date on it and you need to pay attention to that because if it's beyond that it does lose its jelling power over time and you could end up with syrup so pay attention to those dates on those boxes or containers whatever you're however you're buying it um because it does get old and it does lose its jelling power so um that is one thing that you do need to really watch out for and I've seen that happen I've you honestly I've done it myself I've used old pectin before and it doesn't work I end up with syrup so unless that's what you want another question this one's about pickles for pickles does it make a difference if multi cloves of garlic or small onion are added I think we stated one clove of garlic on there I can go back to that I yep you did I think that's what I stated on that one clove per jar so you know that could be like a around a if you wanted to use onions you know of course bread and butter pickles already have onions in them so it depends on what pickles you're making but one clove per jar and a lot of your if the recipes are already built with garlic in them that's usually what it is it's one clove per jar uh next question's also about pickles which is better to use a canner I'm assuming they mean boiling water bath canner or a pressure canner for pickles yeah pickles you don't want to use a pressure canner now you could use a pressure canner as a water bath canner you just don't put the weight on to build up the pressure if that's all you have leave the weight off and just use it like a stock pot you just want to make sure you fill it up with the right amount of water so that the water covers the top of the jars at least one to two inches but pickles they really only need the water bath crossing because it's an acidified food you're adding acid to those cucumbers and it makes it safe enough that water bath crossing or steam canning using a steam canner is sufficient to make them safe right do you recommend apple cider vinegar or white vinegar for pickling well it's kind of a personal preference um all you all of your recipes will state one or the other um in there but if all you can find is if the recipe says apple cider and all you can find is white vinegar you can use that um just remember the apple cider vinegar does add that kind of brownish color and that little bit of that apple flavor to the product so um uh you try to use what's called for in the recipe but you can switch them out uh can you substitute nectarines in a peach recipe and do they need to be peeled yes yes they do all right yeah you do need to peel those same thing on tomatoes they need to be peeled because bacteria can attach themselves some bacteria can attach themselves to the skin and the only way to get that off you can't see it the only way to get that off is to peel it and the recipes are developed without the peel so same thing on apples you want to peel the apples or pears or things like that when it says to peel them peel them potatoes too i always get the question about new potatoes do i have to peel those yes because potatoes have all kinds of little cracks and crevices that can hide dirt and bacteria you've got to get those cleaned off and they have to be peeled uh is it okay to add a little butter to jam to get rid of the scum on top yes and you can use a half a teaspoon of butter or margarine into whatever recipe amount whatever recipe you're making so as you're cooking your jelly mixture or jam mixture add a half a teaspoon of butter to that and that will help reduce any almost all of the foam that's usually generated during the cooking process and then you don't have to skim anything off but i will say if you are making jams and jellies to sell you cannot do that it's there's an FDA regulation that says you cannot use butter as an anti foaming agent i will put that out there so but for home use you can do that um next one is about salsa do you need to add a teaspoon of lemon juice to every pint of salsa well your salsa recipes will have a designated amount that you incorporate into the entire recipe so for example one recipe that i use a lot in classes that i teach it calls for five pounds of tomatoes two pounds peppers one pound onions one cup of vinegar or lemon juice and then salt salt and pepper um that covers it right there the salsa recipes are developed to put the acid into the entire mixture to start with then you don't have to add it to each jar okay here's one that just popped in that probably many people have is there a way to minimize liquid from leaking out when pressure canning yes siphoning one a couple things on that and sing holds true for water bath canning uh after the processing is over um in pressure canning obviously you have to let the pressure naturally drop and then once it hits zero take the weight off let it set for about five to ten minutes and then take the lid off and again let them set it just helps things calm down a little slower if you take that lid off right away and take those jars out right away that really can cause a sudden too much of a sudden temperature change and then siphoning will likely occur so same thing with water bath canning once the processing time is done turn off the burner take the lid off leave the jar set in the water for at least five minutes before you take them out that and again it just helps the product calm down helps the water calm down helps the steam get out of the way and less chance of siphoning from happening we'll just do two quick questions before we wrap it up okay um does running tomatoes through a food mill equal peeling uh yes it should um honestly because you know you're you soften the tomatoes a little bit it's usually a good idea to heat them up it makes it easier um and then run them through the food mill and the peels should stay inside the food mill and then the pulp goes through the holes so you know you're going to do that to make like tomato juice for example and run them through a food mill um and that's an easy way to help the skins get removed another the other option is to dip the tomatoes in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds or so until you start to see the peel pull away take them out put them in ice water and the peel should come right off and makes it really easy peaches can be done the same way that's how i peel peaches try the hot water method that works really well and and i'll just make a comment on one of these comments here the University of Georgia Splenda using recipes are safe yes you can anything on the University of Georgia National Center site would be safe yes and final question for you yes um this person was talking about making salsa to freeze and asked if they can use fresh lemon juice in that case yes yes you can because you're freezing that um that's going to be fine it's the canning side of things where it makes a big difference so yes you can use fresh lemon or lime juice in that case all right well we've reached three o'clock my time and that means that we are done for this week um feel free if anyone has further questions so you can reach out to me or Karen would you take a question or two or Karen Blakesly at Kansas State um certainly appreciate your time and we appreciate all of you for being here and coming back many of you every week so we hope you're here next week and thanks again to Karen you bet thanks for having me