So last week, I FINALLY started and finished my canning! Hip-hip-hooray!
On one hand, I actually enjoy the process and the feeling I get as I gaze at all my lovely jars filled with garden goodness, but on the other hand, the canning itself takes so much equipment and set up.
I’ve been putting tomatoes in the freezer as they’ve been ripe, plus I had tomatoes left over from last year still in the freezer, so I spent four days and got them all done.
This year, I tried something different.
I have had a glass top stove for the past thirteen years and I’ve always read that you can NOT use a regular water bath canner on the glass top because of the concave bottom. I’ve read that it can trap heat under the pot because of the uneven surface and possibly cause your stove top to crack.
Years ago, when I first started dabbling in canning (jellies, primarily), my handy machinist/farmer husband made me a custom rack to go in the bottom of my large stock pot. I could can 7 pints in it, but no quarts (it wasn’t tall enough to cover them with enough water). Using my stock pot has served me well, as long as I was only canning jellies and pints of applesauce. (Update: As of fall of 2018, I still break out the stock pot with the custom rack to use for any pint canning that I’m doing!)
A couple years ago, I expanded my canning repertoire to add my grandma’s tomato soup. We use this as our base for chili. But, canning it in pints meant that it would take three pints for a crock pot of chili, plus if I was also making applesauce that year, I just didn’t have enough jars to accommodate this!
I really wanted to be able to can quarts. An option is using a pressure canner (since they have a heavy flat bottom), but I didn’t want to invest in one just for quarts of tomato sauce and, honestly, pressure canning kinda of scares me 🙂 I know, I know, it’s only lack of experience, but still. (Update: My mom got me one last year for Christmas, so I’ll be learning how to pressure can very soon!!)
After much research and bouncing ideas off of my sister, I arrived at a workable, non expensive, non scary solution for water bath canning on a glass top stove-
canning outside!
We have a propane camp stove, so I set up a table in my carport right outside my back door, set the stove on that, and voila! I can can quarts 🙂
Was it wonderfully convenient? Yes and no. Yes, because canning outside frees up a burner on my stove inside for preparing meals during the day and no, because, well, I had to carry the full jars outside!
But, it was worth it.
I canned 21 quarts of tomato soup, so we are set for the winter on that! I still used my trusty stock pot canner for pints (I did 32 pints of salsa, 12 pints of soup, and 15 pints of thick sauce), mostly because I ran out of propane and didn’t have time to travel the 13 miles to the nearest store while I was in the middle of canning.
Before I leave you, I have one more fabulous, life changing canning tip- use a roaster for cooking your tomato concoctions down!
My sister and mom learned this from a neighbor lady and it has revolutionized their canning!
You free up your burner, it cooks down FASTER (because its being heated on all sides, not just the bottom) and you can turn it way down and walk a way for awhile if something comes up and you need to leave the house.
I made all of my salsa, soup and sauce this way and I will never go back to using my stove for that again! I borrowed my mother-in-law’s and my sister borrows my mom’s, so if you don’t want to invest in one (or like me, don’t have storage space for it!), ask around and I bet you can find one.
What have you canned this fall?
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