Food storage methods

You know what's weird? I obtained some retired battery hens last year at $1 per head for canning up, but didn't want to consume the meat due to the taste of where they had been, so I confined them and fed them up on fermented feeds for a month. I then processed them, but retained two that were still laying for additional rooster fodder for the winter.

Those RSL hens free ranged all fall, winter and into the spring and were fed fermented feed, which normally makes eggs taste simply lovely....nutty, sweet and no sulfur egginess to be tasted, but their eggs never did change in flavor. They STILL tasted like commercial eggs no matter what diet I had them on~pale and watery too, so I finally culled them.

Then I finally tasted the ones I had canned after feeding up on FF all month, which usually takes a strange bird from who knows where and removes the barnyard/gamey flavor from the meat....their meat STILL tasted like the feed they had been fed while at the battery. Ick. Those jars are still on my shelf, waiting until we are desperate for meat before we will likely use them.

Salmonella and e coli are indeed, easier to prevent with good hygiene. They are also more survivable by most people (even if you wish you would die). Botulism is a whole different critter. The spores are everywhere, they just don't produce the killer toxin except under very specific conditions. If you get sick from botulism and manage to survive, it can take years to recover.

If you insist on using this method of preserving corn, please at the very least, boil the contents for a minimum of 15 minutes at a high rolling boil; it may neutralize any toxins present. You are dicing not only with your own life, but those of your loved ones.

If there is anything like a Master Food Preserver's class offered in your vicinity, I highly recommend taking it; it would be very educational.

This right here is why I rarely contribute to this site any longer. There is no room for anyone to be different in their methods here....always the cries of alarm and dire predictions of loved ones dying and expressions like "Russian Roulette" when old methods of canning are mentioned.

Yes, we can appreciate that there are risks in any level of food preparation...we are adults here and have read all the dos and don'ts of canning. The thread asks for how we preserve our food and I told how we do it. I didn't ask anyone else to do it, didn't propose that everyone do it...just how I do it. No need for overdramatizing things with begging others not to do it, telling them to go take classes, etc. No need to cause anyone to feel this huge level of guilt by introducing the fate of their loved ones if they don't can like the book says to do it, etc.

It wearies me to have to deal with this each and every time I contribute to these sites. I am not a person ruled by fear, don't live my life in fear of this or that and I don't write things here with that view in mind. It's a take it or leave it prospect...if you don't like how I can things, don't do it. If you do, that's okay too, but please spare me the sky is falling kind of rhetoric.

But if you want to know why folks who have actually LIVED in a self reliant manner don't often come here to post, this right here is the reason. There is a huge level of risk in becoming self reliant that most of you will never experience due to this fear and constant need for drama....it's a risk to come out and be separate from the pack, to think outside of the box and use common sense instead of the common consensus. To think differently and do things differently, despite what the general population believes or thinks. It separates those who think of doing from those who actually DO. Those folks who DO don't post here any longer and I am remembering now why I don't either.

My concern is that when you state how you can, you don't explain that your method is not considered safe by the Agricultural Extension Office, which has extensively tested many ways of preserving foods for safety. People who are new to canning may read your directions and blithely go ahead with your directions without being aware of the safety issues. They may not be as sanguine about the risk of botulism as you are.

I agree that we are all grownups here, and entitled to make our own decisions about what risks we will take or not take, but before you can make an informed decision, you need to know all the facts.
I have made my point about the risk of water bath canning of low acid foods like corn. If people choose to ignore those risks, at least now they know that using a piece of green tomato to make the corn more acidic will not be enough.

If there are any spores of clostridium botulinum present on the corn when you start processing, 1 piece of green tomato is not going to add enough acid to allow you to safely water bath corn. It needs to be 4.5 ph or lower to be acid enough.

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What is true and what you surmise may be two different things. Green tomatoes can have a pH value of low as 3.67 or lower and canned sweet corn a pH as low as 5.9, with an average of the two combined being a pH of 4.7. Not too far off the proposed 4.5 and close enough for consideration of safe pH. IF the corn has botulism spores on it, the combined acid and heating time of processing could potentially kill the spores. IF it has no spores of botulism, it's a moot point....and your whole premise is that it MAY have botulism. My premise is that there is an equal chance that it MAY not. You have absolutely no proof whatsoever that a piece of green tomato will not add enough acid to a jar of corn to prevent botulism spores from developing. None.

The Extension Office determines corn canned alone to be unsafe for boiling water bath but has no information whatsoever about corn canned with acid added to it, so you are merely surmising what would or would not be safe according to the EO but have no real statistics or information on this at all. Your information is about corn alone, therefore, it does not apply to corn with acid added to it.

The fact that we've used this method for 40 yrs on thousands of jars of corn and have personally eaten that corn with no incidents of botulism is not "Russian Roulette" statistics. In Russian Roulette the chances are 1 in 6 that a person will be killed by a bullet. There really is no comparison with this game of chance and the calculated risk of adding acid to a low acid food and canning it.

For 40 yrs we've taken that calculated risk and have not had a single incident and those who informed us of this method had as many years under their canning belt with the same results. At this point, the method would appear to be as successful as other methods of canning that have actually BEEN tested by the USDA and the Ag Ex Off.

Since this method has, in fact, not even been tested by the USDA at all, it has not been found to be safe or unsafe and the only thing you have to go on is the pH of corn canned without added acid, you are only surmising it is a dangerous practice. I am living proof that it is, in fact, not dangerous at all and not even in the realm of the over dramatic comparison with "Russian Roulette"...if it were, then 1 out of 6 times we ate the corn over a 40 yr span, we would have the potential of contracting botulism. Since we've had not one single incidence of any sickness at all by using this method, there is no real comparison. We have not just been lucky for 40 yrs and anyone suggesting such a thing would have to be somewhat delusional.

I consider a method that has been tried with 100% success for thousands of jars of corn to be a successful and safe canning method. You still may not consider it so, but you have no proof at all on your side of the debate, while I stand on 40 yrs of proof of success.

I thought long and hard about even responding to this topic of debate but considered it worthy of pointing out the truth of the matter instead of leaving it to what MAY happen if you don't follow the rules as determined by the USDA, which have no rules about this method of canning at all, as they've never done testing on it. We, on the other hand, have been testing it for 40 yrs and found it safe, and that is the basic truth.

@Britesea @Beekissed I really appreciate your recipes and contributions and after getting very bad food poisoning from a "perfectly safe, approved, tried and tested" source, am aware of the risks involved with processing and storing foodstuffs, which is why I'm asking the experts, who's done it before me, what worked for you and what didn't.

If there are risks and safety tips we should be aware of, please do share (without arguing )

Beekissed said:

You know what's weird? I obtained some retired battery hens last year at $1 per head for canning up, but didn't want to consume the meat due to the taste of where they had been, so I confined them and fed them up on fermented feeds for a month. I then processed them, but retained two that were still laying for additional rooster fodder for the winter.

Those RSL hens free ranged all fall, winter and into the spring and were fed fermented feed, which normally makes eggs taste simply lovely....nutty, sweet and no sulfur egginess to be tasted, but their eggs never did change in flavor. They STILL tasted like commercial eggs no matter what diet I had them on~pale and watery too, so I finally culled them.

Then I finally tasted the ones I had canned after feeding up on FF all month, which usually takes a strange bird from who knows where and removes the barnyard/gamey flavor from the meat....their meat STILL tasted like the feed they had been fed while at the battery. Ick. Those jars are still on my shelf, waiting until we are desperate for meat before we will likely use them.

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Funny you mention this, I found an advert online offering some rough looking hens "free to good homes" and was wondering if I feel like going through the hassle of rehabilitating them now. I decided against it. I stopped eating chicken meat some years ago already, but I found when I raised pigs and sheep for meat, that the feed really does have a huge influence on the flavour of their meat.