Any unconventional canners out there?

[old fashioned]

My favorite local store will be having fresh button mushrooms on sale tomorrow and I'd like to get a bunch & can them. Has anyone ever w/b canned them before???
If so, what time do you use for pints??? Any special treatments? or anything else I need to know???

Any & all info here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[sufficientforme]

I have saved this in my favorites for three years but have not tried them, looks like what you might be looking for. The author says she has been WB them for 20 years with no issues.
*Eta the author states that it is important to use 1 1/4" or smaller buttons on this recipe, I am assuming it's a safety issue. The recipe was from a master canner recipe published in 1989.
http://www.food.com/recipe/laurels-marinated-mushrooms-easy-canning-227237

 

[old fashioned]

Thank you SFM, that sounds like a tasty & I'll try it too.

I was also wondering about doing just sliced mushrooms (like store bought canned) using only a little salt & water.

 

[sufficientforme]

Oh sorry I was excited for someone to try these! Here is more what you are looking for
http://www.pickyourown.org/mushrooms_canning.php

 

[old fashioned]

No need to be sorry, I had also wondered about a marinated mushroom recipe-I just hadn't got that far yet. The one in your link sounds yummy & worth a try.

The second link only mentions pressure canning method (of course :/ ), but I think I'll brave it for w/b & no absorbic acid.

We all love shrooms & use alot of em, both fresh & canned. Around here shrooms usually cost $3-$4 or more per lb fresh, and a small 4oz can is nearly $1 each. So when I seen the ad for $1.29 per lb for 10 or more lbs, I can't pass it up.

Anyway, thanks for the info.

 

[sufficientforme]

What about dehydrating them in the oven if you do not have a dehydrator? It would work for soup additions and then you would not have to worry about the no acid issue of needing to pressure can them.
I must live in a cheap area for buttons because your sale price is what I normally pay :/

 

[old fashioned]

Well, I did it!

I ended up buying only 4.5 lbs & wasn't too sure what to do with them. I finally sliced up a pot full, covered with water & boiled for about 5 minutes. I used the smallest jars I had 5-1/2 pints & 2 (10oz) jelly jars. My thought here is by using smaller jars & long processing times would provide greater safety since w/b plain mushrooms are questionable. Using 1/4 tsp of canning salt & loosely filled the jars leaving plenty of headroom & processed in w/b for 1 hour.

Then thanks to SFM-I dehydrated a bunch for future use. And I still had several left over but no small jars only pints & quarts & really wanted to try the marinated recipe, so I made a few adjustments since I didn't have enough 1/2 pints & the shrooms were larger than recipe called for & I didn't have any pimentos. I only had enough for 1 pint. So I quartered them down to size & processed 45-50 minutes.

There were a few pieces of mushrooms & a couple of tablespoons of marinade leftover. DS & I ate them for a taste test & both of us thought it was delicious. So we can't wait until they'll be ready. I'm figuring around Halloween.
I would definately recommend anyone trying the recipe for marinade. And I bet it would work great for artichoke hearts too, or any vegetable.

 

[colowyo0809]

Aight, now I have a question for the diehard water bathers
We bought 40#'s of potatoes when we were in montana cause it was a wonderfully good deal and they are actual idaho potatoes I'm thinking we need to can some of them so we have them instead of letting them go to waste. Do we just follow the directions for them that the ball book has for the pressure canner and just apply it to the water bath? should we double the time for the water bath? hmmm, questions! answers?

 

[miss_thenorth]

Potatoes, and all low acid foods, need a pressure canner.

 

[Icu4dzs]

I think the FDA is trying to keep food safe. I don't agree with how they do it sometimes (like irradiation), but I try to follow the modern guidelines for food processing. Just took one story in epidemiology about near death by botulism.

Anyway, I do the inverted-can method sometimes for my blackberry jelly. I don't get overly excited over high-sugar, high-acid foods, but I definitely pressure can low-acid veggies (only beans) and occasionally venison.

Obviously people have lived just fine by water-bath canning their meats, but I bet we've lost a few that way, too. Personally I would want to boil the heck out of it to be sure, in which case I may as well pressure can it in the first place.

The issue of botulism is clearly the main point when canning in my experience, however either method will generally, if performed correctly, yield the same results.

Fortunately, the truth about botulism toxin is that it can be "killed."
The toxin is heat labile and can be destroyed if heated at 80�C for 10 minutes or longer. 80 C = 176 F so boiling the product should safely kill the bacteria and destroy the toxin.

I have only had experience with pressure canners and fortunately, never had a problem. I have heard of the explosive nature of these canners but if used properly *(and they are NOT damaged at the seal level) they are safer and quite a bit faster.

I have several pressure cookers and will admit that if I could only have one item in my kitchen for "survival purposes" the pressure cooker would be the one.

I learned canning from my mother who was (G*d rest her soul) the most incompetent individual I ever knew with her hands but brilliant intellectually. She never had a problem with the pressure canner...my point being that if we can do it, anyone can do it.

There are a few tricks to pressure canning and the most important of these is undamaged equipment and watching the heat; not letting the pressure go to high. I used to cook fried chicken in pressure cookers for a restaurant and never had a problem even with canners filled with hot oil.

You can do it too.
YMMV
Trim sends.