Canning lid "mouths"

[austradork]

Hi everyone,

Can someone tell me if it's possible to make pickled asparagus in REGULAR mouth jars? All of the recipes I've come across call for WIDE mouth jars, but I don't have any on hand. I'm hesitant to make a substitution as it seems there's a health-related reason for every aspect of canning. So - does anyone know if mouth size has to do with safety or if I can in fact use my regular mouth jars?

 

[dipence71]

It is probably just because it is easier to fill the jar more completely with less air space. But that holds true for anything canned lol especially pickles ect..

 

[freemotion]

Yeah, my guess is that it has more to do with getting the asparagus out of the jar...without ending up with asparagus mush!

 

[patandchickens]

The main disadvantage that I know of, of using standard canning jars for canning "chunky" things, is that it is considerably harder to get all the air bubbles out. You have to *work* at it, and be pretty careful. Otherwise you end up with jars that have 2" of air at the top when they come out of the canner, may not seal well, and the exposed parts of the food gets kinda yucky.

Provided you are sufficiently careful -- and asparagus should be easier to deal with than a lot of things, I would guess, b/c of the shape -- by all means use standard jars instead of widemouth if you want.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[~gd]

It is probably just because it is easier to fill the jar more completely with less air space. But that holds true for anything canned lol especially pickles ect..

It holds true more for things that are long and thin and less for things that aren't! Take pickle spears and compare to pickle chips, no real problems with the chips but if the spears are jammed in, the spot where the jar starts to narrow to get down to the standard mouth is a choke point. If you cut your spears short enough to just reach the choke point what do you put in the excess head space above it? (I use chips or wide mouth jars which I like better than standards for everything)

 

[Kim_NC]

Agreed, it's more about ease of packing the jar &/or removing the asparagus later. It wouldn't be a safety issue. I've stopped buyimg any small mouth jars for this reason - well, unless they're ridiculously cheap like 15 cents or less. I have plenty form my 'younger days' when I first started buying jars. Now IF I have to buy jars, it's wide mouths.

Anyway, just be careul to pack the asparagus in the small mouth jars as tightly as possible and thoroughly remove air bubbles.