what makes a recipe unsafe to can?
 

I have been reading as much as I can on this forum to ready myself in my new "hobby". I plan on making some spaghetti sauce and some salsa this fall when my crop comes in. I have seen a few posts stating recipes that are not safe to can?

What makes a recipe unsafe to can? I do not want to make something that could harm my family.

Ken

Any recipe not know to be safe to can. That means any recipe that the USDA, it's scientists and it's lawyers haven't given the nod to.

What makes a recipe unsafe to can in a water bath is low acid. In a pressure canner, the inability to reliability heat the entire contents of the jar to the required temperature without turning the product to mush.

As time has gone on less things have canning recommendations, which I believe is a refection of improved food science. It also is a reflection of our decreasing tolerance of perceived risk, an increase in our demand for the "quality" of the canned product and a bias toward letting "experts" do everything for us.

what doug said.

Hot water bath processing requires a product to be acidic enough to prevent bacterial/fungal development.

Pressure canning obviates the need for acidity but is limited by the density of the product. For example - pumpkin butter is low acid and far too thick to safely pressure can in the home kitchen (sigh).

Great sources for safe home canning recipes are the Ag Ext service of your state. I especially like the GA & NM ext service recipes for salsas.

Tomorrow I am taking the 3 day Acidifed Foods class offered by NCSU - required for folks who want to make & sell home canned acidified food products. From friends who have already had the course, it seems they are no longer advocating hot water bath processing - instead opting for the European method - boiling product into sterilized jars & hot lids put on - seal forms... this'll be sumpin' different for me!

The key bad guy in home canning is botulism, but IMHO the fear of it is often over done. In spite of some 20+ million home canners in the USA, many of whom break the rules, botulism is very rare, especially for tomato products. In a ten year report on botulism incidents in America published by the Center for Disease Control ([URL]http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol10no9/03-0745.htm[/URL]), we average only seven cases per year from home canning, and only one case from a tomato product in the entire ten year period (1990 to 2000). Additional reports show only four cases from tomato products in 18 years with no deaths, In addition, the survival rate for botulism is 96%.

I don't mean to underplay the dangers, just trying to put it into a reasonable perspective. I disagree with the common position that defines anything not proven safe as unsafe. There are degrees of safety, and many common things we do every day are a [U]lot[/U] more "unsafe" than home canning. Every year hundreds of people die getting out of bed, slipping in the shower, falling down the stairs, choking on food, and getting into car accidents. Yet what do we do every morning - we get out of bed, take a shower, go down stairs, eat breakfast, and drive to work. How reckless can we get!

Botulism spores are everywhere, but only hatch and produce the toxin when conditions are right, i.e., low oxygen, low acidity, presence of water, and moderate temperatures. For safe canning you either need to kill the spores with high heat, or prevent them from hatching with high acidity, or both. High acids foods such as many fruits and pickled products require little processing, while low acid foods like corn, asparagus, and green beans, require severe processing, such as long cooks in a pressure canner.

Most tomatoes are high enough in acidity to prevent botulism (pH below 4.6), but the pH rises with the addition of too much low acid foods like onions, garlic, and peppers. Exactly how much of these sauce additions is acceptable is hard to say as even the "approved" recipes vary a lot. I use a fair amount in some of my recipes, but I also add citric acid to increase acidity and pressure can. If you keep the low acid additions low and add some acidity such as vinegar, lemon juice, or citric acid, you can safely can tomato sauce and salsa in a boiling water bath. Otherwise a pressure canner is best.

There is a lot of information on proper canning here: [URL]http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_home.html[/URL] including approved recipes for tomato sauce and salsa.

Canning is a fun and rewarding hobby and I have been canning tomato products for over 35 years. Yes you should take care to follow recommended practices, but don't let the unrealistic fear of botulism that is often found on the Internet scare you away.

TomNJ

[QUOTE=TomNJ;275010]The key bad guy in home canning is botulism, but IMHO the fear of it is often over done. In spite of some 20+ million home canners in the USA, many of whom break the rules, botulism is very rare, especially for tomato products. In a ten year report on botulism incidents in America published by the Center for Disease Control ([URL]http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol10no9/03-0745.htm[/URL]), we average only seven cases per year from home canning, and only one case from a tomato product in the entire ten year period (1990 to 2000). Additional reports show only four cases from tomato products in 18 years with no deaths, In addition, the survival rate for botulism is 96%.


TomNJ[/QUOTE]

I wonder in that same time period how many people have gotten serious infections from cutting themselves while preparing food to can or freeze, and how many have been killed or seriously injured while driving to the store to get canning supplies.

Frankly I go by the Ball Blue Book, and not even necessarily the most current edition, which has removed some recipes and increased the boiling time on other items. The older recipes were just fine and nobody got sick. Just follow a known, good recipe, boil all the jars and use all clean tools, rags, etc. as directed.

[url]http://msue.anr.msu.edu/topic/info/food_preservation[/url]

Includes info on canning classes, etc in Michigan

If you buy a pressure canner today, it will come with a booklet that describes how to use and the information includes how much pressure and for how many minutes. The booklet breaks down the differenct categories of foods that can be safely canned, and that list includes meats.

Interestingly enough, the booklet has the exact same recommendations that are given out by the USDA site on canning (which is headquartered at the University of Georgia). Simply google "canning" and "USDA" to get the website. There are several PDF files that can be downloaded and the information is well worth the effort.

[URL]http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html[/URL]

Download all the guides and you essentially have the booklet that comes with a pressure canner. The guides also have times for Boiling Water Bath on the foods that can be safely done with BWB.

msu.edu site... I can trust thm I think... after all, I am a Spartan.


plenty of good insight here, thank you.

I was wondering how "new" recipes come about if its against the "rules" to experiment...

I had dreams of becoming actually good at this someday and maybe even creating a product of some kind... but not likely

Ken

The government lowered the temps pork should be cooked a while back from sawdust to something you can actually eat.

I have never cooked pork and poultry to these death valley temps.
I knew better.

Worth

Following "approved" recipes is an individual decision - many if not most do not. I don't care for their recipes and always create my own, just staying within some reasonable guidelines.

TomNJ

The approved recipes and warnings are worth spending some time reading to understand the issues. With water bayh canning it is all about the acidity. I seem to recall one memebr recently talking about using a lab grade pH meter to verify the acidity of his recipes.


Canning, IMHO, is also a very worthwhile endeavor.

[QUOTE=RebelRidin;275101]The approved recipes and warnings are worth spending some time reading to understand the issues. With water bayh canning it is all about the acidity. I seem to recall one memebr recently talking about using a lab grade pH meter to verify the acidity of his recipes.


Canning, IMHO, is also a very worthwhile endeavor.[/QUOTE]

There was a guy on here for a while that washed his cucumbers in the washing machine before he pickled them.
I have 2 problems with this.
1 It is over kill.
2 I dont want to eat something that has been in the same place as the dirty socks and underwear./puke
Reminds me of the folks I heard about that mixed sausage in the bathtub./puke
Not gonna happen.

Worth

[QUOTE=Worth1;275103]There was a guy on here for a while that washed his cucumbers in the washing machine before he pickled them.
I have 2 problems with this.
1 It is over kill.
2 I dont want to eat something that has been in the same place as the dirty socks and underwear./puke
Reminds me of the folks I heard about that mixed sausage in the bathtub./puke
Not gonna happen.

Worth[/QUOTE]

Yeah I tend to favor dedicated equipment for the kitchen myself. Except my fingers... I use them for just about everything. :shock:

I only mentioned the fellow using the pH meter to point out the importance of adequate acidty. He was making up his own recipes as I recall. Of course all the folks who tested the recipes at/for the USDA were using them.

I have a cooking book called [I]Ratio[/I]. I gives all kinds of ratios for common cooking and baking items, which is awesome for a person like me who likes to experiment with every recipe. I wish there was some ratios for canning foods. Every time I make salsa I think about adding or subtracting ingredients but am very cautious about doing so because of the dangers of canning, or perceived dangers.

I do use a PH meter when I'm working out new sauce and salsa recipes, as the common hot sauces that mostly taste like vinegar are far from my favorite. I want a sauce that tastes like the pepper first and foremost.

Ultimately if you're doing something for sale you have to get the recipe and the entire cooking/testing/bottling process approved by a 'process authority'. When I took the commercial acidified food processors course I asked about a 'rule book' and was told there would never be one because the research and therefore the rules are constantly changing.

The worry about changing ingredients for things canned in a BWB is that it may change the PH, using a meter alleviates that concern.

[QUOTE=Worth1;275088]The government lowered the temps pork should be cooked a while back from sawdust to something you can actually eat.

I have never cooked pork and poultry to these death valley temps.
I knew better.

Worth[/QUOTE]
America's Test Kitchen were the first to really point me in the direction of USDA pork temperatures being 20 degrees too high. Now I take pork to [B]145°F[/B] and let it rest til it hits 150°F. And chicken, I go for [B]155°F[/B] on the breast, and [B]175°F[/B] on the thigh. Of course steaks I practically want them to walk to the table. ;)

And just to continue in this [I]vein[/I], if you have ever cut into fully cooked chicken and found blood around the bone and wondered why, there is an [URL="http://www.hi-tm.com/Documents/Bloody-chik.html"]explanation[/URL]. After reading that, you'll know why restaurants these days tend to [I]torch[/I] chicken.

that's an interesting article on the chicken, I had no idea.

[QUOTE=Worth1;275103]There was a guy on here for a while that washed his cucumbers in the washing machine before he pickled them.
I have 2 problems with this.
1 It is over kill.
2 I dont want to eat something that has been in the same place as the dirty socks and underwear./puke
Reminds me of the folks I heard about that mixed sausage in the bathtub./puke
Not gonna happen.

Worth[/QUOTE]

Gee, Worth....

I'm the one that posted about washing cukes in the washing machine....when doing bushels and bushels of cukes in an assembly line fashion. Guess I didn't know that my hernia operation was a sex-change one. :P :twisted: :panic: :P

And for the record. I do an organic bleach or vinegar rinse , followed by a serious hosing down of the washing machine before I do the cukes....and again afterwards.

Teasin' ya!

Zana

I only hot water bath process my pickles if they don't seal on their own. Otherwise, I use what is referred to as the "European" method in a previous post. Boiling brine poured over the contents (and I make it with organic apple cider vinegar which has a high acidity than regular white vinegar - or what passes for white vinegar these days.) into hot sterilised jars and covered boiling hot sterilised lids. When we used to do 200-300 Litres of pickles in a day, I'd probably have to process in a hot water bath, less than 20 jars. Granted I made sure that all the lids were clean of any scratches too, so that I could get a good seal, and that any jar that either looked off when I took it from the cold cellar or smelled off when I opened it, were pitched. But most of our pickles didn't last long enough to test out how long the shelf life was. But when I did variations on the Tourshi (Armenian mixed pickles) not everybody liked all the combos so some of those kicked around in the cold cellar up to 2 to 3 years.....and were still good (except for the occasional one). So far in over 45 years of pickling and canning, I haven't managed to kill anybody or make them sick (ok, there were a few who ate waaaaaaay too many and were sick.....but that could've also been because they chose to drink the brine too. LOL)

So prepping of the actual canning jars, lids and rings is just as important in my mind as the contents to prevent spoiled food and botulism. Just my humble opinion.

Zana

Feldon, that is a very interesting article! Makes sense to me, as the commercial chicken breed, the Cornish cross is basically bred to eat, not do much walking around and just grow like crazy (kind of like commercial turkeys). I would not be able to bring myself to eat the pictured chicken though...just too ingrained in me to think of red, bloody chicken as bad. My mom always overcooked pork chops so badly, I stopped eating them as an adult. Now I can enjoy properly cooked pork. :-)

Zana, while I am so glad you have never made anyone sick with your way of sealing cans w/o processing, the mods here would not make recommendations at Tomatoville based on a person's experience. <grin> To be safe, I would only recommend using an approved recipe for canning anything. That is the ONLY way to be really safe...and yes, attention MUST be paid to the equipment and ingredients too. :-))) That's the 'official' line...

Follow the common sense guidelines, and if you are worried about dying from Botulism or the like, buy a lottery ticket. You have far better odds of hitting the latter.

Zana,

For the recipes you are posting, please do not post canning recipes that do not give directions for proper water bath processing. If you do not know how much time the jars need to be processed, please say to refrigerate or freeze. Only approved canning recipes can be posted here for safety reasons. I would appreciate it if you would edit the ones already on the board. :)

batch? do you mean bath?

Worth, you are so right. I complained to Publix here in Atlanta because all of the cooking suggestions on their meat are about double the cooking time needed to reach recommended temperatures. Basically, they are recommending that people destroy the expensive ribeye they just bought. I thought it was terrible to have lawyers write recipes. Result of my complaining: nada.

Scott, you are so right. Overcooking a nice steak should be against the law <grin>! I have read somewhere (don't remember where) that problematic bacteria would be on the outside of meat so cooking a steak rare is not a problem, but cooking hamburger rare would be...since the bacteria on the outside of the meat has been ground and mixed all together with the interior meat. I love med rare steak but don't eat burgers that way. My preference... :-)

[QUOTE=coronabarb;276336]Zana,

For the recipes you are posting, please do not post canning recipes that do not give directions for proper water bath processing. If you do not know how much time the jars need to be processed, please say to refrigerate or freeze. Only approved canning recipes can be posted here for safety reasons. I would appreciate it if you would edit the ones already on the board. :)[/QUOTE]
I've also been taking a close look at pickle recipes and methods, and it turns out that the method called "hot fill/hold" is approved - but only for recipes that are classified as acid foods or acidified foods, with a final product pH of 4.6 or less. The hot fill/hold method brings the pickles to the necessary pasteurization temperatures, so water bath processing isn't necessary. The best description I could find of the process and its limits is here:
[URL="http://www.fapc.okstate.edu/files/factsheets/fapc118.pdf"]www.fapc.okstate.edu/files/factsheets/fapc118.pdf[/URL]
The size of the pieces of food being pickled is an important factor, where larger pieces might bring the temperature of the boiling brine down below the necessary for pasteurization, and would require a water or steam bath instead.

The same pdf also contains a handy list of the pH of foods that you might be pickling, which would affect the final pH depending on the formula for the brine, pH of added water, and volume and moisture content of raw pickle material.

The pH of the usual 5% vinegar used in pickling recipes is 2.4. Pure water is pH 7.0 but in practice may be above or below 7. A 1:1 ratio of vinegar to water in a recipe would be 2.4+7/2 = 4.7 if the water is neutral pH. So unless the food being pickled is also acid, there's no reason to expect the final pH from this recipe ratio would be 4.6 or less. Recipes with a higher ratio of vinegar to water could be used to provide a margin for error, and reasonable certainty the final pH isn't too high. 4.6 is an important benchmark because it prevents growth and germination of [I]Clostridium botulinum[/I] spores. Pasteurization temperatures are also lower, the lower the pH, and the process is expected to kill any vegetative cells of other pathogens and hermetically seal the jars.

The second factor for safety in a pickle recipe is "available water" aw, which bacteria require to grow, where water is assigned the value 1.0, fresh foods around .99, and preserved foods have lower aw values depending on the amount of salt and/or sugar used.
Salt is reported to have six times the water binding activity of sugar. An aw value of 0.90 is given to foods with 12% salt or 55% sucrose. A typical 12% salt brine recipe is given as 1/2 cup salt per litre (4.2 cups) water- the 1/2 cup salt/4 cups liquid is a typical ratio I have seen in some USDA approved pickle recipes which also include vinegar. 50% sucrose in recipes is given as approximately 1 cup sugar to 1 cup water.

The salt and sugar in a recipe provides a second line of defense against bacteria, some of which are able to grow at pH lower than 4.6. At available water aw value of 0.90 there is no risk that any of the following will grow in the pickles: [I]Bacillus cereus, Camplyobacter jejuni, Clostridium Botulinum, Clostridium perfringens, Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella, Shigella, Vibrio spp., Yersinia enterocolitica[/I].
For an aw value of 0.85, I believe it's a 15% salt solution, very salty! and will also inhibit most yeasts as well as toxin formation by [I]Staph aureus[/I], which has the largest range of pH and salt tolerance among the common food pathogens.

Heat treatment and effective pasteurization is necessary to ensure no pathogens are alive in the sealed product, to multiply while in storage. Botulinum toxin in food can be destroyed by reheating to boiling for 5 minutes, but toxins produced by [I]Bacillus cereus[/I] (min pH 4.3; aw 0.92) and by [I]Staph aureus[/I] (min pH 4; aw 0.83) are very heat stable and cannot be destroyed by reheating. For more about specific pathogens and food handling:
[URL="http://www.hi-tm.com/RFA/food-path-summ.pdf"]www.hi-tm.com/RFA/[B]food[/B]-path-summ.pdf[/URL]

I have used the hot fill method for years as do many commercial canners.

Many products would be ruined in hot water bath or pressure cookers.

Its what I do it is my own business and I wont post recipes I don't want to be chastised.

Worth

[QUOTE=coronabarb;276336]Zana,

For the recipes you are posting, please do not post canning recipes that do not give directions for proper water bath processing. If you do not know how much time the jars need to be processed, please say to refrigerate or freeze. Only approved canning recipes can be posted here for safety reasons. I would appreciate it if you would edit the ones already on the board. :)[/QUOTE]

Does that go for me too? Because I also don't can things in a traditional manner, nor do I tell people what method, pressure cooker, hot water bath, or just hot brine fill. Shoot my Mom even uses an old Carolina method that involves COLD brine! :twisted:

We even used to make Sauerkraut by using zinc lids and purposely not sealing them so they could ferment naturally!

Then afterwards we had many uses for the extra cabbage vinegar including so called Sauerkraut pickles!

I am pretty sure that pretty much breaks every rule in the book!:)) It's a wonder I even survived childhood on the farm.:panic:

[QUOTE=Redbaron;306870]Does that go for me too? Because I also don't can things in a traditional manner, nor do I tell people what method, pressure cooker, hot water bath, or just hot brine fill. Shoot my Mom even uses an old Carolina method that involves COLD brine! :twisted:

We even used to make Sauerkraut by using zinc lids and purposely not sealing them so they could ferment naturally!

Then afterwards we had many uses for the extra cabbage vinegar including so called Sauerkraut pickles!

I am pretty sure that pretty much breaks every rule in the book!:)) It's a wonder I even survived childhood on the farm.:panic:[/QUOTE]

I hear that.:yes:

Worth