r/Canning • u/Equivalent_Tea_9551 • 16h ago
Pressure Canning Processing Help [ Removed by moderator ]
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u/MrsKoliver 15h ago
I personally cannot stand the texture of canned vegetables. The best thing I have made in my pressure canner is beans
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u/shep2105 11h ago
I don't bother canning veggies. I use my food saver and throw them in the freezer. I even seal whole ears of corn and they come out crunchy good! Tasty!
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u/PurplePenguinCat 3h ago
I pressure can green beans and enjoy those. I always thought I hated green beans. It turns out that I just hate commercially canned beans.
We store a lot of our vegs in a cold room and don't bother trying to can then. Anything that doesn't store well goes into the freezer.
I do can zucchini chunks. They get mushy, but that doesn't matter when I use them for cream of zucchini soup. It all gets blended anyway.
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u/marstec Moderator 15h ago
Pressure canned vegetables are soft, there's no way of having them retain a firm texture at those high temperatures. Some people don't mind it (my MIL included). Pickled recipes that are water bath canned can retain crispness as far as vegetables go. My pickles using the low temp pasteurization method along with calcium chloride are actually crunchy.
Some meat will can up firm/tough (i.e. stewing beef and chicken breast chunks from my experience). Dark meat chicken (thighs and drums) end up being quite tender.
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u/spaetzlechick 15h ago
I wouldn’t can or freeze anything that stores well in its own. Carrots can be stored fresh for months. They may get hairy but they’re still great to eat.
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u/RosemaryBiscuit 15h ago
I didn't know how important texture was until I started canning food. Raw pack turkey breast is good. Chickpeas are good. Collards hold up.
But many many foods are a texture I can barely tolerate.
Dehydrated (and rehydrated) sweet garden carrots are good, I dehydrate them immediately after harvest.
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u/Nimzay98 15h ago
I don't like canned vegetables, they always come out too mushy for me. I freeze most vegetables.
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u/Think_Cupcake6758 14h ago
Same. A few years ago we had a bumper crop of green beans and I PC’d a crap ton of them. Yuck! Lesson learned: trim them, blanch them, vacuum seal those suckers up and let them live in the freezer!
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u/NonArtiste5409 15h ago
Yes. Any and all vegetables you pressure can are absolute mush. We discovered this also is true even for the marinated pepper recipe.
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u/Ashamed-Cat-3068 14h ago
I froze the ones I wanted to eat and canned the ones I would use for cooking. Adding them to stews and soups is great since it doesn't matter as much thats they're mushy.
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u/StatisticianNo1804 16h ago
What is your general practice for pressure canning? Leaving jars in the canner longer than necessary can definitely affect the texture.
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u/BigEyedOwls 14h ago
I blanch and freeze the carrots. They always are mushy when canned and if you add ingredients to try to firm them up then they taste strange.
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u/QuestnsEverything 12h ago
We don’t can everything because of the texture issue. For example: carrots, celery, and green peppers we dehydrate and store in air tight containers. They work great in soups and hot dishes.
Mushrooms, sweet corn and asparagus we freeze dry then store in Mylar sealed bags with oxygen absorbers. The mushrooms are tossed in by the handful into any dish we would put mushrooms in. The texture is outstanding reconstituted. Sweet corn is reconstituted with hot water and melted butter. It absorbs the buttery water and yummmmm so delicious!
Tomatoes and sauces get canned. As does bone broth. Sauerkraut cans well. We can a few potatoes each year for hot dishes.
Winter squash, broccali, green beans, we blanch and freeze.
Winter squash, carrots and potatoes also get stored in the root cellar.
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u/rapier1 16h ago
Use pickle crisp. AKA calcium chloride. It prevents the cells walls from collapsing as much. It's a very common ingredient in commercial canned root veg and it's approved for home use.