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A guide: jarring and canning
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Guide: food preservation
The freezer died. The jars did not.
An interactive guide to jarring and canning, built around one reader’s pantry.
A reader sent me this, and I have not stopped thinking about it:
“I’m 72 and retired. My standup freezer died on me about 2 years ago. I ran out and bought a Presto canner to save what I could in the freezer. Been canning ever since. I pretty much live off my jars. I live in an apartment so no garden. I’ve always got green beans, white beans, and small red beans. Lately I’ve been canning a lot of corn. It’s on special for 25 cents / ear. I have rice and flour in bulk. I keep soup bases on hand.”
“If I were to grow 5 crops it would be tomatoes, sweet potatoes, beets and bell peppers.”
That is food security at 72, in an apartment, with no garden: one Presto canner, rice and flour in bulk, produce bought the week the price drops, and shelves of jars that do not care whether the power stays on. A dead freezer is the ordinary disaster. It happens to everyone eventually and it takes everything in it. A sealed jar on a shelf has no compressor to fail.
I built this guide around his pantry. Every processing number in it comes from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) tables as published by the National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP), the University of Georgia program that tests these procedures, and I checked each one against the source page on 2 September 2026. None of it is my opinion of how long a jar should boil.
The one rule that keeps it safe
Everything that reader cans is low acid. Green beans, white beans, red beans, corn. So are sweet potatoes, beets and peppers. Low acid means a pH above 4.6 (pH is the scale for acidity; lower numbers are more acidic), and 4.6 is the line that matters because of one organism. Clostridium botulinum is a common soil bacterium whose spores survive boiling. In a sealed jar with no air, no acid and a comfortable room temperature, the spores can wake up and produce the toxin that causes botulism. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) puts it plainly: you cannot see, smell or taste it, and home canned vegetables are the most common cause of botulism outbreaks in the United States.
The spores are destroyed at 240 to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Water boils at 212 at sea level, and no amount of extra time in a boiling water bath makes it hotter. A pressure canner running at 10 to 15 pounds per square inch (PSI, the number on the gauge) gets there. That is the whole reason the Presto exists, and it is why USDA has recommended only pressure processing for vegetables other than tomatoes since 1943.
Acid foods are the other side of the line: fruit, jams, pickles, sauerkraut, and tomatoes with acid added to the jar. Those can go in a boiling water canner, because the acid does the part of the job the pressure would otherwise do. Tomatoes sit right on the line, which is why every USDA tomato recipe adds bottled lemon juice or citric acid before the tomatoes go in.
If a recipe for beans, corn, soup, potatoes or any vegetable other than acidified tomatoes says water bath, oven, dishwasher, or “just boil it longer,” close it. Surviving a method is not evidence the method is safe, because the failures give no warning. USDA lists open kettle, oven, microwave and dishwasher canning as methods that do not prevent all risks of spoilage. That page is linked at the bottom.
What do I do with this?
Pick the food, the jar, your canner and your elevation. The card shows the USDA process and links the page it came from.
A Presto with a needle gauge on the lid is a dial gauge. If the pressure regulator has removable rings marked 5, 10 and 15, it is a weighted gauge. Presto and USDA both say a dial gauge should be tested once a year, and if it reads more than 2 pounds off, replace it. Many county extension offices test them free.
Pressure and time change with elevation because water boils cooler the higher you are. Buffalo, New York sits near 600 feet. Not sure? Search your town’s name with the word elevation.
Show the rest of the guide: the run step by step, what not to can, the four crops, pantry math, sources
The run, start to finish
This is the pressure canning sequence from USDA, in order. Tick each step as you go. The list remembers itself on this device until you reset it for the next load.
Using a boiling water canner instead (acid foods only)
Jars go in hot, covered by at least 1 inch of water, 2 inches for a process over 30 minutes. Start the timer when the water is at a full boil, keep the lid on and the boil going the whole time, and add boiling water if the level drops. When the time is up, turn off the heat, wait 5 minutes, then lift the jars out. Cooling and seal testing are the same as above.
Things people can that should not be canned
Each of these is in the USDA directions. None of them is a matter of taste.
- Flour, rice or dry beans heated in jars in the oven. The reader keeps rice and flour in bulk, and that is exactly right: keep them dry, cool and sealed. Oven heating dry foods in canning jars is, in NCHFP’s words, not a recommended science based method, and dry packing vegetables without liquid can leave them under processed.
- Mashed or pureed sweet potato, pumpkin or squash. USDA publishes a process for pieces only. Cube it now, mash it when you open the jar.
- Noodles, rice, flour, cream, milk or thickeners in soup. They go in the pot at supper, not in the jar.
- Tomatoes without added acid, or tomatoes from dead or frost killed vines.
- Peppers in quart jars. Half pints and pints only. USDA publishes no quart process.
- Any low acid food in a boiling water bath, an electric multi cooker, an oven, a microwave or a dishwasher. Pressure canning is the only method CDC or USDA recommend for low acid food.
- Canning powders, and flat lids used twice. The powders do nothing for safety. A flat lid seals once; the screw bands can be used again.
- A jar with a bulging or leaking lid, a jar that spurts or foams when opened, or food that is discolored, moldy or smells wrong. CDC’s rule: do not taste it, throw it out.
The four crops he would grow
He counted five and named four. I am leaving the fifth to him. Here is what each of his four becomes in a jar, plus what the extension offices say about growing it in a pot, since an apartment can still have a sunny balcony.
Tomatoes
The most useful crop on the list for someone who lives off jars, because crushed tomatoes are the soup base that keeps. Add the acid to every jar, then either canner works. A warm season crop: 6 to 8 hours of direct sun a day, and a 5 gallon container at minimum for one plant.
Sweet potatoes
Pressure canner, in pieces, in liquid, 65 minutes for pints and 90 for quarts. Do not mash. The plant wants a long warm season and a lot of room: extension guidance points to a 25 gallon container or a half barrel.
Beets
Two roads. Plain beets in the pressure canner, 30 minutes for pints, with the inch of stem left on so the color stays in. Or pickled beets in the boiling water canner, 30 minutes at low elevation, with the full measure of 5 percent vinegar. Beets grow in containers; give the roots depth below the soil line.
Bell peppers
Pressure canner in half pints or pints, peeled, 35 minutes. Or pickled strips in the boiling water canner, 5 minutes at low elevation, in sterilized jars. Warm season, the same 6 to 8 hours of sun as tomatoes, and a 3 gallon container at minimum per plant.
Pantry math
He buys corn at 25 cents an ear and beans by the bag. Here is what a year of jars costs in canner loads and pounds, using the USDA quantities for a standard load (7 quarts or 9 pints). Pick a food and a jar above first.
Where these numbers come from
- USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning (2015 revision), as published page by page by the National Center for Home Food Preservation, University of Georgia. The card above links the exact page for each food.
- NCHFP, Ensuring safe canned foods (the 4.6 line, the 240 to 250 degree requirement, which foods are low acid).
- NCHFP, Using pressure canners (venting, timing, the restart rule, gauge testing) and Using boiling water canners.
- NCHFP, Equipment and methods not recommended, Cooling jars and testing jar seals, Recommended jars and lids, Storing home canned foods.
- NCHFP, Canning tomatoes, introduction (acid amounts, dead vines, both canners allowed).
- CDC, Home canned foods and botulism (the outbreak statement, the warning signs, pressure canning as the only recommended method for low acid foods).
- Presto, Pressure canner comparison guide (dial versus weighted regulator, annual dial gauge testing, which sizes hold quarts).
- Container sizes: N.C. Cooperative Extension, Easy container vegetables. Sun hours: University of Maryland Extension, Growing vegetables in containers.