Terrific Tomato Soup and Other Tomato Recipes
(Page 8 of 9)
September/October 1975
The Mother Earth News editors
At canning time, keep such lids in boiling water until you're ready for them. Then place the tops on the appropriate jars (now filled with hot produce), screw them down firmly-but not too tightly-and process the batch in the usual way. The containers will self-seal as they cool. Recycled tops don't emit the characteristic "ping" which assures you that the conventional lid is properly closed, but you can check the seal by looking across a jar cover in a good light or by comparing it with an identical unsealed lid.
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Fair warning: Canning with resealable commercial jars and lids is definitely not recommended by experts. All the same, many of us have done it successfully and have experienced no more failures than occur with regulation equipment It's true that the breakage rate of such glassware increases at about 10 pounds of pressure—but name-brand jars are also more likely to collapse at that point. I heard of a woman who put up about 900 quarts of food last year in a variety of containers — old, new and oddball — and lost a total of only 11, with no particular type suffering more than another.
Jars with resealable lids contain a mind-boggling array of foodstuffs: salad dressing, breakfast drinks, non-dairy creamers (ugh!), instant coffee, sauerkraut, pickles, pigs' feet, orange juice (1- and 2-quart sizes), cranberry and prune juice, jellies, peanut butter, dry-roasted nuts, etc. If you use as few of these plastic products as we do, beg empties from in-laws, friends, rummage sales, recycling centers, or wherever else you can glean them. Then keep the jars and lids together for future use.
A special note on baby food jars: Most of them used to be practicable home-canning containers, but the manufacturers seem to have changed the lid designs recently and the newer types don't reseal. I've learned to avoid any that are hard to close, since they allow the jars to fill with water in the canning kettle. Another type of lid, those onego on readily andare fitted with small black rubber sealing rings — also tend to leak. Tops that will reseal are those that screw on easily and have built-in white, spongy plastic bands like those found in other reusable containers.
No closable glass jar — even one that doesn't qualify as a canning container — need be wasted. Those that can't be resealed and won't take standard lids can be filled with jams, jellies, and preserves topped with paraffin. I put up my apple butter this way (and, I'll admit, I did lose a couple of quarts to mold last year). "Dud" baby food jars are fine for small amounts of jelly, or as freezing containers for infant-sized servings of homemade purees or whatever. Non-resealable bottles can be stoppered with corks to store such products as catsup.
Large jars which formerly held instant iced tea mix are good storage containers for dried foodstuffs and herbs, tomato "bouillon," and anything else you please. Those with the green striped lids make pretty see-through canisters for lentils, beans, pasta, etc. The nonsealing covers of such glassware can be made more airtight with liners cut from blotting paper or cardboard.
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