Canning

[BDG]

No, I would not generally. I do a bit, but it is limited to tomatoes - high acid food anyway and pickles and chutneys - w/r to chutney, as you know, cooked for hours with vinigar and salt and pickles salted then stored in vinigar - both high acid environments.

Even storing tomatoes this way is a pain - rather than pressure cook I do in the oven as I can fit more jars in, but I had a though a few years back - my tomatoes stored get used in sauce - along with onion and garlic - so I use up the over wintered onions that will not store making sauce with the first glut of tomatoes - as I have freezer space, freeze it in portions, do not have to worry about storing nasties, worry about storing a load of jars and so on.

I think the whole canning / jarring thing is more suited to certain parts of America, where any ground in winter could be several feet under snow, where as in the UK we can reliably be harvesting plenty of brassica in winter. Also, beans and peas I freeze - if we were in a world without deep freeze, I would salt the beans and dry the peas rather than mess around.

I think canning has its place around storing meat, but still people in the UK managed fine with making bacon and brining meat. OK, so salted venison might not be the best thing in the world so for holding it for more than a month or so with out deep freeze, you would need to can.

Does make me think however, how many americans canning are doing it becaus they are 'playing prepers', how many are fair weather gardeners and how many because it is something they do as part of their yearly routine and always have?