Canning Amish Canning Videos

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***REBEL CANNING ALERT***

I ran across these videos about "old school" canning. I know the internet canning police do not like these, but I think they're very interesting. Am I going to water bath meat for 3 hours? No. Still, it's nice to know how women preserved foods for their families before all of our modern conveniences. Obviously, people have survived for thousands of years without the National Center for Home Food Preservation. I don't plan on doing it, but I love reading/hearing about the old ways. I do like to file information away in the back of mind for "just in case". If I didn't have a pressure canner and couldn't get another one (for whatever catastrophic reason), would I water bath? Yes I would. Again, your kitchen your rules. If you have some time to kill this weekend consider watching.

These two are about Amish canning methods. First one is ~25 min, second one is ~10 min.

View: https://youtu.be/5OS-ZBNnmk8

View: https://youtu.be/yB6TC4K-VNg


This one is about Appalachian old ways food preservation. It's just her talking, but I really like her channel. Of course, I'm an Appalachian native myself. ~40 mins

View: https://youtu.be/YH2vUELtqlY


Please create your own thread if you want to discuss the dangers of rebel canning. Thanks!

 

[SouthernBreeze]

I wouldn't do it, either, but I love to read about the old ways of doing things. Those old ways may come in handy one day soon.

 

[Border Collie Dad]

I've eaten a lot of canned meat (beef, pork and venison) that wasn't pressure canned and I didn't die.

I do have a pressure canner and use it now

 

[WalknTrot]

Obviously, people have survived for thousands of years without the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Some did...some didn't.

 

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[Publius]

Good to know if the gasket gives out on the pressure canner at lest you may have some way of preserving meat other than drying it out by salting and smoke.

 

[oops]

Remember gran water bathing everything...her rules were beyond stringent...can I do it the old way...yep...do I...no...to many headaches n like I said...her rules were beyond stringent...with the pressure canner...I can do other things while the canner is going...instead of sittin n watchin water boil to make sure it doesn't drop below a rollin boil the entire time...includin the second kettle of water...

 

[Melodi]

Canning is not thousands of years old, it was invented for a contest during the Napoleonic Wars. My FIL is a retired doctor and grew up during the Great Depression, he knew so many people who became violently ill or died he was terrified for us when I started canning. It took me years to explain that these days, meats and low acid foods are either pressure canned, or in some cases "pickled" (canned with enough vinegar/sugar/salt to bring up the PH balance).

My old Joy of Cooking had the old times for "water bath" canning meats and Low Acid Foods, as the Amish still do. After three to five hours of boiling, there probably isn't a lot of nutrition left. Also, as Summertyme has explained and I gather the video does too, the Amish teach their children to NEVER taste anything directly from a jar.

If you hard boil anything for 20 to 25 minutes it will kill most buts, the reason people of my FIL's generation are so terrified of canned green beans (even my Mother had this) is that most people don't open a jar of green beans and rapidly boil it for 20 minutes.

I am seriously looking at learning both fermentation and what they call "pickling" over here as an alternative to pressure canning if things get to where that is no longer easy or safe to do (or we just can't get jars or the canner dies).

Eastern Europe has survived for centuries with the pickling, fermenting, and salting/smoking variations and will probably work in our cool but very humid climate as well (we have a dehydrator but without the food molds before it dries, even sometimes over the turf stove).

People are free to do what they want, but while the Dept of Agriculture in the US can, in my opinion, go way overboard as every year they seem to find something else to "ban" from canning to the point where you wonder if this message was brought to you by "Industrial Processed Food Sales Inc); I think the basic high acid/water bath can, low acid/pressure canner is a good rule of thumb.

On the other hand, I didn't throw out my canned zucchini the year they suddenly "banned it," either. I didn't make any more, but I didn't throw mine away either.

 

[kyrsyan]

IMNO, they keep throwing things at people to make them more and more scared of doing for themselves. Case in point the article on how your gardening may cause heart problems.

But the Amish way of canning low acid things is not something I'll follow. There are other safer ways if I can no longer use a pressure canner for some reason.

My willingness to follow Dept of Ag changes to guidelines is a bit... I don't have a problem when they present the results of new testing that proves that something is not safe. I tend to be a bit more skeptical when they change their guidelines because "they can no longer find the original research". That's just bad record keeping and automatically assuming that their predecessors did not do their jobs correctly, in other words ego. Example, they proved why to not can pumpkin puree or pumpkin butter. They didn't assume. They did the research and proved it.

For years they would tell you not to can onions because it was unsafe. Until one year they admitted that it wasn't that the older recipes were unsafe, it was that the results were "unappetizing". Well ugly chicken and pork are unappetizing to look at in the jar but they cook up into some mighty fine dishes when needed. Lo and behold this last year or two when onions can once again be canned and the guidelines are the same as the old ones. Oh, and now bell peppers can be canned. I make use of both of them.

If they want to have people follow them canceling old guidelines, then they need to provide updated testing results.
That said, I don't can summer squash because the results are just uck. I don't freeze it for the same reason although I'm going to try again on that because I want to make my own veg mixes if possible.

Everyone needs to use their own best judgement. And, at the same time, be willing to accept the consequences of their decisions.

 

[WalknTrot]

My grandma was pressure canning back during the Depression in the 30's, following standards sent out in bulletin form from USDA, and she was doing it on a wood-fired cookstove. She canned plenty of meat, including venison, beef and pork - because no electricity on the farm, so no freezer or refrigerator, (haha....except the natural freezer over the long Minnesota winters). Yeah, they had a smokehouse, and Grandpa did some salting, but believe me...a diet full of that stuff has it's limits - try it sometime. And it still doesn't keep for shit in warm weather.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what's up with (some of?) the Amish and why they don't pressure can their meat and low-acids. Granted, they aren't the most educated folks on the planet, and they don't use electric stoves, but they can use propane, and those ladies get pretty proficient with regulating heat on a wood cookstove. Tradition maybe, or pure German stubbornness.