25 Canning Secrets Mountain Women Took to the Grave

Comments · 19

• OP

  @opybrook7766 · 1 month ago

  I always canned over 1,000 jars every year. Seldom had a seal let go.

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• MI

  @michelle1903 · 1 month ago

  When I was growing up, my grandfather always took care of the garden, from planting to harvest, and my grandmother did the canning and preserving.  I learned to can from my father, who learned from her.  It's been passed down several generations in our family and we all try to keep that going with our own children.  They don't see the value in it right now, but I have faith that they will in the future.

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• AV

  @AVToth · 1 month ago

  A pressure cooker is the same thing used to sterilize instruments in the hospital, only theirs is much bigger. Steam sterilization, the autoclave.

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• AV

  @AVToth · 1 month ago (edited)

  In the Texas Hill Country we have wild mustang grapes. When my aunt was telling me how to make dill pickles, she told me don&apos;t use alum. That&apos;s what most people use to make pickles crisp. She told me to go out and find a grape vine. Fill a paper sack with enough leaves to be able to put two or three in each jar. &nbsp;She said not the big &amp; old leaves but the ones just a bit smaller than my hand. You pack your pickles, put in what every you&apos;re going to use, dill,etc. &amp; put those well washed leaves on top of the cucumbers. Then you pour your brine or heated vinegar over the leaves, wipe the jar lid good, because salt in solution is hard to see and just a little between lid and jar will keep it from sealing. Put the lids on &amp; put jars in a hot water bath. In about 6 weeks, you&apos;ll have pickles. Those leaves work so well that I took best of show, three years running at our county fair.<br>(Those grape leaves are FULL of tannic acid, that&apos;s the crisper )<br>I&apos;ve also made pickles so salty you flat couldn&apos;t eat a little nibble. I&apos;ve made some that were mushy. A good seal is the most important. A bad seal and you&apos;ll be able to do your own botox because you&apos;ve grown, from that bad seal, botulism. &nbsp;😉A good seal doesn&apos;t guarantee good taste. I our early days,we have failures, salty, mushy,et. You learn.

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• CO

  @cos7per · 2 weeks ago

  I am 76 and I canned with my mom. &nbsp; I just made her 14 day pickle recipe.

• HG

  @hgbugalou · 1 month ago

  I really appreciate you calling out the old ways that have actually been replaced by better or safer methods while standing by whats tried and true. So many channels like this aren&apos;t always honest about the old ways and look at everything with rose colored glasses. I come away with a lot more trust in the knowledge being shared when done like this.

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• HO

  @hollyjobitner3285 · 5 days ago

  I like to take food preservation a step in a different direction. &nbsp;I like to freeze dry separately onions, parsnip leaves, and peppers, then vacuum seal them in a wide mouth canning jar for mixing in a meal loaf, stuffing or whatever. &nbsp;We vacuum seal different dry goods for long term storage. &nbsp;It does require a freeze dryer, an additional expense. &nbsp;I recently mailed my sister several bags of homemade chicken barley soup. &nbsp;Locally grown chicken, I’d canned, our carrots,onions, and garlic. &nbsp;Made the soup, then freeze dried it. &nbsp;Just add hot water and stir. &nbsp;She called me and said she hadn’t eaten barley soup that good since mom made it at home. &nbsp;🖖💙

• JA

  @janicegelbhaar1047 · 1 month ago

  I never learned canning from a book, I learned in from my Granny. I was allowed to use the steam canner, Granny used the pressure cooker

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• JO

  @josephbrown2774 · 1 month ago

  Nobody that I know of doesn&apos;t inspect a lid and use it twice if they may, and NOBODY ever boiled low acid food that was canned, if any real humans saw otherwise please let me know!

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• EC

  @EcoSavvySolutions · 1 month ago

  I have a question. Where I live in the Appalachians, we don&apos;t have as much what you could call &quot;water&quot; as we have &quot;dissolved rock&quot;... hardest water I&apos;ve ever seen. Back in the day, before distilled water or water softening, how did they get either sour or sweet pickles right? Especially sweet, because adding lime to this water just takes its superpower- being alkaline enough to ruin hair, nails, clothes, and plumbing- and sends it further towards the need for an exorcism and a priest!

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• AV

  @AVToth · 1 month ago

  One of the best feeling&apos;s in this world is laying down for a bit after having started canning about 7:30 am. &nbsp;I&apos;d have fussed at the kids again this year about the cucumbers, they have wrinkles and dirt gets in there. Clean them all and get out all the dirt. &nbsp;I&apos;d have either put up peaches, tomatoes, greenbeans, blackeyed, purple hull, crowder &amp; acre peas. &nbsp;Mama called Acre peas SOB peas. They are one of the best peas I&apos;ve ever eaten, but they are tiny. I put up corn, okra, pickles in different styles, dilled green beans. Whatever I&apos;d spent all morning putting up, was lined up to cool off and as I lay there dozing off, the PING....PINGPING....PING &nbsp;of the lid snapping down felt like success.

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• RO

  @roroa6877 · 1 month ago

  Your videos are very interesting and I do appreciate all the information. I do disagree about reusing the lids for canning. My mom often reused them, after inspecting them. I reuse them as well and very rarely ever have an issue. I don’t use them if they’re in bad condition or if there’s any warping in the rubber, or any rust on the lid, of course. I know the county extension office will disagree. I can only go by what I’ve seen all my life.

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