Canning 20 Meals from ONE Harvest!

hi everybody welcome back to living traditions homestead well our garden is producing like crazy already and we've gotten some really nice harvests and you know when i talk with people out in the community or online that we produce a lot of our own food and i do a lot of canning i always hear amazing stories from people amazing memories that they have of their grandmas who did a lot of canning and when i talk about green beans specifically people are always talking about memories of snapping green beans for their grandma how their grandma would always have green beans for them when they came over and nothing was as good as grandma's canned green beans and those are the memories that i really want to have for my children and for my grandchildren so today i'm going to be practicing being an awesome memorable memorable grandma by canning more green beans so today i'm going to bring you along while i can green beans we've had three really nice harvests of green beans this year and we're hoping to get some more but the three harvests that we've done so far i've canned some and i've freeze dried some and i'm hoping that after we get these guys into the canner i can bring out some of those freeze dried green beans so i can show them to you taste them and tell you about how they are so i would love for you to stick around and to find out really how easy it is to can green beans now whenever we harvest green beans i have my girls snap them for me and they do a really good job and they don't mind it and they like to be able to entertain themselves with a movie or something and snap green beans at the same time but i want to just talk a little bit about what to do with green beans after you harvest them do you have to process them that same day if you're busy or you're working does everything have to happen that day and really the best thing that you can do is yes harvest them wash them snap them and can them all in the same day that's the best thing that you can do but that doesn't always work for everybody and we're all busy so the green beans that you just harvest off of the bush or the vine they can be stored in like plastic shopping bags tied up kind of loosely in the refrigerator for a couple of days if they have to when you're ready to snap them make sure that you rinse them with with water just to get any debris off of them any of the like leftover brown little flowers that have kind of dried up because really you don't want that in with your canning solution you don't want that floating around you don't want to serve that to your family or to your company when they come to eat your canned green beans and then you will snap them there are lots of different opinions about how large you should snap them if you should take off the stem end and the very end but just to make things easy for us i just have the kids snap off the stem end and uh snap them into just you know two three four pieces per bean maybe an inch and a half long and it's really not that hard if you have several people working together or if you have a really great movie on it goes by really quickly and all of a sudden what you think is a huge job that's not attainable is all done and you have a big container full of green beans ready to can now there are some situations where you don't want to can particular beans and i want to talk with you about that if you find a couple beans that have several or any rather bug holes i wouldn't can those and sometimes when the beans are maybe on the vine a little bit too long or you've refrigerated them a little bit too long before you can them they start kind of getting rusty colored or spots of maybe light brown color on the beans you want to pass by those for canning you can serve those steam them eat them real quick but those aren't the good quality beans that you want to have in your canning jars you just want to make sure that you are canning the best beans of the bunch so that they're safe for your family for the long run the method that i use for canning green beans is the raw pack method where you put all the green beans in your jars just raw you don't cook them ahead of time and so we're going to get the jars over here and start packing them now before we get too much further i do want to let you know that green beans must be pressure canned they can't be water bath canned no matter what our grandmas and great grandmas did the safest thing for you to do is to pressure can them and if you are having anxiety about pressure canning or if you're really worried about it i promise you you don't have anything to worry about it's very very easy and it is very fruitful in the end so i have prepared all of the jars that i could possibly need for this canning session i'm going to be using a double stack presto pressure canner it will hold two levels of pint-sized jars not the quart sized jars but the pint-sized jars and it will hold about 20 pints in that canner so that's what i have prepared i've prepared 20 pint jars i've washed these really well let them air dry and we're going to fill these up with the raw green beans now generally with pressure canning you fill them as full as up to one inch above the top and so that's what we're going for we're going to put beans in here until they're about one inch from the top of the jar so we have that all filled i'm just going to keep doing the same thing until all of the beans are in the jars or i'm out of jars so we're just planning to do 20 pints of green beans [Applause] okay so all of my jars are filled up i actually had a little bit extra so that was definitely plenty to fill up an entire double stack canner full of pint-sized jars now the next step that i'm going to do it's not required is to add a half a teaspoon of salt to each jar i do like the salt because it really enhances the flavor you don't need to put the salt in there that is really just a preference and we really do enjoy that i actually use pink himalayan salt i'm actually running out i buy it in bulk five pounds at a time from azure standard which is an online buying group that offers a lot of good prices on mostly organic foods i'm actually getting my shipment next week another five pounds and a five pound bag of it it runs about eight dollars and you know prices fluctuate and the five pounds fills up a half gallon jar like this so i need that soon because canning season is just starting for me so i'm going to be putting a half teaspoon of salt in each jar you can either put it in the jar first or you can fill your jars with your beans and put it in second and that's what i'm doing today now if you are canning green beans in cord size jars you would add up to one teaspoon of salt this is the first year that we are canning green beans in pint jars rather than quart jars because one of our daughters is 18 and just graduated high school and is going to college so we don't need to can in quartz we need to cannon pints because there will be one less person eating green beans when we serve them with our dinner it's kind of sad but exciting for her to start a new chapter in her life now if you are interested in learning more about buying the salt in bulk and actually a lot of foods in bulk that are organic i want to encourage you to check out azure standard i do have a link to their website in the description of this video just below and you can learn more about that i actually really love azure standard i can buy a lot of the food that we eat on an ongoing basis in bulk so i don't have to go to the grocery store as often and i feel like it saves me a ton of money on organic products okay so these have the salt in them i just need to wait for my water to boil that i have on the stove top and then we'll get ready to can these green beans so my water here is boiling that's what we're going to use to pour in with the green beans this is my double stack canner i actually need to fill the bottom of it with a little bit of water in the sink now in these presto canners they have a tiny little mark that shows you the water level i think it actually is two quarts of water but you'd want to double check your instruction manual which you should always keep by the way always keep your instruction manual for your pressure canner you can see the little mark in there and that is where you're going to fill your water level to so i've got enough water in here i'm just gonna put this on the stove we need to get all set up for canning so we can fill up this pressure canner and get these green beans going the boiling water is ready so we can get started canning okay this is very easy you guys you have all of your jars prepped for the hot water we're going to take a canning funnel put it inside that jar we're gonna ladle enough water so that the water level comes up to about one inch from the top of the jar but we're going to check the water level with one of these devices that you can get you know by the canning supplies in your supermarket or big box store it has little measurements in quarter inch increments and you just check and make sure that your water level is at least one inch below the top of the jar it can be a little bit under but you don't want it to be over and this is perfect now the next thing you need to do is get out any air bubbles that are trapped in your jar and so i like to use a chopstick to just move the green beans or the contents of the jars around a little bit to release all of that air we're going to take a damp towel and wipe the rim of that jar to make sure that there's no food debris on there that would prevent the lid from sealing to the jar now i am using ball lids that you can buy in the grocery store these are single use one time only use lids they've been hard to find this year but i have found enough to use for my green beans these you just need to wash them and rinse them really well you don't need to put them in hot water anymore or boil them first these instructions are right on the box to do it this way so put your lid on top of the jar you're going to put a band on there and screw it down until it's finger tight it's just a tiny bit tight and then we're going to put it in our pressure canner let's do another one bring our jar over with the canning funnel in it fill it with water until it's about one inch from the top and over time you will figure that out you'll be able to eyeball it but until you're comfortable with that you want to measure it that's good let's get those bubbles out wipe off the rim put on a lid and a ring and put it in the canner it's really just as easy as that you guys it doesn't have to be so intimidating in goes the last jar for this level and then we're going to put one of these dividers in there and the second level of jars will sit on top of there [Music] all of the jars are in our counter so it's time to close it up put the lid on screw it down in place we're going to turn on the heat i'm going to keep this on high heat until you can see steam starting to vent out of this little portal here whatever this is and uh so we're gonna be watching for that once it starts venting out of there we'll let that continue for 10 minutes before we put the weight on there now just before when i was canning i talked with you about these canning lids being single use only one time use only but there is another option there are reusable canning lids and i'm using the tattler brand reusable canning lids i did a video recently about how to water bath can with these reusable canning lids but if you're interested in learning how to pressure can with the reusable canning lids make sure that you indicate that in the comment section below and i'll make sure to do a video soon about how to pressure can with them if you're interested in learning more about them you can go to their website it is reusable canninglids.com or you can check them out in our amazon shop i want to talk with you really quickly about the two different types of pressure canners that the presto company makes this one here is one of their canners and it has a pressure dial on the top that shows you what pressure you're canning at now generally you will can at 10 psi unless you live higher than 1000 feet above sea level and then you'll can at 15 psi that's what we can in when you get one of these canners with a dial on it you get a weight that you put on top of here and it doesn't really rock back and forth so you will control the heat of your oven to make sure that the psi the pressure stays just at 10 or 15 or a little bit over but not under so you're in control of the pressure now on the other type of pressure canner that presto offers it has a different type of lid okay you see it doesn't have one of those pressure dials on it pressure gauges it just has a hole it has a different type of weight the weight itself determines the pressure that you're canning at based on how many rings on the weight you use so just plain it's five pounds of pressure one weight it's 10 pounds 2 weights it's 15 pounds and you'll know that it's gotten up to pressure because it will rock back and forth well i find this dial gauge type of canning to be a little bit more stressful that i'm in control of how much pressure there is and you have to hang around and make sure that it doesn't get too low or get too high but i've learned a trick that you can use these this weighted type of weight to put on there to control the pressure in your pressure canner so that you don't have to sit around looking and making sure that your dial is at the right number so when it's time for the weight to go on i will not use the weight that came with this i will use the weight that came with my other kind of canner and the pressure will be controlled by this weight it's actually time for the weight to go on my timer just went off so 15 pounds of pressure for me because of my altitude gonna go on when it starts rocking back and forth that is when i'll set my timer now just as i put the weight on here the pressure built up enough to make this little top this little lock thing i don't know what it's called this little gauge popped up and so that's a good thing that's a normal thing so now we just need to wait for our pressure gauge to rock back and forth and we know that it's up to pressure and we can start our timer these green beans in pints you will process for 20 minutes if you are going to be doing quartz you'll process those for 25 minutes the canner has reached 15 psi and you can see that the weight is rocking back and forth nicely and you can see on the gauge it is at 15 psi so we don't have to worry so much about it just going overboard and getting too much pressure so i set a timer for 20 minutes and we'll come back when it's all done okay so our timer has gone off it's been 20 minutes i'm just going to turn off the heat and i'm just going to leave it there and this is going to sit here until the pressure has gone completely down to zero and this little thingy that popped up before it needs to go back down so it will take quite a while for this to cool down so you can just go about your day and keep coming back to check on it while we're waiting for the jars to cool i just want to talk with you a little bit about freeze drying we have a harvest right freeze dryer and it's been so fun experimenting and having another way to preserve our harvest so we have done two rounds of preserving green beans in the freeze dryer and it's been so awesome the benefits of freeze drying are that number one if they're stored properly they can last 20 years so it's really a great long term storage option the second thing that's really great about freeze drying is that it really retains almost all of the nutrients when you're dehydrating when you're canning when you're freezing you're losing some of those nutrients are kind of lost in the process but freeze drying retains nearly all of the nutrients all the vitamins so we've been really loving it our freeze dryer is the medium size harvest right freeze dryer it has four trays like this that you fill up just pour your green beans on there and kind of you know in a single layer you just put them on here and put them right in your freeze dryer and the way that they have it set up is just really kind of push button software you shut the door turn it on voila that's all you have to do until they're done okay now when the green beans come out of the freeze dryer they're completely preserved we just have some of these in a jar for snacking we don't store them in here for long-term storage we use mylar bags with oxygen absorbers but i just want to show you how these look how you can hear how crunchy they are and i'll taste one for you you can see that they look pretty much exactly like green beans like they went in they're super crunchy and crispy and when you eat them just like this they're crunchy like little chips the most interesting thing about freeze-dried veggies and especially about these green beans they taste exactly like a fresh green bean right out of the garden and we're just really excited to have an additional way to preserve the harvest that we work so hard for and if you're interested in learning more specifically about the harvest right freeze dryers make sure you check out that company and we have a link to that in the description section of this video the pressure canner has the pressure's gone all the way down to zero and this little uh thingy here what i don't even know what it's called has dropped back down so the pressure is completely gone out of here uh the next step is to remove this weight so what's going to happen here is the heat is going to start escaping through here along with it just kind of really gradually cooling down on the outside of the canner the one thing we really need to be careful of right now is the jars cooling too quickly and for the temperature to change too quickly if that happens there is a risk of the contents of your jars siphoning out or rushing out of the top of the jar in between the lid and the rim of the jar and what can happen is food contents can slip in between the jar rim and the lid and get stuck there and that will compromise the seal so we need to make sure things are cooling down really slowly now in the instruction manual it gives you a time frame to wait after you take the weight off before you open up the lid and what i actually do just to be safe is i just leave it like this for a really long time sometimes even until the next morning and the jars seal just fine with those single use lids on them so in order for me to really feel safe that everything's going okay and things aren't going to siphon out i'm just going to leave it here for quite a while before i open it up well i've waited almost two and a half hours and i think it's probably safe to open this up now it it's definitely safe i am still going to be careful so i'm just going to turn it and lift that off carefully they look good inside there so let's prepare the counter with a towel so that there's not a big temperature difference between the hot jars and the cold counter and we'll pull them all out and line them all up [Music] do [Music] well there you go guys 20 meals worth of canned green beans from our garden it doesn't get much better than that i am so happy that you guys spent time with me today learning how to can green beans i hope you enjoyed it if you did if you're enjoying videos like this from us please make sure you hit the subscribe button and also the best way that you can help us is to just share our videos on your social media if you know somebody who's been worried about pressure canning make sure you share this video with them because it is really easy until next time guys thank you so much for stopping by our homestead take care and god bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 69,297

Rating: 4.9652033 out of 5

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing

Id: uE3cvZ9UYok

Length: 25min 3sec (1503 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 31 2021