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i have just been having a discution with my macedonian in laws about bottleing/canning. iv spoke a little before about the subject on here within a few other threads but id like to be more specific.

they assure me you can safely jar preserve anything you want in the water bath without having to pickle or salt anything.
aslong as you first wash all the ingridients and cook them properly then pour into clean steralized jars and put into the water bath to boil steralize, then use them within 6 months and be sure to thouroughly heat through before eating.

you can make up whole meals like chilli, stew, bolignaise sauce or whatever you like, with meat and veg.
or you can do one thing at a time like french beans cooked in water, for example.
you can also do fruit, either stew the fruit first then jar it up, or you can put the whole washed and destoned fruits in the jarr with some water and a few spoons of sugar then into the water bath which cooks the fruit during the steralization process.

as long as you are careful that everything is clean and properly steralized and you use fresh ingridients then you shouldnt have any problems with bacteria. use within 6 months and allways do a smell check just to make sure.

if any one else has any experiance jarring whole meals, meat ect without pickling/salting id be happy tp hear about it :)

Technically, it can be done, if you're willing to accept that a certain percentage of those jars will contain botulism, which cannot be prevented by washing things beforehand, and that there will be no way to tell which jars are contaminated. The spores could be in or on anything, no matter how fresh.

Our ancestors did take that risk, and most of the time they were fine, but it's a gamble with each and every jar. I wouldn't be able to do that.

My advice, for what it is worth, jar anything but meat. Don't take the risk, it's like the old one about my grandad smoked 50 a day and lived to 100, ok, but not in the big book of how to stay healthy.

We kill the livestock, portion and freeze, hope that helps.

Ellendra wrote:Technically, it can be done, if you're willing to accept that a certain percentage of those jars will contain botulism, which cannot be prevented by washing things beforehand, and that there will be no way to tell which jars are contaminated. The spores could be in or on anything, no matter how fresh.

Our ancestors did take that risk, and most of the time they were fine, but it's a gamble with each and every jar. I wouldn't be able to do that.

In all jars? Or just those with meat? I'm just thinking about my jams and chutneys - and shop bought ones!!!

This one does keep coming up. The Botulism organism is found in soil and water, which is pretty hard to avoid. The risk of getting it on your food, though, is low under normal circumstances. However, the risk to your health - even your life - is high if you happen to fall foul of the original low risk. To keep the nasties away, you need a pH of less than 4.6 and you need to heat the food to be preserved to at least 240 degrees F - far and away above what you can achieve in a water bath.

If you don't do this, you are taking a risk. It's as simple as that.

Mike

Which,I believe ,is why you could do with a proper American Canner designed especially for the job.It's probably far cheaper to use a freezer to preserve fresh meat and 'ready meals', I just have this wierd thing about seeing shelves lined with jars of food,and I just dont get that with a freezer.

Following on from Demi's point,it does seem that regulations re canning, differ widely from country to country, could it be that we're all so much healthier here in the UK (where home canning of meats\etc is really discouraged ,andyou cant buy serious canners) or it could be that the Food Industry hires only the best lobbyists.

merlin wrote:My advice, for what it is worth, jar anything but meat. Don't take the risk, it's like the old one about my grandad smoked 50 a day and lived to 100, ok, but not in the big book of how to stay healthy.

We kill the livestock, portion and freeze, hope that helps.

we usually stick all the meat in the freezer, but we have limited space in there and once you stick a whole pig in theres not much room for anything else.
i was a bit concerned about doing meat in the water bath, but apparently it can be done.

nobody seems to be concerned about botulism here. i was asking about this and they said because you cook the food first before you jar it that kills everything.

botulism produces toxins which are not distroyed by heat. when you heat the food it kills the botulism but the toxin remains and thats what can poison you.

but if you kill off all the bacteria at the begining then theres nothing left to produce toxins.
also its easy to see when a jar has gone off. iv opened jars and they have exploded, so obviously we didnt eat those ones

As this is an important suject, with far-reaching consequences if you get it wrong, I am putting on a teachers' hat here. Apologies if I come across as lecturing, but it's just too important to let misinformation continue.

botulism produces toxins which are not distroyed by heat. when you heat the food it kills the botulism but the toxin remains and thats what can poison you.

It's exactly the other way around. The TOXINS are chemically broken down under heat, but the SPORES remain alive.

Quotes from Wikipedia:
Botulism can be prevented by killing the spores by pressure cooking or autoclaving at 121 °C (250 °F) for 3 minutes or providing conditions that prevent the spores from growing.
Although the botulinum toxin is destroyed by thorough cooking over the course of a few minutes, the spore itself is not killed by the temperatures reached with normal sea-level-pressure boiling, leaving it free to grow and again produce the toxin when conditions are right

but if you kill off all the bacteria at the begining then theres nothing left to produce toxins.

The bacteria themselves do not survive that, but unfortunately the spores of the botulism bacteria are not killed, so they are still present if you have a contaminated pot with insufficient sugars and/or acidity to prevent the bacteria from growing. As soon as that pot is cooled down enough (but not refrigerated) the botulism bacteria starts to multiply, thus creating botulin toxin, again.

And from the article on food poisoning one can learn that, while botulin toxin is destroyed by heat: :
"Many forms of bacterial poisoning can be prevented ...[etc] Many toxins, however, are not destroyed by heat treatment."

also its easy to see when a jar has gone off. iv opened jars and they have exploded, so obviously we didnt eat those ones

According to Wikipedia "Contamination of a canned food solely with C. botulinum may not cause any visual defects (e.g. bulging)."

So the bad news that any water-bath canned food might contain botulism spores. (but then again, I also MIGHT win the lottery one day ). The good news, of course, is that - as long as you're only dealing with botulism - sufficient heating will destroy the toxins. Do eat it all right away, cause the spores are still present and will grow again as soon as the food has cooled down.

Toxins from other bacteria may not break down with heat, so personally I'd go for pressure canning when prserving meat and/or entire meals!

.... stepping down lecturing mode....

i stand corrected.
my mum had told me that, i should have double checked it.

anyways,

its not very likly to happen. its more likly you'd get hit by a car, but thats not going to stop you from crossing the road.

in reference to cooling to food down to prevent re-growth, they keep the jars here in their basements or somewhere thats really cold. i remember my gran-in-law telling me not to keep the jars out on the shelf and to put them in the fridge or they'll go off.

I'm still confused.

Is there a risk of botulism in the jars I use for my jams - (pasta sauces, mayonaise from supermarkets) and is there a risk in supermarket foods or meat form the butchers? Or the veggies and fruits I grow/forage for?

Hmm,it'd be interesting to see a comparison between the chances of dying of botulism vs. the chances of dying of measles.

Anyhow most seem to agree that pressure canning of meats is the way to go.

THe acidity of the fruit you use to make jam, plus any added in the form of citric acid or lemon juice, will take the pH value below 4.6, so no. The botulism organism doesn't like acid at all.

Mike

Is there a risk of botulism in the jars I use for my jams - (pasta sauces, mayonaise from supermarkets)

Shouldn't be: these foodstuffs would be pressure-canned to kill off the botulism spores. Or be too acidic to be any danger at all.

and is there a risk in supermarket foods or meat form the butchers?

There might be spores perhaps, but unless you create conditions of water, no air and no refrigeration they can never come to anything. As said, acidity also really stops any botulism.

Or the veggies and fruits I grow/forage for?

Again, there might be spores, but I really don't think that's a problem. It's the toxins that are dangerous and they only are created when the bacterium starts to multiply and prosper.

There's absolutely no reason to go paranoid. It is just a chance that there might be botulism spores on food stuffs and if you give them the right breeding conditions and you don't take care to heat your foodstuffs thoroughly (!) before eating, yes, then you have a potentially dangerous situation.

Anyway, I'm no expert but I did try to read up on this matter from reputable sources.

Sticking to veggies bacause I don't have an American canner. We can't get cans here anyway, we usually 'jar stuff up' , like in jars

Hi Merlin

I believe 'canning' is putting things in jars! It's American

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