Dry Pack Canning

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paulrobots
captain of 100
Posts: 374

Dry Pack Canning

Post by paulrobots »

Hi, I know there must be a lot of experienced canners on the forum. I am a novice and I want to ask if I'm doing this correctly. I don't have a vaccuum sealer so I'm doing this in the oven.

I found a great deal on name brand cereal so I bought 30 boxes. I put them in new, cleaned, rinsed, and dried 1/2 gallon, mason jars. It worked out to be a box per jar, almost perfectly.

I put them (in batches) in the oven at 200* for 1 hour, pulled them out, put the rings and seals on finger tight, and put them back in for another 1/2 hour. I then took them out, tightened the lids, and let them cool. Most of them sealed but a few did not.

What can I do to get them to seal on the first try?

scottja
captain of 100
Posts: 424
Location: Gilbert, AZ

Re: Dry Pack Canning

Post by scottja »

These instructions are for dry packing, dry product in glass jars.
Pack the Jars with dry product, Put the lids and rings on loosely, then put in the warm oven, the heat will expand the air inside the jars and the jars will burp a little air out.
then after the time, remove the hot jars and tighten the rings,.
When they cool the air inside the jars will shrink pulling a vaccume.
Prepared cereals wont last as long as whole grains.
Expect about 1 year for the cereal.

Wet products, need a completely different process, either water bath, or pressure canning.
Get the "Ball Book of Home Storage" - it has the best instructions.

paulrobots
captain of 100
Posts: 374

Re: Dry Pack Canning

Post by paulrobots »

scottja wrote:These instructions are for dry packing, dry product in glass jars.
Pack the Jars with dry product, Put the lids and rings on loosely, then put in the warm oven, the heat will expand the air inside the jars and the jars will burp a little air out.
then after the time, remove the hot jars and tighten the rings,.
When they cool the air inside the jars will shrink pulling a vaccume.
Prepared cereals wont last as long as whole grains.
Expect about 1 year for the cereal.

Wet products, need a completely different process, either water bath, or pressure canning.
Get the "Ball Book of Home Storage" - it has the best instructions.
Thanks, Scottja. I tried it exactly like you describe a few months ago and most of my jars did not seal. I've been good at making sure the jar mouths are wiped clean. Maybe I had the wrong time and temp?

I found these alternate (heating sans lids first) instructions several places. Here is one example.

http://theprepperproject.com/oven-canni ... m-storage/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

brianj
captain of 1,000
Posts: 4066
Location: Vineyard, Utah

Re: Dry Pack Canning

Post by brianj »

On Amazon you can buy a Seal a Meal brand vacuum sealer for $40. It appears to come with a hose, and you can buy jar sealer attachments for $9 or $10 from the FoodSaver website. These will take some practice before you can reliably seal jars, but the result is a much greater vacuum than you will get from the oven heating method.

And I would recommend taking a hint from how they did things at church canneries - put oxygen absorbers into the jars. I believe we would put one 300 cc absorber into each can when the canneries were operating, but a 100cc absorber will be more than enough either way you choose to can. You can buy a pack containing one hundred 100cc absorbers at Amazon for under $10. They will come in a vacuum seal package that looks like it was sealed with a FoodSaver or competing product, and if you don't use all the 100 at once you will want to re-seal the package. Or, if you don't buy a vacuum sealer and still have a lot of absorbers left, they would probably not go bad if you put them all in a half pint canning jar.
Using the heating without a lid method you described above, you would want to drop the oxygen absorber into the jar immediately before putting the lid on.

brianj
captain of 1,000
Posts: 4066
Location: Vineyard, Utah

Re: Dry Pack Canning

Post by brianj »

I should add that I have a Food Saver that was gifted to me by a relative who found she never used it. I rarely use it with the pouches for anything but sealing blocks of cheese, but I use the vacuum containers and jar sealers it came with very often. And, since the church closed their canneries, I have used it to jar dried foods for long term storage - foods like split peas, dry kidney beans, and bulk purchased spices. If we are asked to gather our food storage and gather to Utah, as some believe and some early prophecies suggest, while everybody else is having bland rice and white beans for diner this New Orleans native will be cookin' up some nice spicy red beans and rice! I only wish I could jar crawfish tails or andouille sausage!

Ann
captain of 10
Posts: 31

Re: Dry Pack Canning

Post by Ann »

When did the canneries close? I was just there 2 months ago.

paulrobots
captain of 100
Posts: 374

Re: Dry Pack Canning

Post by paulrobots »

Ann wrote:When did the canneries close? I was just there 2 months ago.
They are still there but you can't can anything there, only purchase pre-packaged food.

brianj
captain of 1,000
Posts: 4066
Location: Vineyard, Utah

Re: Dry Pack Canning

Post by brianj »

Ann wrote:When did the canneries close? I was just there 2 months ago.
Unless you live in Utah, Idaho (Idaho Falls or Boise), Mesa AZ, Carrolton TX, or Lethbridge AB you did not go to a cannery - you went to a home storage center. Seven canneries in Utah remained open, plus the five listed above outside Utah, remained open after June 2013 but the others were renamed home storage centers and they only sell pre-canned foods.

There are a few foods I would like canned, but which are not offered by the church. In years past I could check out a portable canner from the cannery and can split peas, dry kidney beans, or popcorn at home. But these days the only affordable option is vacuum sealing in home canning jars - which are obviously much more fragile than tin cans.

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