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If you buy from a link, we may earn a commission. Here’s the lowdown on how to troubleshoot. Canning can be a little intimidating. Break out the cookbooks: This is no time to riff on a recipe. Canning is an exact science, so it’s always important to follow a tested and approved recipe when canning for the sake of food safety,” Piper says. Using fresh instead of packaged lemon juice.
Think you can swap the bottled stuff for the fruit itself? In order to be safe for canning, some types of fruits and vegetables require the additional acid that’s not guaranteed with fresh lemons. If a recipe does call for fresh lemon juice, it’s just for flavor. This one’s not so much a mistake as unnecessary. Using metal utensils to remove air bubbles.
Or even worse: failing to remove air bubbles at all. It’s extremely important to remove air bubbles prior to processing,” Piper says. When air bubbles are not removed, the air trapped by the food will essentially add to the headspace. Too much headspace can lead to seal failures. Remember that headspace we alluded to? If jars are overfilled, the contents may siphon or boil out during processing,” Piper explains.
Any food residue remaining on the jar rim, such as grease, juice, seeds, or pulp can prevent the formation of an airtight seal. Remember: “You can always safely go down and process at the same time, but you cannot go up in jar size,” Piper says. Yep, there’s even a right way to screw on your lid. Using just your fingers, screw bands down evenly and firmly just until a point of resistance is met—fingertip-tight,” Piper says. Do not over-tighten bands by using the full strength of your hand. Over-tightening bands can prevent air from venting out of the jars, resulting in buckled lids or seal failure. After processing, bands may appear to have loosened.
You can reuse the jar itself and even the bands, but you can never reuse the Mason jar lid—for canning, that is. After the first use, the plastisol seal is spent and will not recover enough for reuse when processing,” Piper explains. Using a lid multiple times can lead to seal failures for this reason. It turns out, you can’t freeze all wide-mouth jars. That’s because the contents can expand during freezing, which can break some types. But there’s an easy way to tell which ones are freezer-safe: “Look at your jar,” Piper says. Where you secure the band is referred to as the neck of the jar.