Vacuum sealing jars
Although I vacuum seal plastic bags, vacuum sealing canning jars is new to me. How do you do it? Can tomatoes, beans, onion, and zucchini also be dried and vacuum sealed? Is it better to seal in a plastic bag or in a canning jar?
Sharon May
Carlsbad, California
While vacuum sealing in plastic bags and jars may help keep food fresher, longer, I’ve never really bothered. I’ve done it, but don’t feel the result is worth the extra cost and work involved. All of my dry foods are kept in airtight jars, tins, and plastic pails and I’ve never had food spoil. Or had food taste less than good. (I’ve got 25-year-old dehydrated apple slices that look and taste like I did them yesterday!) I know “oven canning” to seal canning jars full of dry foods is popular now but I store hundreds of pounds of food and really NEED my canning jars for canning. There are online videos of using a vacuum sealer for sealing canning jars if you’d like to watch the process. — Jackie
Refrigeration
Growing up we had a small frig and did not refrigerate ketchup and pickles, peanut butter, jellies and jams. Someone recently commented about the opened jar of peanut butter in my cabinet. Am I asking for trouble not refrigerating this items? What about seeds like mustard, celery, sesame, and poppyseed? Do they need refrigeration?
Jean from Michigan
Folks today over-refrigerate! If you had no refrigerator or a very small one like ours, you’d quickly see you need it for a lot less than is commonly “advised” today. Grandma and Mom (and me too) never saw the need to refrigerate these foods. Sesame and poppy seeds don’t really need refrigeration but they’ll stay fresher, longer, with it. Mine sits on the shelf in small packages. I buy in bulk and can up the rest in half-pint jars using the method used to can nutmeats. (check out my canning book!). — Jackie
Using over-ripe cucumbers
Our neighbor just brought over about 60 pounds of very large Armenian cucumbers that got away from him in his garden. He still has more to give if I want them, including some smaller slicing ones. It seems like a shame to waste these gigantic cukes, but I’m sure they’re not that good for eating as cukes any more. Other than grinding for sweet relish, do you have any suggestions on how we might preserve these? I think they would probably make good bread and butter pickles if they were sliced small enough. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Some might end up as chicken food anyway.
Dallen Timothy
Gilbert, Arizona
I make both sweet and dill relish from my oversized cukes. I also make sweet chunks out of them after removing the seed cavity as the seeds are oversized by then and tough. You can make any pickle recipe with them after removing the seeds. If the skin is getting bitter or tough, peel them first. It’s amazing how fast they get oversized; from two inches long to two feet in two days it seems. — Jackie
“All of my dry foods are kept in airtight jars, tins, and plastic pails and I’ve never had food spoil. Or had food taste less than good. (I’ve got 25-year-old dehydrated apple slices that look and taste like I did them yesterday!) ”
I am new to dehydrating and having some success this past summer with tomatoes and am fascinated because in SHTF scenario and lids become unavailable, sun drying and dehydrating seems to be awesome as you can dehydrate almost anything, but some people keep telling me, you have to do this and you have to do that. I can’t afford a vacuum sealer and the 02 absorbers are expensive and a one time use, when you put up your dry foods are you just placing them in jars, tins and plastic pails and nothing else? I’m really going to try to make tomato powder, etc. this summer and don’t want to lose my harvest. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise!
We have vacuum-sealed some Mason jars holding dehydrated stuff like various peppers. We used the “jar adapters” that fit the top of the jars and are connected to the vacuum sealer device by a little hose.
Once sealed, they are OK. We had limited success getting all jars to seal. It appears that the sealer/adapter combination cannot handle large relatively “empty” volumes as well as it can handle the heat-seal bags that actually have essentially zero “empty” volume after “evacuation”, and the “fit” of the jar adapters is of some doubt.
That said, we have several jars that have remained tightly sealed after several years. Of course once you open one you have to again go thru the vacuum-sealing procedure if you don’t use up all the contents.
Interesting concept but we haven’t decided exactly what it’s really good for. Its one unique feature is that it doesn’t result in “crushed” contents like you get when evacuating/sealing bags.
The only peanut butter that HAS to be refrigerated is the “natural” type, as it does not have preservatives. I learned that the hard way after I opened some and two weeks later it was rancid (twice). After the second time I noticed the “refrigerate after opening” notice. I had never even heard of refrigerating peanut butter before that either. If you do, it makes it almost impossible to spread and tears the heck out of your bread!
I never refrigerate peanut butter. People really do that? I also don’t refrigerate butter, ketchup, bacon grease, mustard, hot sauce, eggs and other stuff. Any sausage or bacon that didnt get eaten at breakfast gets set out on the stove wth a towel over it. It keeps just fine til lunch. I figure if my granny did it that way and lived to be 98, I can do it too. I do store my unused butter in the freezer and in the refrigerator but the butter for immediate use goes into a squat half pint jar with a lid and gets kept on the counter. It’s the perfect consistency all the time.
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