Home Canning of Fruits and Vegetables

Title

Home Canning of Fruits and Vegetables

As Taught to Canning Club Members in the Southern States

Excerpt

Canning has become the most widely used and popular means of preserving large quantities of fruits and vegetables. The original form, flavor, color, and texture of fruits and succulent vegetables are retained to a greater degree by canning than by any other means. For this reason, certain delicately flavored vegetables are most attractive v/hen canned. Another advantage is that canned foods are ready for almost immediate serving. It must be remembered that other means of preserving foods are very desirable, especially during the present season when conservation of all food products should be practiced. For example legumes, like lima beans and peas, and root crops, like carrots and beets, while attractive when canned in a succulent stage, are more nutritious and more economically stored when mature. Summer cabbage, cauliflower, and cucumbers are better saved in brine than canned.
Other vegetables also can be brined. Many vegetables, such as sweet com and green string beans, can be dried, and in this stage furnish variety and serve as a substitute for canned vegetables. If properly dried and stored these vegetables are attractive and wholesome. A publication (Farmers' Bui. 841) dealing with drying may be obtained from the United States Department of Agriculture.

This bulletin will deal wholly with methods for canning, preserving, and jelly making. The directions given are chiefly for those products which seem most worth preserving in these ways, and the methods are those which seem best suited to the products.