The Canning Sessions: Pears and Peppers

Well I did it! I canned. Yes I did! {insert fist pump}

Our local farmer’s market had a great sale on some fruit and vegetables so I bought a stash and brought them home to try my hand at this canning bid’ness.

Among the purty fruits and vegs I bought, I selected pears and red peppers specifically with my first canning session in mind. I decided to do a simple can process for the pears…

make some red pepper jelly with some of the red peppers…

and roasted red peppers with the rest. (I’ll tell you about that in a minute)

Pressure Canner vs. Waterbath Canner

So my biggest question was: pressure canner or waterbath canner?? Well, I don’t have a pressure canner. Just a waterbath canner. But here’s what I’ve learned: the majority of what I am growing and plan to purchase for the purpose of canning can be processed with a waterbath canner. All high-acid foods go into a hot waterbath canner.  That means fruit products such as jams, jellies, preserves, marmalades, chutneys, fruit butters, and anything pickled with vinegar like pickles and relishes. Tomatoes are high in acid and are canned in a hot waterbath canner. That just about covers all that I plan to can this year! I read a gazillion books about canning to try to educate myself – but one great website you might like to get beginning information is Our Best Bites.

Canning Roasted Red Peppers

I was most excited about canning the roasted red peppers. First of all, I adore roasted red peppers. And every time I buy a jar of them from the store, I find myself aggravated at the price. I thought surely this was going to be the solution. So I bought a HUGE bag of those peppers and set about to make my dreams come true.

You’ve roasted red peppers before, right?

Take those beauties and rub olive oil on them and roast them in the oven directly under the heat unit (or even better – grill them!) until they are blackened all over.

Then take them out of the oven and immediately put them in a paper bag to sweat and cool down.

Roll the top of the bag tightly and leave it until the peppers are cooled down – about 30 minutes. When they are cool enough to touch, you should be able to peel the charred skin off and remove all the seeds.

And there you have a roasted red pepper you can eat immediately. But of course, I was canning mine for future use so there were some additional steps. Here is where I turned to Honest Food for instructions on canning the peppers.

This whole process took a couple hours. It takes about an hour to prep and roast the peppers, then they had to sweat for 30 minutes and then it took another 30 minutes to can them. I started this far too late in the evening so by the time it was done, I was pretty “over” this fun little experiment.

The final product? I had 10 really big peppers to roast. I was expecting to get 2 and {hopefully} 3 jars out of this. What I ended up with?

One. Jar.

One not completely full jar.

So, uh, I don’t know if I’m gonna do this one again. And I bet I won’t let anyone open that jar of roasted red peppers! They’ll become the holy grail of canned vegetables in my pantry. HA!

Oh well…live and learn. I’m still…

Happily Homesteading!

JulieAnn