Hello, Hivers!
Today's post is about canning some zucchini.
I had a good harvest of big zucchinis from last summer's garden and I had not canned them all, so I was storing them in the basement. The large ones will store reasonably well for a few months before they start getting soft. I check them fairly regularly so they don't go bad without me knowing it. I had a couple of them starting to get a bit soft so I decided to can them. I can zucchini chunks in wide mouth quart jars and use it as a filler in my crockpot stew.
As usual, I thought of taking some pictures after I had started the process. I use the cold pack method for zucchini, it's just easier. I fill all the jars with the cut up zucchini first, and then I put the hot water in all the jars at the same time. I have a pot big enough to heat up all the jars at the same time so they're hot when I put them in the pressure canner. That way there's no temperature shock to the jars.
This was my first picture after I had started the process of cutting up the zucchini and putting in the jars.
[IMAGE: https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/amberyooper/EqNFEjchLD5YHnH8GiAnvWPsutGJKHBoFP99cRPBZdjuXKS4JsF5f2q4XcTm1x2iboe.JPG]
Here's the peelings from the first zucchini. This one had turned yellow after I picked it so there was probably some cross-pollination with other squash. If you look closly at the picture, you can see that a few seeds had sprouted inside the zucchini.
[IMAGE: https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/amberyooper/EoH1pHXXSBTwqZizwgBAHv3Cr9acezA6hJ7PbeFCXda72gJEUteXgubhMgzMcxYBWoR.JPG]
In this picture, I have the 7 jars in the heating pot, getting them hot enough to put in the pressure canner. I had not yet put the hot water into the jars here.
I try to have the water in the pressure canner boiling when I put the jars in it so it doesn't take as long to get up to 10 pounds pressure for the canning cycle.
[IMAGE: https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/amberyooper/EpT4ErvogGMab8YzjUJvLQ19VuFTbycSqUNGjLtgd77oV9ZQQJfmMah4QDzRrW8af1M.JPG]
Here's the canner, up to pressure. It was actually about 12 psi at this point. I tend to overshoot the 10 psi mark when I'm canning. The pressure needs to be at least 10 psi for proper canning, but it can be a bit more without any problems. I find it harder to regulate the pressure at one spot with the electric stove than with the propane burner I use in the summer and fall out in the greenhouse.
[IMAGE: https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/amberyooper/EoEqbbvNq9j82NVcL4KtfQji1UhJ8rYp3r43dRWNPJzTGVmp5ELVxVoYDzF5jeXjXEi.JPG]
Here's the jars after they came out of the canner. They're slowly cooling off on the towel.
[IMAGE: https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/amberyooper/EoyP49nrYaHmcPjEPAY2HNCqwQEcrp4XveEPxPjkz8thxAQb2EcET5qMXTYGwEUxxzh.JPG]
That's all I have for this post, I hope you found it interesting!
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