Can you Can Carrots?

Yes we CAN!

Once we finished harvesting all the carrots, we ate a bunch fresh, made ginger carrots using lacto-fermentation, blanched carrots, and finally we're going to use our pressure cooker to can the remaining ones. We cleaned them up real good and cut off the tops to put in the compost pile.

Cutting off the tops

Here's the finished product ready for processing.

Cleaned up and Ready

In the meantime, we cleaned up some pint jars along with the lids, gaskets and rings. We're using Tattler brand lids that you can use over and over.

Splish Splash

For the next step, we cubed the carrots using a little product that Tricia purchased on the Home Shopping Network.  I think we've only purchased one item off that TV channel and this is it.  It really saves a lot of time and work.

Act now, this could be yours for only 3 payments of....

Jars are sterilized and ready to be filled with cubed carrots.

Jars are washed

Tricia begins filling the jars up with carrots, leaving one inch head space in the jar.

Fill 'er up, please

We were able to fill eight pint jars with cubed carrots.  We had a little left over, but decided to eat them rather than half-fill a jar.  Eight pints are fine since our pressure cooker will hold a maximum of ten pints.

Bright Colors!

Something about putting things on the window sill and letting the sunlight shine through makes things look nice.

Sunshine shining through jars of carrots

Since we're using the reusable Tattler lids, Tricia is affixing the gasket to the lid.  The lids are plastic, but are BPA-free.

Tattler lids

Now she's adding boiling water to each of the jars of carrots, filling them up to 1 inch from the top.  My parents used to use that line, "You're gonna be in hot water if you do that, son."  That was a bad thing.  In this case, carrots in hot water is a good thing.

Packing with hot water

Now she puts the gaskets and lids on top of the jars and then tightens the rings.  Then she backs off just a smidgen on the ring tightness - a smidgen in this case means a quarter turn.  This allows hot air to escape during processing, but once you remove them from the canner and move to the counter, firmly tighten to get the rubber gasket in close contact with the jar to make an airtight seal.

Lids going on

We add two tablespoons of vinegar to 3 quarts hot water and then put the jars into the canner.  The vinegar is added to the canning water to negate any water staining on the jars.

Vinegar to stop staining

Lock the lid on, and turn the heat to high.  Let the steam come out of the top for 10 minutes.  Then add the pressure regulator (10 pounds) to the top and watch until it begins to rock gently.  Once it rocks, you start timing because that means your pressure has reached the point where you want it.  Higher pressure is needed to bring the water to a higher temperature than you would in normal hot water bath canning. You need the higher temperatures for canning vegetables and meats to kill bacteria.

Waiting for the Rocking...

Once the pressure cooker has depressurized, we pull the jars out on the counter and allow them to cool on some racks.

Canned carrots for the pantry

These will go into the pantry for safe-keeping and adds to our inventory.  (We want to be like the ants - NOT the grasshopper!)