First time pressure canning

[Wiznet]

Hey all!
I recently went shad fishing and decided to pressure can a few. I just had a few questions. (I canned for 120 minutes at 11 pounds)

1. We put them into the cans raw and added no liquid. We noticed when we took the jars out after canning, there is still some fish not covered in liquid. Is this fine?
2. I noticed one of my jars I was able to push the lid down which made a click, but it stayed down. Should I just toss this jar?

Thanks!

 

[Salmo_g]

Anything canned is most likely getting over-cooked. I used to can sockeye salmon every season and read lots of times and pressure to use. I settled on 60 minutes at 15 pounds for half-pint jars. That worked out well for me. If the fish is not completely covered with liquid, that's fine. The lid that clicked when you pushed it down and stayed down is OK. It is sealed. Do check it again to make sure it stays sealed in a day or two. Any jar that releases its seal is one you need to toss the contents and not eat. Canned fish in jars will keep for years so long as the seal remains intact.

 

[Wiznet]

Anything canned is most likely getting over-cooked. I used to can sockeye salmon every season and read lots of times and pressure to use. I settled on 60 minutes at 15 pounds for half-pint jars. That worked out well for me. If the fish is not completely covered with liquid, that's fine. The lid that clicked when you pushed it down and stayed down is OK. It is sealed. Do check it again to make sure it stays sealed in a day or two. Any jar that releases its seal is one you need to toss the contents and not eat. Canned fish in jars will keep for years so long as the seal remains intact.

thank you!

 

[Nick Clayton]

Is there any real reason to toss a jar that hasn't sealed? When I do tuna, if I get one that doesn't want to seal up when it's done then we just eat that one right away. It's my understanding the sealing is for longtime preservation and really doesn't have anything to do with how the fresh product turns out.


As far as the liquid level, ya you're totally fine. I add zero liquid to my tuna and when I pull the jars our there is a fair amount of water. Not enough to fill the jar and cover all the fish inside, but enough that when I open a jar I do need to drain it.

 

[Salmo_g]

Is there any real reason to toss a jar that hasn't sealed? When I do tuna, if I get one that doesn't want to seal up when it's done then we just eat that one right away.

Good point Nick. I put jars that don't seal in the refrigerator and eat those as soon as possible. A sealed jar is only necessary for storage beyond a week or so in the pantry.

 

[Tallguy]

Anything canned is most likely getting over-cooked. I used to can sockeye salmon every season and read lots of times and pressure to use. I settled on 60 minutes at 15 pounds for half-pint jars. That worked out well for me.

I also have been canning tuna for the past 5-6 years, and read up on canning conditions. I have one possibly important response to above advice: I don't think the time-pressure combination needed to can meats has anything to do with actual cooking of the meat. Salmo is right, canned fish are overcooked. I do think that pressure canning at 90-100 minutes at 12+ psi time is actually determined by the need to kill off microorganism spores that create botulism toxin and insure that NO microbes/spores are present that could grow in the jars. I do not believe 60 min time is considered sufficient to insure complete sterilization of those botulism spores, you might want to consider the longer time for this reason. Salmo, you might want to look into this.

I am sure there is a safety margin built into the recommendations, but it's truly a potentially lethal mistake if you allow botulism spores to survive in canned food. I read up on this one time my pressure canner lost pressure after an hour and I wondered if I could be done. After I read how tough the spores were, I redid the jars and made sure I stayed until 100 min.

 

[iggie]

Botulism is anaerobic, so improperly canned food is susceptible to it.

 

[Salmo_g]

90-100 minutes at 12+ psi time is actually determined by the need to kill off microorganism spores that create botulism toxin

That is correct. And there is a lot of uber-safety consideration in the canning recommendations. I slutehed out my time for half-pints from a commercial salmon canner. Full pints take longer, but I don't remember how much longer as I always used half pint jars for salmon. I knew an Indian family from Ketchikan who canned salmon for years with only a boiling water bath, which is amazing because no matter how long you boil water, it never reaches the threshold temperature that kills botulism.