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Geoffrey S. Mendelson Geoffrey S. Mendelson is offline
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Default Canning recipe specifies jar size - dangerous to change?

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:

(excellent post about saftey....)

> The more important issue, though, is convenience of the
> recipient. You may like eating salsa a lot and could maybe
> eat up a quart jar in a week, around here we use salsa only
> for dipping potato chips into, and a pint is a 6 month supply
> for us.


Even for we who are realtively heavy salsa eaters, a jar of commerical salsa
(probably a pint) is about a week's supply. But we "cycle", some weeks
the chips get eaten with salsa, sometimes my kids just snack them plain.

Occasionaly the jars mirgrate to the back of the refigerator and are not found
for weeks. They loose flavor and eventually become "biology experiments".

> This is why I do most of my jam canning in 1/2
> pint jars. I have several jam varieties I can. If I put them in
> pints, I would get tired of that variety before finishing off the
> jar, so I would end up with multiple open jam jars in the
> refrigerator.


That is signifcantly different. Unless it's low sugar jam, it will not
mold or develop any other problems if left closed in the refrigerator.
I would not say the same for salsa.

I think Ted's right. Unless the people you are going to give the salsa
are really into it, or have a very large family, I would stick to the
small jars.

There's also a matter of taste, while people who for example like strawberry
jam will eat almost any strawberry jam you give them, individual taste in
salsa varries. In my own family one likes mild, one likes medium and two
like hot. You can always "tollerate" mild, or add tabasco to it if you
are a hot eater, but you can't "unheat" it if you are not.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM