All Your Most Paranoid DIY Food Questions, Answered

As a hot sauce nerd, lauded jam queen, cooking instructor, and food entrepreneur for 13 years, I’ve learned a ton about food safety, both in the trenches of a commercial kitchen and and in professional food safety training.

Maybe you want to preserve your pandemic garden bounty, or save some money this year on pantry essentials? Either way, canning is an amazing life skill to add to your roster. But my students often throw a volley of safety questions at me, from “what is water bath canning?” To “will I kill my family with my homemade jam?”

I’m going to sit down at my canning call center Q&A desk and answer as many as I can for you! Let’s go.

Your most common food safety questions, answered

How long will my homemade canned goods keep for? Most properly sealed and canned foods, such as jam, pickles and hot sauce can be safely stored for at least one year. But make sure you keep them in a cool, dry place like a cupboard. Dampness, sunlight, and temperature fluctuation can all degrade the quality.

Do I really need to sterilize my bottles or jars before canning? Surprisingly, not always! If you are filling them with hot food and then processing them for at least 10 minutes in a water bath or pressure canner, then you do not need to sterilize the jars and bottles before canning. But make sure they are clean by giving them a quick wash with soap and hot water.

Can I re-process my jars if they don’t seal? Yep! Just do it within 24 hours. Use a fresh lid, as that will ensure that your lid liner wasn’t the issue. And make sure that your jars are totally submerged in the water bath!

I have a ton of fresh basil in my garden! Can I make pesto and can it? Sadly, no. Herbs and oils are both low-acid and together can allow disease-causing Clostridium botulinum bacteria to party in there, so there is no proper way to can pesto at home. The best thing to do is freeze it!

Can I tweak a canning recipe without compromising safety? If you’ve taken my classes, you know that I always encourage my students to get creative! But know your ingredients first, and understand what role they play in the recipe. While it can be incredibly rewarding to create a signature hot sauce flavor, the best way to ensure you do it safely is to start by replacing one ingredient with another that is similar. For instance replacing a fruit with another fruit, such as replacing 1/4 cup of apple in a hot sauce recipe with 1/4 cup of mango. Mango is a similarly acidic fruit, so the pH level will not be compromised. Likewise you could swap the peppercorns for dry cloves in a pickle recipe, as these are both dry spices that add flavor but do not effect the acidity. My recipes often have suggestions for safe ingredient swaps, so they’re a great place to start.

Is it cool to use my oven to process the jars instead of a water bath? No. The temperature in your oven is not consistent, and dry heat is slow to penetrate making timing challenging. Plus your jars are more likely to explode—yikes! Use a water bath, or skip the canning part and store your jam and hot sauce in your refrigerator.

Can I put a bunch of jars in the canner on top of each other? You bet. Feel free to stack them up! You still want to make sure that the jars on the top layer are totally submerged in that water bath by at least once inch.

I’ve got a bunch of old jars lying around—can I reuse them? Yes-ish. You can reuse the glass jar, but lids shouldn’t be used a second time since the plastisol that lines the inside can get dented and will not re-seal. Screw bands can be reused unless they’re dented or show signs of rust. You can get a set of new lids at many hardware stores or online, or find your local jar or bottle distributor if you want to be super savvy.

More questions? You can always shoot me an email or a DM. Happy canning!