Hi Taz, I read your remark on quartering onions and canning them in the ground beef thread below. I REALLY want to do that and would appreciate knowing the jar size, time and canning method you use. I can do both water bath and pressure cooker and want to can some meat sauce too this Friday. Thank you very much in advance for taking your time to tell me the recipe. smfdoc

-- smfdoc (smfdoc@aol.com), November 25, 1999

Answers

Taz,

Ditto....

-- Vernon Hale (create@premiernet.net), November 25, 1999.

Re the onions...I use wide mouth pt jars for the chopped up ones and qt jars for the ones I cut in 1/8ths. Just stuff the jars as FULL AS YOU CAN STUFF THEM (otherwise you end up with a jar of fluid and about two inches of onions floating on the top. Can in a pressure canner using the time you would use for NON ACID veggies. Oh..after you have the onions in, toss in 1/2 tsp salt per pint or 1 tsp per qt and trickle hot water into jar until its full. Thats it...you will never want to be without them again, I can guarantee. I had to hide mine as Chubby Hubby was using them for a midnight snack!!

-- Taz (Tassie123@aol.com), November 25, 1999.

Taz, thanks much. I will pressure cook them for 30-35 minutes for the quarts. I would have e-mailed my thanks, but it doesn't like your address. smfdoc

-- smfdoc (smfdoc@aol.com), November 26, 1999.

According to USDA, also foodsafety.org, quarts of ground beef need to be pressure canned for 90 minutes @ 11 lbs pressure at sea level up to 1000 ft. 30-35 minutes is waaaay too short for meat canning of quarts of low-acid food. Even pints require 75 minutes. Please look it up in the Ball Blue Book or at foodsafety.org before you proceed. Not a flame, just offering what I've learned. Rosa

-- Rosa (rosabeleve@aol.com), November 27, 1999.

Rose, you are certainly correct about the processing time for meats. I'm afraid you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I only mentioned the meat sauce to indicate I was going to doing some canning and wished to do the onions as well. The process time for the meat sauce is one hour and 15 minutes for a pint and 1.5 hours for a quart. The 30-35 minutes was for the onions alone.

-- smfdoc (smfdoc@aol.com), November 27, 1999.