Canning Mistakes

As I promised I will now let you in a few mistakes I learned during my last canning session. But first I will show you a picture of what all I canned. Below is 6 quarts of chicken stock, 12 pints of clementines, 4 pints of sweet and sour chicken, 3 pints of orange chicken and 3 pints of lemon chicken.

Now on to the mistakes!

Mistake number one:

Just because you can't go to sleep do not get up and try to do a big canning session after you have been awake for 20 hours straight! That mistake alone will cause you to make other mistakes.

Mistake number two:

Check, double check and then triple check to make sure you have everything you need to complete a canning recipe. I did check twice and never realized that I forgot to get out the ginger I needed for the stir fry recipes I was canning. Maybe if I had checked one more time I would have realized it but then again the fact that I didn't goes right back to mistake number one. By the time I got to the stir frys I had already been up for 24 hours straight. If I had been rested I would have been a lot more alert to what I was doing.

Mistake number three.

Save the easiest canning project for last. If I had done the stir frys first instead of the clementines maybe I would have been more alert and remembered the ginger.

Mistake number four and the last thank goodness:

Just because you find a canning recipe on the net you think you will like does not mean you will like it. Make a small amount first to see if you even like it. I got the orange chicken canning recipe off the net and after all is said and done I do not really care for it. She had put slices of fresh oranges in her jars so I did to and found that the bitter flavor of the pith was so strong that is over powered the taste of all the other ingredients. From now on I will remove the peeling and pith before adding the orange slices to the jars. As for leaving the ginger out that was not to big a problem. I drained the liquid from the jar into a sauce pan, added some ginger powder and a little cornstarch, heated till slightly thickened and the ginger flavor came through, then added the rest of the jar to heat. It came out fairly well except for the bitter taste of the orange pith.

Well there you go. There is the canning mistakes I made the other day. I hope by my sharing them with you it will help you have better luck with your canning then I did on my last session.

Happy Canning ya'll.