85 mins ?

[bully]

man ..are you guys really boiling those jars for 85 mins?

I always err on the side of caution..most folks i know process for a half an hour.
We have always set the timer for 45 mins.
now my new ball catalog says 85 mins

Why the change? ..

[nctomatoman]

We've been doing our quarts for 45 min for years, without any issues or problems with the product, even after a year or more.

[Mischka]

I can't imagine any living organism that would survive 45 minutes at 212° Fahrenheit but I'm no expert.
Time to ask our resident microbiologist!

Carolyn, what say you?

[Granny]

I've noticed the changes in tomato canning recommendations that have appeared over the last few years - notably the recommendation to acidify the tomatoes and the super-high boiling water bath canning times.

I suspect that a couple of issues are involved here. First, all of the recipes seem to have been standardized using the sort of commercially produced tomato that is commonly available in the grocery store. They are not as acidic as old-fashioned tomatoes are.

The new 85 minute recommendation for whole packed tomatoes seems to go hand in hand with the statement that they have included boiling water bath times but people really should use a pressure canner for tomatoes.

Why these changes? I don't know. But then I also do not understand (well I DO but. . . .) why all of the sudden the USDA would put forth their recent statement encouraging us to all stop eating corn either. Or why the FDA would allow the use of high fructose corn syrup in virtually every item you buy at the market.

As far as tomatoes go, nobody uses human fecal matter on my fields and I do not grow hybrids. I do check the pH on the tomatoes I'm canning, but other than that I am using and intend to stick to the timing given in my old book from 1970-some odd.

[bully]

It's an ordeal canning 100+ qts for 45 mins!

it always takes me longer than I account for and I'm lucky.
My wife is chef and taught the hygiene course at Schoolcraft Culinary college ( CIA of the Midwest) so she has everything organized and we add the lemon juice, keep everything sterile..she makes me sterilize the jars prior to filling them..everything is by the book.

an additional 5 mins I could probably live with but 85!
it would take forever and jars filled and ready for the next batch would have to sit around..you couldn't put em in the fridge because they may break when they were dunked in the boiling water.

I heard Balls was bought by a company in Canada and that after that the times were changed.

Is this a case of some corp lawyers wanting to cover their behinds (like a ladder that is rated at 300 lb is tested to hold 1,200) " tell these idiots 85 mins and that should insure that they will at least get a solid 45 mins done correctly"
Or is their solid evidence that 85 mins at 212 kills something that 45 mins at 212 does not?

bully

[Granny]

Originally Posted by bully

It's an ordeal canning 100+ qts for 45 mins!

it always takes me longer than I account for and I'm lucky.
My wife is chef and taught the hygiene course at Schoolcraft Culinary college ( CIA of the Midwest) so she has everything organized and we add the lemon juice, keep everything sterile..she makes me sterilize the jars prior to filling them..everything is by the book.

an additional 5 mins I could probably live with but 85!
it would take forever and jars filled and ready for the next batch would have to sit around..you couldn't put em in the fridge because they may break when they were dunked in the boiling water.

I heard Balls was bought by a company in Canada and that after that the times were changed.

Is this a case of some corp lawyers wanting to cover their behinds (like a ladder that is rated at 300 lb is tested to hold 1,200) " tell these idiots 85 mins and that should insure that they will at least get a solid 45 mins done correctly"
Or is their solid evidence that 85 mins at 212 kills something that 45 mins at 212 does not?

bully

Bully, I am a medical scientist/chemist by trade and I've done more than a little bit of hunting around for an answer to the changes re canning times/recommendations for tomatoes. As far as I can tell this is either a CYA or a typo. You might note, BTW, that the canning times for diced tomatoes remains 45 minutes - it is only the whole tomatoes that are 85 - water or juiced packed, hot or cold packed. Makes absolutely no sense to me.

One of the things that I do to lessen the ordeal a little bit is freeze tomatoes I intend to can as sauce in giant ziplocks until I happen to have the time to make a couple of gallons of sauce. I've also found over the years that I use far more diced tomato, tomato sauce & tomato juice than whole tomatoes, so I don't bother with those much anymore.

[bully]

Thanks for your input Granny and Craig and M.

I'm gonna stick to the 45min mark..my buddy Wilbur and his wife have stopped canning over this. They said after 85mins a whole bunch of the juice had boiled away and seeped out the top. he showed me the jars, they looked 1/2 to 3/4 full with tendrils of the tomatoes hanging down from the seal..not very appetizing.

They put a lot of stock into the Ball name and feel that there must be a reason for the change..too bad

bully

[bcday]

To see if the 85 minutes in the Ball Blue Book might be a misprint, I went to the website advertised on the carton that my Ball canning jars came in, www.homecanning.com, figuring that if the company that wrote the book is the same one that sells the jars, they ought to have up-to-date info on their website. I got redirected to www.freshpreserving.com when I said I was in the USA and not Canada, but it's still the Ball site and it said:

Tomatoes – Whole, Halved or Quartered (Packed in Water)
"PROCESS filled jars in a boiling water canner 40 minutes for pints and 45 minutes for quarts, adjusting for altitude."
http://www.freshpreserving.com/pages...p?recipe_id=63

Tomatoes – Whole, Halved or Quartered (Packed in Own Juice)
"PROCESS filled jars in a boiling water canner 1 hour and 25 minutes for pints and quarts, adjusting for altitude."
http://www.freshpreserving.com/pages...p?recipe_id=64

Raw-Packed Tomatoes with No Added Liquid
"PROCESS filled jars in a boiling water canner for 85 minutes for both pints and quarts, adjusting for altitude."
http://www.freshpreserving.com/pages...?recipe_id=148

The Canadian site at http://www.homecanning.com/can/AlRecipes.asp?R=177 says the longer processing time is needed for raw-packed tomatoes with no added liquid because "Tomatoes packed with no added liquid are more dense inside the jar than the hot-pack tomatoes with added liquid. A longer processing time is required for proper heat penetration needed to ensure a safe end product."

[Granny]

Interesting, bcday. The "85 minutes" that I first came across came from a US Agricultural Extension Service website (Oregon's I think) and it claimed 85 minutes for whole tomatoes, packed in either water or juice, hot or cold.

Even that explanation makes little or no sense. When you Pack tomatoes in "their own juice" they ARE raw packed and you still pack as many into the jar as you can so you don't get floating fruit.

I think I shall come down pretty firmly on the side of "somebody at the USDA made a typo" that has been perpetuated throughout all of the various "canning experts." At least until I see some reference to the primary research that dictates this ridiculous change.

[Granny]

Originally Posted by bully

Thanks for your input Granny and Craig and M.

I'm gonna stick to the 45min mark..my buddy Wilbur and his wife have stopped canning over this. They said after 85mins a whole bunch of the juice had boiled away and seeped out the top. he showed me the jars, they looked 1/2 to 3/4 full with tendrils of the tomatoes hanging down from the seal..not very appetizing.

They put a lot of stock into the Ball name and feel that there must be a reason for the change..too bad

bully

It is too bad that your friend had such a bad experience with that 85 minute business. Truthfully, I'm a little surprised the jars did not explode on him. Ball and Kerr canning jars both were sold to a Canadian company a few years back and they do not do their own R&D re home canning anymore. One of my daughters got me the Ball Book of Canning and Preserving last year and I was sorely disappointed. Everything was full of corn syrup and used Clearjel or some other "special" product. Thank goodness eBay had a couple of my favorite old books from the 70's & 80's so I could replace a few lost recipes.

Any "current" recommendations come courtesy of the USDA. Those used to be developed at the various state university school's of home economics but that field mostly no longer exists. Who is doing them, I do not know, but given this and a couple of other oddities, I want to see the primary research these days before I change things quite so dramatically.

As I said above, even the explanation that bcday found above makes absolutely no sense. If you still can whole tomatoes in their own juice for 45 minutes, then why on earth would you can "no added liquid" tomatoes for nearly twice that? Especially given that anyone who has ever actually canned tomatoes knows that "in their own juice" means that you smush them into the jar tight enough to release enough juice to come to the prescribed height in the jar and that you cannot can tomatoes without filling the spaces between the tomatoes with some kind of liquid.

[bcday]

Originally Posted by Granny

As I said above, even the explanation that bcday found above makes absolutely no sense. If you still can whole tomatoes in their own juice for 45 minutes, then why on earth would you can "no added liquid" tomatoes for nearly twice that?

The explanation I found and posted above says to process tomatoes in their own juice for 1 hour and 25 minutes, which by my math equals 85 minutes, not 45. So the processing time in their own juice would be the same as for "no added liquid", right? The only ones processed for 45 minutes are those packed in water.

[Granny]

Originally Posted by bcday

The explanation I found and posted above says to process tomatoes in their own juice for 1 hour and 25 minutes, which by my math equals 85 minutes, not 45. So the processing time in their own juice would be the same as for "no added liquid", right? The only ones processed for 45 minutes are those packed in water.

Guess I misread the middle bit. My apologies.

Meanwhile, have a gander at the various timings here - National Center for Home Food Preserving
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can3_tomato.html

Hot pack tomato and vegetable juice gets 40 minutes processing while straight tomatoes hot packed get 85? Does not compute. My pre 1994 canning books (these documents were last revised in 1994) say 45 minutes.

The Farm Journal Freezing and Canning Cookbook actually goes into the new, longer (then) processing times. They mention newer low acid tomato varieties and a couple of cases of botulism in home canned products as the cause of the increase. The most cogent explanation that they give for the cases of botulism (not supposed to happen in acidic foods) is canning of tomatoes that are from dead plants, over ripe or somehow decayed in spots, leading to a pH higher than 4.5. And botulism spores would be the only reason that I can think of for processing tomatoes for 85 minutes. The rational for overprocessing whole tomatoes while not doing so to chopped or juiced tomatoes (even when combined with vegetables that are not normally canned by boiling water bath) escapes me though.

Still have not found any evidence though - just the bald statement of 85 minutes. that is one recommendation I have absolutely NO intention of following any more than I will follow the USDA's latest recommendation to eliminate corn from my diet so that I can be "healthier". (Read "so that there is more available for High fructose corn syrup and biofuel.)

But then I have yet to figure out how the heck Salmonella (enteric bacteria, found in manure) has managed to find its way inside of unshelled almonds (grown on trees, machine harvested, never touch the ground) so that all almonds sold in the US must now be "pasteurized" - and thus denatured.

[bcday]

Originally Posted by Granny

But then I have yet to figure out how the heck Salmonella (enteric bacteria, found in manure) has managed to find its way inside of unshelled almonds (grown on trees, machine harvested, never touch the ground)

All the information I could find about Salmonella in almonds just said raw almonds, not necessarily unshelled. They could have been the shelled whole almonds or pieces, unless you have more info than I could find with Google.

My best guess for the source is bird droppings rather than manure from the ground, and we know from Salmonella in hens' eggs that birds do get infected with Salmonella.

There is bound to be bird poop on the hulls of some of the nuts. Sure, washing the almond hulls before hulling and shelling will clean off most of the poop, but does it remove all the Salmonella?

And if the birds get a chance they'll get into the processing plant to eat spilled pieces of shelled nuts as well, potentially contaminating the processing equipment there with droppings. And in fact one inspection did find bird droppings and even a bird's nest in one area that happened to not be in use at the time of the inspection.

But it doesn't look like anyone has really figured out exactly how the almond contamination occurred even if birds turned out to be the source.

If the source was birds, it makes me wonder how safe it is to eat a fresh apple (or peach, or pear, or...)

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=1&gl=us

[Granny]

The notification that I received a while back said that all raw almonds were going to have to be pasteurized - including the unshelled ones, which are of course raw.

Re Salmonella in birds, it is normal flora in chickens but do note that in chickens the bacteria appears in eggs or as a contaminate if the meat is not properly handled during slaughtering. It isn't something that is normally part & parcel of chicken poop. If it were everyone in the country who raised chickens would have salmonella - and that is not the case at all.

[bcday]

Thanks for clearing that up, Granny. Now I can stop worrying about eating an apple! Pasteurized almonds...there goes the price of almonds.