Canning Meatballs and Spaghetti Sauce

Recently, I shared with you how I make my own spaghetti sauce and how I make my own Italian meatballs. Today, I'm sharing with you how I go about canning my meatballs and spaghetti sauce. (See Disclaimer at the end...)

Process

After making meatballs and sauce, I pack my jars. I will be using wide-mouth quart jars - as well as some pints for sauce.

First, I put in the meatballs. Depending on size, I can fit 12-16 meatballs into a quart-sized jar. End below the "shoulder" of the jar.

Fill with sauce, again, ending just below the shoulder of the jar (or about 1 inch of "headspace.")
With my spaghetti sauce recipe, I have enough sauce to fill the quarts plus four pints. (It's okay to add a little water if you need to.)

With a clean, damp cloth, wipe around the lip of the jar. A dirty rim won't seal.

Now, I place my lids and then my rings. Another broken rule here! I reuse my lids. You're not supposed to, but the reality is the lid will either seal or it won't. My reused lids almost always seal correctly.

Anyway, I tighten my rings, but not super tight - just enough to keep them on is all you need. This is doubly important if you're pressure canning.

Next, we prepare the canner. I use the bath tub to fill the canner halfway (I can always adjust it later.) - Oh, if you have hard water, like we do, add a couple Tablespoons of vinegar to the water to keep the jars from clouding.

The rule of canning is that if we start with hot product, we bring the water to boiling before adding the jars, cold product we place the jars in cold water. As it happened, I had my meatballs and spaghetti sauce in the fridge overnight - you'll see why in a minute - so I'm beginning with cold water.

I hate running a canner that's not completely full, so I grabbed a couple of jars of leftover Spanish Rice and threw them in.

I make sure the water is over the tops of the jars.

Once the water is boiling, cover the pot and start the timer... (actually, I write the time on my white board.)

If you're pressure canning, you need 90 minutes for meat. When you water bath, you need 3 hours.
Except that I'm at high-altitude (over 5000 feet), so I get to add 80% of that time extra! So, for me, that ends up being about 5 hours and 25 minutes! (That's why sometimes I don't have time to do the canning on the same day as preparation.)

Every hour, I add another kettle of boiling water to make sure the water covers the jars.

After nearly 5.5 hours, I use my canning tongs to carefully lift the jars out and place them on a counter lined with a dish towel.

In this case, I quickly added my spaghetti sauce pints and (as long as there's no meat in them) waterbath them for 10 minutes (15 for altitude - just to be safe, anyway.) One time, I accidentally added the meat dripping to the sauce before putting it in the jars - then, all the sauce had to go for 5.5 hours!

Now, all that's let to be done (besides the cleanup) is to listen to the chorus of "pings" from your jars as they seal. Leave them 24 hours before removing the rings. Wash the jars, label and store. If any haven't sealed after a couple of hours, transfer to the fridge and eat right away.

Here is your recipe card...

Disclaimer!

Although the USDA used to provide information about using a water bath canner for canning meat, it currently only recommends using a pressure canner. However...

I don't have the money for a pressure canner,
I've seen what goes wrong when they fail...,
I don't think food has changed that much in the past 50-odd years
I get plenty of advice from other "rebel" canners on Facebook...
So far, I have not lost a single jar of meat since I started water bathing my meats several years ago. And that includes canning paté - which is completely against the rules.

Two of my kitchen witches. One hung in my grandmother's kitchen as long as I can remember, so I have mine - adding a certain magickal spice to my cooking, presumably...
My grandmother's now lives in my mother's kitchen.

Previous recipes in Lori's Cookbook

(Links are for Steem... For Whaleshares and WeKu, simply place whaleshares.io or main.weku.io where the steempeak.com is.)

Note: All photos are mine - Pentax K30.
Crossposted at Steem, Whaleshares, WeKu, Hyperspace

Lori Svensen
author/designer at A'mara Books
photographer/graphic artist for Viking Visual
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blogging on: Steem, Whaleshares, WeKu, Hyperspace