How to Make and Can Old Fashioned Pickled Beets!

By Stephanie Dayle
I originally wrote and published this article for American Preppers Network and have moved it here to my personal site and updated the information, of course with permission. 

It’s that time of year when the beets in your garden should be finishing up. When I was a kid our choices were to eat them fresh, which I loved, or pressure can them, and I despised eating canned beets. They were the source of many late nights at the dinner table while I stared down the “you may not get up until you eat your beets” ultimatum.

As an adult I learned that they could also be pickled, my mom was not fond of pickled beets so she never preserved them that way (you can also dehydrate them but that’s another article). I love old fashioned pickled beets, they are by far one of my most favorite snacks and side dishes! They are a far cry from their pressure canned counterparts. Want to try something unique? Slice them thinly (or 'french' them if you are familiar with that slicing technique) and apply them to a sandwich featuring cured meat, like salami.

And by “old fashioned” I mean they are pickled using a sweet brine with traditional ingredients. 

Row of beets

Why Grow Beets?

For some beets are an acquired taste - like coffee or beer. This means you should keep trying them even if your first impressions weren't really good. The taste will grow on you, as your taste buds learn to appreciate the flavor. Why bother? Because they are a great survival food in your garden to name just one reason, so keep reading oh great finicky one.

Beets are a quick growing, hardy root vegetable. They are cold hardy so beets are a great crop to get in the ground as soon as possible for an early harvest giving you food when nothing else is ready yet. Beets can be steamed, roasted (my favorite), grilled, shredded for salad, and of course they can be preserved by being canned or pickled. 

They are also packed with potassium, magnesium, folate, and B vitamins! In other words, they are really good for you (and for any of you who are a possible 'mom-to-be'). Beets are also really good for livestock and are often fed to cattle, horses, and are also good for chickens. The greens are completely eatable and are often prepared like ‘collard greens,’ beets can also be juiced or dehydrated. Pigs, cattle, chickens and horses also enjoy the greens so nothing goes to waste. Click here for heirloom beet seed.

Here is a quick ‘how to’ on canning pickled beets!

Canning Pickled Beets

(recipe courtesy of the Ball Blue Book)

• 3 quarts beets (double recipe if you have more)
• 2 C sugar
• 2 sticks cinnamon
• 1 Tbsp whole allspice
• 1/2 Tbsp of whole cloves (I add this is variation of the recipe)
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 1/2 cups vinegar (use cider vinegar)
• 1 1/2 C water

Remove tops and roots, then wash beets.

To peel beets: Cook beets for 20-30 in a large stock pot or canner (like pictured above), until you can just barely stick a fork them, then run them under cold water or stick them in a tub of cold water and peel them easily with your hands. 

• Wash beets, cook beets, peel and then quarter beets.
• Combine everything except beets in large sauce pot.
• Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
• Remove cinnamon sticks.
• Pack beets into hot jars leaving 1/4″ headspace.
• Ladle hot liquid over beets leaving 1/4″ headspace.
• Remove air bubbles, then add lids and bands.
• Process for 30 minutes in a hot water bath canner.
• Yield: Approximately 6 pints or 3 quarts.

All ingredients combined and simmering – this is the sweet brine ready to go!

Sterilized jars filled with peeled beets – ready for the brine.

Water bath canner full of jars.

Finished product.

**This recipe and process is approved for safety – I even asked the WSU Extension Office if adding a few cloves was ok – they said it would not alter the safety of the recipe. Many people have written articles about pickling beets on the internet, any similarities are merely coincidence.**

Homemade Seasoned Tomato Sauce To The Rescue!

By Stephanie Dayle via The American Preppers Network 

Here's What You Can Do With All Those Tomatoes!

No, its not spaghetti sauce, but it is real close to spaghetti sauce! Not real chunky but very versatile in what you can do with it. One night it can be a soup stock, the other night it can be spaghetti sauce, the next you can use to to flavor your sloppy joes or meat loaf. Best of all, if you have bags and bags of tomatoes from the garden sitting in your kitchen - it will very quickly use up a ton of tomatoes! 

The recipe I used was from the Ball Blue Book . If you don't already have a copy of that inexpensive but incredibly useful book, I highly recommend picking one up. It's a hundred years worth of time proven and safe food preserving recipes. If you look at this recipe, and are put off by the fact that it is not your favorite family recipe of chunky tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms - but merely a 'tomato sauce' there is a reason for that, bare with me. 


Anything canned in a boiling water bath canner needs to be high acid (for the science buffs, this means that it has to have a pH of 4.5 or below). This is because botulism cannot grow in high acid environments. However, tomatoes are in the grey zone of acidity, typically having a pH right around 4.5. Since they are, you need to add acid to tomatoes when you can them, so that the levels are pushed into the safe zone and the pH becomes something lower than 4.5. That’s why all good proven recipes you'll find for water bath canning tomatoes includes two tablespoons of bottled lemon juice per quart jar (you can also use citric acid, or red wine vinegar).

Which brings us to the approved homemade seasoned tomato sauce recipe that is found in the Ball Blue Book. Sound too bland and unexciting? FEAR NOT! This tomato sauce is NOT bland! Far from it. It has all the flavor one could want for an excellent pot of spaghetti. Personally I LOVE it. You would only need to add a few ingredients from your food storage to turn it into a pot of spaghetti sauce and no one could tell that this wasn't the original family recipe. Look for these tips at the bottom of the article. 

Ball Blue Book: Seasoned Tomato Sauce Recipe
Yield - 7 Quart Jars

• 45 pounds tomatoes (see, I told ya - LOTS of tomatoes but this process is so time intensive - I figure why bother doing it if you are not going to get at least 7 quarts out of it?)
• 6 cups chopped onions
• 12 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 2 tablespoons oregano
• 2 tablespoons fresh chopped basil (we added this because we grow it - not part of original recipe)
• 6 piece bay leaves (I skipped these, just a taste preference).
• 1 tablespoon black pepper
• 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar (I doubled this after tasting)
• 1/4 cup salt
• 2 teaspoons crushed red pepper optional (I left it out)
• Bottled lemon juice (TIP: lemon juice is used in a lot of food preservation recipes for what you will spend on it at the grocery store - you can get two jumbo bottles of it at Costco or Cash and Carry, it also stores well and has many other uses so don't be shy buying it)

Set aside TWO days to do this.

Day 1: Gather the tomatoes from your garden and go grocery shopping for all the prep work. Wash toma­toes; drain. Remove core and blossom ends. Cut into quar­ters; set aside.Sauté onions and gar­lic in olive oil in a large stock ­pot (I used a 20 qt stainless steel, because they are an easy to clean stock ­pot ,and it was too small and had to add the smaller 12 qt — go bigger!).  Add toma­toes, oregano, basil, bay leaves, black pep­per and sugar. Stir in salt and crushed red pep­per, if desired. Sim­mer 20 min­utes, stir­ring, it may take up to an hour for your tomatoes to reach a simmering temperature (don't get impatient and crank the heat up, you'll just burn them to the bottom). Remove bay leaves.

Pureé toma­toes using a food mill. (I used an old fashioned food mill with a wooden pestle - because I like using that kind of stuff, but if you wanted to speed this process up use the Food Mill attachment on your Kitchen Aid mixer). Strain puree to remove peels and seeds (the mill I used automatically does this, but if you use your kitchen aid you can just run the results through a mesh strainer or a strainer bag that you would use for jelly). 

Day 2: Cook pulp in a large, uncovered stock pot over medium-high heat until sauce thick­ens, stir­ring to pre­vent stick­ing. Reduce vol­ume by one-half (it starts out more like tomato water than pulp, and what the book doesn't say is that it may take 8 hours to reduce it by half - if you want to make this lower maintenance USE A CROCK POT on high, it shouldn't burn if you stir it every now and then). 

Then get ready to can the sauce with a 21 QT water bath canner with jar rack, jar lifter, canning funnel, a magnetic lid lifter, and at least 7 lids and rings. 

This is a hot pack so your sauce will be boiling, your jars will be hot and the water in the canner will also be hot.  Add 1 tbsp bot­tled lemon juice to each pint jar, 2 tbsp to each quart jar. Ladle hot sauce into hot ster­il­ized jars, leav­ing 1/2" head­space. Adjust two-piece caps. Process pints 35 min­, quarts 40 min­*, in a water bath canner.

* When canning you need to increase the boiling times for high altitude. P=Pint, Q=Quart 0-1000 ft. P 35 min.; Q 40 min. 1001-3000 ft. P 40 min.; Q 45 min. 3001-6000 ft. P 45 min.; Q 50 min. over 6000 ft. P 50 min.; Q 55 min.                 

 Spaghetti Sauce From Food Storage

• Start with one quart of Seasoned Tomato Sauce
• Add one pint of drained canned hamburger or you can also go meatless
• One 14oz can of diced tomatoes will give you the chunks you want
• One small can of mushrooms will give you the mushrooms (or a handful of dehydrated ones, no additional water)
• Two teaspoons of dehydrated onion will soak up the excess moisture and rehydrate into tasty onions
• And one teaspoon of crushed red pepper or red pepper flakes will give you the pepper that you want
• Add more granulated garlic and salt and pepper to taste

Cook on a stove top on low or in a dutch oven (keeping a close eye on your heat) for 30-45 minutes. The longer you let it simmer, the more your dehydrated elements will absorb the moisture and thicken the sauce). Add to precooked noodles of any shape!

Note for the frugal: It is not cost effective to buy all the ingredients to make this. Now, if you have a garden full of tomatoes, onions, and garlic - it is very cost effective and way more healthy for you to boot. If you don't have a garden up and running yet, your best option for stocking up spaghetti sauce is picking up the canned stuff when it is on sale. I have seen the Del Monte brand as low as .68 a can, when it drops this low I buy three or more cases of it. But it is always more healthy to make things yourself and it might be good practice to make this once or twice just so you know you could if you had to. If you have made your own sauce and have some tips, please share them in the comments below. I find the experiences of others to be priceless when preserving food. With garden season wrapping up, I will have more frugal and tasty articles soon!

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Shopping for Used Canning Jars

Canning is one of the absolute best skills anyone can learn. 
It is a HUGE step in learning how to affordable feed yourself, and of course in self-reliance. Canning allows you to not only grow your own, but also to save it for later! And of course nothing looks prettier on your pantry shelf than rows and rows of beautifully canned green food. Canned goods could save your life, they make great gifts, save you money, and home canned goods offer you a healthier alternative to running to the grocery store.

As soon as people learn how to can, they learn how expensive canning jars are and have all kinds of questions regarding where to get the best prices on them, what kind to get, and if they can use pre-owned canning jars. Let me answer that last question for you. Of course you can buy used canning jars and reuse them. That's the beauty of canning! You can keep reusing the jars! It fits right in with a lifestyle of reusing, recycling, and being self-reliant. 

Older Kerr jar, still completely usable.

First I'd like to recommend using new jars while you are learning how to can, as they are more forgiving of errors. I personally stick to either ball or kerr brand canning jars. I prefer wide mouth jars for most things, as they are easier to fill, easier to empty and easier to clean. However if regular mouth jars are on sale I have no problem in purchasing those. Once you have the hang of the practice and need more canning jars (canning is an addicting habit) go ahead and start looking for used canning jars. 

Here are some shopping tips for finding safe used canning jars: 

Shop yard sales, craigslist, freecycle.org, estate sales, thrift stores, and the good old classified section in your local paper. Also let your friends and family know you are looking ask  if they know anyone who is liquidating their supply. When the time comes they will remember that you want the canning jars, trust me. I have been called, several years after asking, by my friends wanting to know if I still want canning jars because they have found some.

Make sure what you are using and/or buying is actually a canning jar. Pictured above is two Ball Freezer jars that were only manufactured for a short period of time. They were not meant to be used for canning and only one is clearly marked as a freezer jar on the front, the other is marked, but on the bottom.

Remember what you paid for them new, and do not pay new prices for used jars. You are not antique shopping, you are looking for cheap useable canning jars.

Older Atlas jar - only problem I have with these is that they are shaped differently
 than the newer jars, the shape difference prevents a full load in my pressure canner if I am 
combining them with new jars. 

Stick with brands you trust - avoid mystery brands, and jars that were never meant to be canning jars. I know some people use them - but my batches of food are too valuable to ruin a batch because of an exploding jar. Since mason jar crafts are so popular right now, there are some copy cat jars out there that look like real canning jars but are not made for home canning purposes. Stick with Ball, Kerr and other known brand jars while you are learning to can.    

Run you hand along the rim of the jar, if you feel any rough spots, or chips (as pictured above) pass on that jar, there is a good chance it may not seal and will only make you mad.  Pass any jars that have defects in the glass such as, bubbles, swirls, rough or imperfect seams as pictured above. Older jars were more prone to defects than newer ones so you need a good eye.  

Authentic Ball Blue Jar

  

You may want to set aside any jars that are old enough that they have a slight blue tint to them. They may have antique value and selling a few of those could pay for three more boxes of brand new canning jars. The newer reproductions, even though they are a limited edition have no collector value - yet, but they do look nice. Click here to see the new blue jars.

Lot of used and new canning jars plus lids and rings I bought at an estate sale .
 

Above is a box of old unused mason jar caps, in excellent shape kept in a zip lock bag - by examining the lid it appears as if the caps would hold still a seal. I will try to water bath these, as it's easier to re-batch with water than pressure if the seals fail. If they are not useable i can punch holes in these and use them with a couple of smaller flawed jars as salt and pepper-shakers.

Dried apples sealed in a "mystery brand" canning jar (left) with an oxygen absorber. 

Sometimes you can't pick and choose jars, the seller just wants them all gone. You will end up with several boxes of jars. In that case when you get home, clean them up and go through them one by one. Any that can't be used for canning you might usable for storing dehydrated foods with an oxygen absorber. If the jar does fail it's not going to ruin a whole batch of food. I love using mystery brand jars up this way.  Click here for an article on How to 'Dry Can' Safely.

If you are dealing with a chipped rim there are still many uses for that jar such as: a flower vase, a candle container, a liquid soap dispenser or you can make a portable rechargeable lantern. Use a solar yard light with the stem removed, then hot glued it to the top of the jar.Or you can purchase solar lights specially adapted for canning jars! Click here to see a few I found!

Solar light specially adapted for canning jars.

                               Homemade solar light canning jar lantern.

Rusty ring - leave them behind or use them for christmas tree ornaments with a picture in the middle and a red bow on top.

If you come across used canning rings - you buy those and reuse them for a long time as well. I stop using mine when they get rusty for obvious reasons so pass on buying rusty ones for canning purposes and keep the ones that are smooth and rust free. 

You won't need many rings, as canning jars should be stored without the ring on them. The ring only holds the lid on long enough for it to seal and has a tendency to rust and get stuck on the jar if the lid is left on for a period of time. 

Use your older jars first and save the newer ones for a rainy day, this way if a jar fails you will find out now, while you have the luxury of time to fix it or redo it. As with anything, approach using older canning jars with common sense, if it doesn't look right to you, don't use it for canning.

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Canning Homemade Dog Food – Recipe and Instructions!

Our pup, Diesel, dropping me a hint.

By Stephanie Dayle - via The America Preppers Network

When I make dog food, I make it using one type of meat per batch.  So we'll make a batch of dog food using beef, and another for chicken parts (we save the less desirable parts from the chickens we butcher and turkeys we eat when we have enough of these random parts we grind them up and make a batch of dog food with them) but we don't combine them.  So when we came across some extra meat this fall we didn't want it to go to waste and made some dog food out of it.  It is fairly cost efficient and much more healthy than the stuff you by at the store.  As a nice side effect, it also boosts our stock of dog food we keep at the house in case of an emergency and if push comes to shove it's completely safe for humans to eat too.

After a successful hunting season, we took the parts of our deer that weren't used for steaks, sausage, or jerky and trimmed them up again.  This includes the liver and some other organ meats - we love to eat venison heart so the dogs didn't get that.  We cut all the tendon out, any bone, and any abnormally large chunks of fat.  Anything eatable that was cut out of the dog food was fed to the dogs in small amounts as snacks, treats, or mixed in with their regular food.  They even got the bone marrow from the bigger bones.  The ONLY thing that was thrown out on this deer, was the rib cage, spine, and lower intestinal tact, all devoid of meat - everything else was used.

Since I wanted to can this batch of Dog Food, it was important to not have too much fat in the recipe - I know the dogs need fat as part of their diet, but too much and you run the risk of it going rancid even when it is canned.  So we included some fat but not too much.  I just eye balled this, as we tossed the meat into a large stock pot with some water.  We cooked all the meat with water for just over an hour in a giant canning/dog food making session.  This created a "meat stock" we used later.

I cooked up some veggies to mix in. Carrots and spinach (the next time it will be carrots and green beans, I have heard green beans are a better fiber for moving things along in their intestinal track) it is just stuff we had from the garden so it was all grown at home.  I added those in for vitamins and minerals.  Then added some hard boiled eggs from my chickens WITH the shells for calcium (also home grown).

I also cooked up some rice (overcook the rice with more water than is needed so it can't swell anymore, if you are not planning on canning the dog food - please disregard this step) as this is usually very easy for dogs to digest, and its dirt cheap.

Then we added some cider vinegar - to keep the acidity level up (this discourages bacteria growth when canned) and because I have read it is good for their joints.  Our older German Shepherd needs everything good for joints.  We also added a little bit of garlic - which in small amounts can improve palatability for the dogs and helps repeal insects.  I have heard garlic can be bad but after doing some reading on the subject and talking to my vet, I learned this small amount of garlic is harmless and may even be beneficial as there are people who say adding some garlic in their diet can help to discourage mosquitoes and ticks.

We mixed all that together.  Then we ran it all through a meat grinder - on medium - with a course grind blade.

Next we prepared the jars and pressure canner for canning.

We kept the ground up dog food warm on the stove - and then added back in some of the "meat stock" which was also being kept warm on the stove back in the jars. This is what is commonly known as a hot pack in the world of canning. In retrospect - we found out the hard way, that too much liquid causes the seals to fail. So all the jars we've done since then have been a tad more on the dry side.

Leaving just about 2 inches of headspace in the jars, we filled them and processed them in our pressure canner at 12 lbs for 90 minutes following the recommendation in our canning book for 'ground beef'. Don't forget to adjust for your altitude!   UPDATE: Due to what I have learned about canning safety I have switched to canning this recipe at 15 lbs for the entire 90 minutes and using only pint jars, this adds a little bit more insurance for me that I am doing everything I can to produce a safe end product.  

I love hearing that ping of a successfully sealed jar!

The finished product (please note I no longer use quart size jars).

And just in case you are wondering homemade dog food doesn't stink.  In fact it smells like a roast beef cooking in the oven.  It will make you hungry. Our dogs LOVE it - whenever we feed it every dish is licked perfectly clean when they are done.  We don't prep this dog food exclusively but we do make it when we have scrap meat like I mentioned above and add it into a rotation.  It helps me know that I am doing everything I can as a responsible pet owner to provide for them in the event of a disaster.

"Pet Food-What to Store and How" is another article I have written for American Preppers Network that also addresses all types of store bought dog and cat food, if making your own is not your thing.  I have covered how to store it to get the maximum amount of storage life out of it, techniques for usage, and even some new ideas for food - like freeze-dried dog food. Click Here!

Here is the recipe - I got the original one from The Canning Granny Blog  (a wonderful blog for all things 'canning and preserving' plus she's a Washington native and just a neat lady!) and made a few modifications due to my preference for a higher meat ratio and needing less liquid.

This will do a single batch of 6 or so pint jars.

• 3.5 Cups of Meat
• 2 Cups of Rice
• 2-3 Large Cooked Carrots
• Half a bag of Cooked Spinach or a Handful of Cooked Green Beans
• One Boiled Egg still in the shell
• 2-3 TBS of Cider Vinegar
• 1 TBS of Garlic Powder
• 1 Cup of "Meat Stock"

If you want to forgo the pressure canning  you can partition out serving sizes, stick them into little freezer bags or FoodSaver bags, vacuum them and then freeze them. This recipe would even make good RAW meals for your dog if you aren't canning it. Each morning simply get a bag of food out and it will be thawed and ready to serve in the evening. No wheat, no corn, no preservatives, or other goofy crap that Dog Food companies like to add.

According to The Canning Granny, one pint of this dog food will feed a 100lb dog for a day, fed half in the morning and half in the evening.  Of course, this will vary from dog to dog as they have different energy needs so like any dog food you will have to keep an eye on your dogs weight.

I would also like to add that I understand that USDA advises against canning rice.  They recommend this because rice swells, it also increases the density making it more difficult for the contents to come up to temperature.  Also know this recipe is has not been scientifically tested for safety, so you are taking a risk by using it.  But I do know this, and now so do you .  I choose to can it anyways.  You will have to decide for yourself if you want to can with rice and with this unapproved recipe.