Preserving/Canning...

Under careful tutelage of my mother we have been canning and preserving our hearts out.  Mostly fruit and tomato based stuff.  I've invented tomatillo relish, preserves, and chutney to deal with the glut of tomatillos! (I just made salsa too.)  Now we have two bushels of apples

Can you help me!!??!  My grams gave me an awesome Apple Butter recipe to can- but I am having the hardest time finding all the supplies I need!  She said to use those rubber rings, and the old-fashion jars with the two part lids that sort of suck themselves shut tight as they finish cooling... (know the ones??)

Anyhow I told her I can't find the rubber rings anywhere- and i can only find the solid metal lids- and then the guy at the ironmonger shop tried to sell me these wax discs......... I bought them because he took AGES to try to explain how to use them to me so I felt compelled in the end!!!!  So- i tried to make the Apple Butter... The jam turned out wonderful---- but I am still praying no one gets sick from the caning!!! 

My gram told me that I need to do this whole 'hot water bath' thing... how do you guys can?!?  Have you used those wax discs?  Are they supposed to dissolve or melt into the jam?!!!?  ...please help....!

NEVER-MIND!  I am a nerd!!  I totally missed the post about this!!!  Oh dear!  BLOND moment!!

Glad you found it.... let us know if you need any further info!

Thanks to all the brilliant info and help in this thread, I overcame my fear of sterilising and canning this weekend and made 5 1/2 beeeeeeautiful, golden pots of Apple Jelly/Preserves. The half is conveniently for us to devour, but the others are going out as Christmas gifts.

And I enjoyed it so much we walked over to What!!! (a warehouse-sized pound shop by Surrey Quays. The exclamation points are theirs!) and bought more jam jars so we can mix and match for gifts. They're doing really pretty ones right now, 6 or £2. So we bought three more sets. Now to find a metal jam funnel so I don't need to keep bugging the neighbour for hers... 

Thank you UKY!!

Okay, so it looks like we're going to have a bumper crop of tomatillos this year (as well as tomatoes), and I wanted to preserve some so I can have my green enchilada sauce in winter as well.  But you can't just go to the supermarket here and find Ball canning jars like I used to in the US.  Or can you, and I'm just being a thickie?  Or shopping in the wrong store?  Could someone point me in the right direction pretty please?   

Lakeland sells them online (just put 'jars' in their search engine as they don't use 'canning'). I don't recall ever seeing them in the supermarkets there but there must be local places to get them, too.

Google Kilner jars too..

I can't find the old canning thread to sticky it too.

EDIT:  I've found it! 

I haven't seen canning jars like I used in the US.  They have the kind with the rubber gasket and the hinge, but not the ones that have the metal lid and metal ring.

All my in-laws don't boil their preserves, which I don;t understand, but then the US doesn't sterilize baby bottles, so maybe it is a trade off.

I haven't actually placed the order yet, but jamjars.com has a much wider range than the ones we got at Lakeland -- including some especially nice small jars. I want to give some jam as gifts, but only in small quantities as I am a greedy pig.

Right now, we're in a lull between loganberries and blackberries.

I finally found them on eBay.  They're listed as Kilner jars, but "updated" to be two-part metal tops with the ring.  Yay!! Not cheap though. 

Got my order from jamjars.com. Excellent! Shipping is a bit dear (isn't it always?) but the jars were relatively cheap. Lots of cool shapes and they turned around my order in two days.

Mucho recommendo!

I am so glad I found this thread! My mother, back in the States, just started her annual summer canning fix and hearing her talk about it on the phone made me feel a little homesick. I had all these silly thoughts about, "I'll never be able to can again." <sob>

I am so glad to find out how wrong I was! Thanks so much for all this helpful information!

Floating this thread to the top because it's CHUTNEY TIME, baby!

I've got a ragtag assemblage of leftover crap-from-the-garden: green tomatoes, chili peppers, apples, onions. I'm never going to find a recipe that exactly matches what I've got, so I've been trying to find a sort of universal chutney formula.

So far, my Google-fu has suggested a ratio of 3:1:1 or 4:1:2. That's fruit:vinegar:sugar. But I'm a novice preserver and I live in terror of giving my self a good dose of botulism. Also, some recipes call for sterilizing the final jars in a bath and some don't.

Any experienced chutnoids about?

I was never into chutneys in the States, but I've gotten terrifically addicted. Particularly since I discovered mixing chutney 50/50 with creamcheese as a dip. Ohhhhhhh.

Anyone doing any canning for the holidays? 

I'm not, as I have never canned before, however, I am taking a keen interest.
I watched Nigella make her chili jam last night, which reminded me of jalapeno jelly, which is sooo good with cheese and crackers. Also, I started thinking of the possibilities of ordering some jalapenos from Devon to make my own fire-roasted salsa (this way I could make a lot and just preserve it for future use!) So, I've read through this thread, but I'm still a little confused, since I don't have any prior experience. Are there any beginner books to canning that anyone can recommend? Obviously, UK books would be better, since some equipment in the US books might be hard to find here. Thanks!

I started thinking of the possibilities of ordering some jalapenos from Devon

Our Tesco had jalapenos last week! I don't know if they've always been there because I haven't looked before, but they're definitely there! And it's not a very big shop either - they're with the fresh herbs and come in bags of 3-4 peppers.