How do I know if my applesauce canning experiment worked? Concerned I'll be giving folks botulism for the holidays
Inspired by a wonderful children's story about applesauce making, our family (including kids age 2 and 4) has been making weekly batches of applesauce throughout the fall and after reading a bit on canning we decided to make applesauce for our friends and family for the holidays. Yesterday we set up our "applesauce factory" and made 15 jars of sauce.
We had places to be so after we pulled the last jar out of the bath, we spread them on the counter to cool and left the house.
This morning I inspected the jars – trying to figure out how I would know if the canning process was successful. I screwed off the rings to see if the lids were tight – they all were.
But I noticed that:
1. Some jars had experienced a bit of leakage during the boiling process – I wiped away a small amount of applesauce from many lids. The lids did seem closed.
2. On a few jars the rings were on very tightly and I couldn’t open it easily and I decided not to try too hard for fear of breaking a seal.
So you know what we did: We sterilized the ball jars in the dishwasher and the lids in boiling water and then put the hot applesauce, fresh made, into the jars. I put the ball jar lids on – the lid and then the rings-- and then submerged the jars on their side (I didn’t have a tall enough pot) for 15 minutes in water as the directions state. I did a quick internet search which seemed to suggest that boiling on their side was OK – something I was nervous about.
Do you have any advice to offer to let me know if we got it right? I would hate it if I did something wrong and got everyone sick. Would also hate if I was hasty enough to do this without any expertise and have now wasted a lot of delicious applesauce…
What to do??
Many many thanks!
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