When my weirdo friend Gary and I were little, as precocious little boys with a love of reading do, we would say the names of ailments and diseases. We would then laugh like busy pint-sized demons.
Leprosy!
Jungle Rot!
Hernia! (This one we thought should be a first name)
Rickets!
Malaria! (Also a name)
Botulism!
Not so funny now, and we've lost Gary (to none of those listed). For my part, I want to avoid Botulism if I can. When I can. During canning.
I put up a fair quantity of my Middle-Eastern tomato sauce this year, using my typical recipe and adding lemon juice to each jar, as today's varieties are not as acidic as those our grannies grew.
And being stupid, I canned them in a water bath, as I have long recommended at this site. All the jars sealed, but today I'm going to pop the lids, empty the jars, re-sterilize them, add more lemon, reheat the sauce, refill and can the jars in my pressure-cooker canner.
Why all that work? One, I love that sauce. Two, the jury is out on water-bath canning or pressure-cooker canning for tomato sauces, with my canner's manual recommending boiling water for salsa (is my recipe that?) and the National Center for Home Food Preservation (yay academia!) recommending pressure-cooker canning for spaghetti sauces without meat. Here is their FAQ page. They wisely advise on that page "The specific recipe, and sometimes preparation method, will determine if a salsa can be processed in a boiling water canner or a pressure canner. A process must be scientifically determined for each recipe."
So let's call my sauce vegetarian spaghetti (without even one meatball and therefore, no bread. Google that one). And I will use the pressure-cooker method the National Center recommends, since it guarantees that food reaches 240 degrees. That will kill off any bacteria that can cause botulism.
Boiling water is not hot enough.
Friends, do not trust all the homesteading and DIY-bloggers on this matter. Go with the scientists, and good luck with your late-season food prep.
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