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Open kettle canning is a fast but unsafe food preservation method that involves placing hot foods into hot jars and sealing them closed. It doesn’t raise the temperature of the food enough to kill many harmful organisms and leaves numerous opportunities for contamination. It’s not recommended for long-term or room temperature storage.
Open kettle canning is a food preservation method that involves placing hot foods into extremely hot jars and then sealing them closed. This canning method is not recommended by a number of food safety organizations, including the United States Department of Agriculture. However, it can help to understand what the process is because this will make identification and avoidance easier. Alternatively, cooks should consider canning in a pressure cooker or boiling water bath, as these two methods are much safer.
In the open kettle packaging, a pot is used to heat food that is canned, such as tomato sauce, while jars, rings and lids are kept in a pot of boiling water. The cook removes one jar at a time, fills it with hot food, and quickly seals it, setting it aside to cool. Once fully cooled, the conservative ring can in theory be removed, although many people like to leave it on.
Some people use this as a shortcut method, because it’s fast. If you plan to refrigerate or freeze the food later, open kettle canning is an acceptable technique. However, for long-term storage and room temperature storage, it’s not a safe canning method. Recipes that recommend this canning technique should be viewed with suspicion.
The main problem with this canning method is that it doesn’t raise the temperature of the food enough to kill many harmful organisms. In a pressure cooker or canning bath, the food is raised and held at a high temperature, ensuring that the heat is evenly distributed and this kills most of the organisms that could be potentially harmful. Open canning of the kettle also leaves numerous opportunities for contamination.
Organisms can be pulled from the counter or from tools used to handle food and the jar, for example, and they can also be introduced to the pot used to boil jars by sloppy cooks. Under normal circumstances, if some bacteria is introduced into a jar while the food is being packaged, it is no cause for concern, as the bacteria will be killed when the jar is boiled again. However, there are no second chances to get rid of bacteria, mold and mildew in open kettle canning, and as a result, there is a high risk of food going bad, especially when kept at room temperature.
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