Home Canned Pumpkin
Canning pumpkin has become one of my favorite things to do in the fall. Starting late September, pumpkins begin to show up in stores. Typically all you will find at the store are the ones people carve for Halloween. They have a wonderful taste when home-canned. There are other pumpkins that you may find taste better. Your best bet to find them is at some kind of pumpkin festival or church and hometown hayride. These venues will have a wider variety of pumpkins for sale.
If you do a bit of research online you can find pumpkin names and taste profiles and decide what you are looking for in terms of tastes for eating and for baking. My favorite thing in the world is mashed pumpkin with butter salt and pepper. By canning pumpkin, I can have pumpkin for pies at Thanksgiving, and buttered pumpkin all year round.
I found these pumpkins at the store. This was literally the only type they had. A word of advice when choosing pumpkins. Look at all the pumpkins, usually, stores will store them in a large container. Look at the pumpkins and see if any have mold or mildew or rot starting on them or at the stem. If so do not buy them or any near them if possible. You have to check the stems very carefully. Make sure they are strong and firm with no softness or rot.
Take the pumpkins home and wash them right away. Use a mild soap and simple bleach water. Just a solution with a bit of bleach in it to kill the pathogens from the field that might facilitate stem rot. Dry them very well especially around the stem. Kept in a cool dark place on a table or up off the floor.
You can keep pumpkins, and other winter squashes for several months or usually most all of winter. They usually will keep until you are ready to home can them or just rotating them into your meals. Usually, I will keep mine on a piece of cardboard on the floor all along my dining room wall. I also keep them in racks layered alternately in different directions so air can move through and also on my kitchen table.
My daughter and I found a really great sale on winter squash so we bought quite a bit as it keeps so long and is seasonal. We are currently doing the GAPS diet. and winter squash is part of the introduction part of the diet. The acorn, butternut and spaghetti squash was a great find. When it no longer becomes feasible to store on the table and the rack we will home can the squash.
Gut and Psychology Syndrome
When you are ready to start canning the pumpkin there is going to a lot of prep work to get to the point where you can safely can the pumpkin. It ends up being a lot of work at the beginning yet at the end is well worth it. Not to mention by home canning you control what is in your food. Nothing but food! Being able to open a can of home-canned pumpkin and in five minutes have hot buttered pumpkin as a meal or with a meal is well worth the work at the front end. After experiencing the ease of putting a meal together post canning. I have come to love canning. I am very willing to put the hard work in at the beginning for the fast and easy reward at the end.
Pumpkins have a lot of steps to get it to the canning jar, or stored. if you cut it in half, deseed it, and roast it in the oven to deskin it, you can no longer home can it. You can only freeze it. So that leaves hand deskinning.
You can do this in several ways. After multiple years of canning pumpkin in the fall, I found my happy method. Rather than peel the whole outside as this picture shows,
I cut it into the desired chunk sizes. I then cut the peel off from the one-inch chunks. This method seems to go faster. The recommended size to cut your pumpkin is one inch as recommended by all ball canning books and the National center for home food preservation.
My two favorite ball canning books are: The Complete Guide To Home
Preserving
The All New Ball Book Of Canning And Preserving
The removal of the seeds, deskinning, peeling, chopping, and cutting into one-inch squares is highlighted below.
You can hot pack or raw pack vegetables when home canning. The method below is a hot pack. After cutting the pumpkin into one-inch squares, I rinsed it and then blanched in boiling water for 2 minutes. I then placed it in jars with one inch of headspace. You then pour clean boiling water up to one inch creating the one-inch headspace. Typically I would add one teaspoon of salt in vegetables, but as pumpkin also has a sweet profile I left out the salt. Debubble with a wood or plastic skewer pushing the pumpkin around gently. This will force out any air bubbles inside the jar in or around the pumpkin. After de-bubbling the water or pumpkin may shift allowing you to either add more pumpkin or more water to realign back to one-inch headspace.
Fill your canner with the jars as you are filling them. As you are hot packing turn your canner on low and begin to slowly bring up the heat so that the canner and jars are of the same heat. My canner the All American 921 holds seven, one-quart jars.
All American 921 Canner
Once you can have canned the pumpkin for the recommended amount of pressure for your area, and the recommended amount of time per either the ball canning books or the NCHFP, turn off your canner and let it come down off of pressure. Once it is down from pressure you can remove the pumpkin from your canner and let it cool. Follow all instructions as per your personal canner. Once cooled for twelve to twenty-four hours, check all your seals, wash the jars, and store them on your shelves. I have found that with average size pumpkins that I get almost seven-quart jars per pumpkin.
From start to finish the pumpkin is delicious and beautiful in jars. I get wonderful satisfaction looking at my canning closet seeing the fresh in-season produce I have canned that I can have all year long. I have been doing three to Four pumpkins for my household. This takes me through the holiday season and pumpkin for me and the occasional guest who loves pumpkin as much as I do.
Happy Canning!!
If you do a bit of research online you can find pumpkin names and taste profiles and decide what you are looking for in terms of tastes for eating and for baking. My favorite thing in the world is mashed pumpkin with butter salt and pepper. By canning pumpkin, I can have pumpkin for pies at Thanksgiving, and buttered pumpkin all year round.
Take the pumpkins home and wash them right away. Use a mild soap and simple bleach water. Just a solution with a bit of bleach in it to kill the pathogens from the field that might facilitate stem rot. Dry them very well especially around the stem. Kept in a cool dark place on a table or up off the floor.
You can keep pumpkins, and other winter squashes for several months or usually most all of winter. They usually will keep until you are ready to home can them or just rotating them into your meals. Usually, I will keep mine on a piece of cardboard on the floor all along my dining room wall. I also keep them in racks layered alternately in different directions so air can move through and also on my kitchen table.
My daughter and I found a really great sale on winter squash so we bought quite a bit as it keeps so long and is seasonal. We are currently doing the GAPS diet. and winter squash is part of the introduction part of the diet. The acorn, butternut and spaghetti squash was a great find. When it no longer becomes feasible to store on the table and the rack we will home can the squash.
Gut and Psychology Syndrome
When you are ready to start canning the pumpkin there is going to a lot of prep work to get to the point where you can safely can the pumpkin. It ends up being a lot of work at the beginning yet at the end is well worth it. Not to mention by home canning you control what is in your food. Nothing but food! Being able to open a can of home-canned pumpkin and in five minutes have hot buttered pumpkin as a meal or with a meal is well worth the work at the front end. After experiencing the ease of putting a meal together post canning. I have come to love canning. I am very willing to put the hard work in at the beginning for the fast and easy reward at the end.
Pumpkins have a lot of steps to get it to the canning jar, or stored. if you cut it in half, deseed it, and roast it in the oven to deskin it, you can no longer home can it. You can only freeze it. So that leaves hand deskinning.
My two favorite ball canning books are: The Complete Guide To Home
Preserving
The All New Ball Book Of Canning And Preserving
The removal of the seeds, deskinning, peeling, chopping, and cutting into one-inch squares is highlighted below.
You can hot pack or raw pack vegetables when home canning. The method below is a hot pack. After cutting the pumpkin into one-inch squares, I rinsed it and then blanched in boiling water for 2 minutes. I then placed it in jars with one inch of headspace. You then pour clean boiling water up to one inch creating the one-inch headspace. Typically I would add one teaspoon of salt in vegetables, but as pumpkin also has a sweet profile I left out the salt. Debubble with a wood or plastic skewer pushing the pumpkin around gently. This will force out any air bubbles inside the jar in or around the pumpkin. After de-bubbling the water or pumpkin may shift allowing you to either add more pumpkin or more water to realign back to one-inch headspace.
Once you can have canned the pumpkin for the recommended amount of pressure for your area, and the recommended amount of time per either the ball canning books or the NCHFP, turn off your canner and let it come down off of pressure. Once it is down from pressure you can remove the pumpkin from your canner and let it cool. Follow all instructions as per your personal canner. Once cooled for twelve to twenty-four hours, check all your seals, wash the jars, and store them on your shelves. I have found that with average size pumpkins that I get almost seven-quart jars per pumpkin.
Happy Canning!!
