Quoted: Just one important note. If you use the "cold pack" or "water bath" canning method in the excellent thread by Feral, don't put the meat or other vegetables in it. These are low acid (>4.5 pH) foods and even if they are mixed in the tomato sauce in small chunks, they may not process properly to kill spores. Better to put the meat, onions, mushrooms, etc. in to the sauce after you open the jars to heat them for service. Meats and low acid vegetables should be pressure canned.
|
I agree with you wholeheartedly that one should not NOT
NOT (can I be more clear?
) add low-acid ingredients willy-nilly to a tomato preparation and call it safe simply because it's been through a water bath. Moreover, as soon as you even
think about adding meat to a tomato sauce, you're obligated to also start dragging out the pressure canner.
With that said, I think it's worth noting that there
are tested recipes out there that allow processing of low-acid ingredients in water bath canner. The Blue Book has quite a few of them. The key here is that these recipes have been
tested and are known to have a safe pH. Moreover, these tested recipes all call for supplemental acidification with lemon juice (store bought, not home squeezed) or citric acid.
The forward to Ball's
Seasoned Tomato Sauce recipe (p. 364,
Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving) puts it succinctly:
Even though onions, a low-acid food, are included in this sauce, this recipe can be processed safely in a boiling-water canner because te acidity of the mixture and a safe processing time have been scientifically determined. However, it is crucial that you do not alter the ingredients or quantities or you may produce a product that isn't safe to eat. [emphasis mine]
|
Occasionally we'll have folks on the forum detail a "family recipe" that has not been tested and proven safe. The justification for using the recipe is usually: "Well, Granny's been doing this for fifty years and nobody in the family has died yet!" I don't know about you, but this kind of attestation isn't good enough for me and
my family. Particularly when many of our foodstuffs will sit on a shelf for a year or even more. I consequently stick with proven recipes........and I recommend that others do as well.