Restocking the pantry
My wife and I are rebuilding our pantry through pressure canning. This weekend we did pinto beans and red beans. We've also been doing green beans and carrots. The pressure canner handles all of these since they're low-acid foods — you can't water-bath them safely.
We looked at canning tomatoes. The math doesn't work. Buying tomatoes at grocery store prices and canning them costs more per jar than just buying canned tomatoes. If you grow your own, it probably makes sense. We don't grow tomatoes yet, though the AeroGarden experiment might change how we think about growing things at home.
Beans are the opposite. Dried beans are cheap, pressure canning is straightforward, and the result is better than store-bought canned beans. A bag of dried pintos yields more jars than you'd think, and the texture is noticeably different from the can — creamier, less metallic.
We've been floating the idea of finding local produce sources with bulk deals or seasonal specials. Our routine-manager already watches grocery store loss leaders and flags price drops, so we'd know when tomatoes hit a good price. We just haven't found a local farm or co-op selling in quantities that make canning worth it yet.
What we're canning
- Pinto beans (done, first batch this weekend)
- Red beans (done, same session as pintos — these go into Monday red beans)
- Green beans (in rotation)
- Carrots (in rotation)
- Tomatoes (on hold until we find a cheaper source or grow our own)
What we've learned so far
Canning is tricky. My wife has tried a few books and the instructions vary enough to make you nervous. We've landed on checking the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning for ourselves on processing times and pressure levels. If a recipe disagrees with the USDA tables, we go with the USDA.
Two books have been worth it. Attainable Sustainable: The Lost Art of Self-Reliant Living by Kris Bordessa is good on the whole picture — canning fits into a broader system of preserving, growing, and reducing waste. It's practical without being preachy. How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman is not a canning book, but it's the one I keep picking up for everything else. It teaches patterns, not just recipes. You learn what acid does, why you sear, how emulsions work, and then you can improvise.
We also pay for the America's Test Kitchen app. People always talk about their NYT Cooking subscription, and that's fine, but a lot of those recipes have specialty ingredients you buy once and never use again. ATK tends to work the other way — the ingredients are things you already have, and the technique is what makes the dish. That fits how we cook. Learn the shape of the thing, then vary it.
Open questions
- What's the break-even point for home-canned vs. store-bought by item?
- Are there local farms doing bulk produce deals in our area?
- Would a chest freezer make more sense than canning for some items?
- A friend grows and cans her own tomatoes with her kid. Worth asking her about process and whether she'd share it here.