What's the worst thing you've ever canned?

[Dinghy]

I cleaned one failed experiment out of the "bunker" today. Last year I canned garlic jelly and absolutely hated it! The only thing I could taste was vinegar, which I detest. I love garlic and garlic bread, so I thought the garlic jelly could go on toast for a quick garlic bread. This was my biggest canning disappointment. I emptied out all the jars so I can use them when I make hot pepper jelly. I know I like that!!
What all have you canned that didn't turn out like you hoped??

 

[Tweakette]

I made "dilly beans" (pickled green beans) using a recipe I hadn't used before. There was something wrong in the recipe - way too much vinegar, I think - and the beans came out COMPLETELY limp. They tasted terrible, and you could tie them in a knot without them snapping.

Needless to say, I switched recipes.

Tweak

 

[blueberry]

I found a recipe in an old magazine for "beet flavored applesauce". The article went on to say it was a good topping for ice cream.

I ended up using it as a topping on my compost pile.

 

[A.T.Hagan]

Without a doubt that would be my orange juice canning experiments.

The best of the lot tasted like industrial grade reconstituted juice.

.....Alan.

 

[Beetree]

I accidently canned potatos (is it es or os? ) I accidently canned them! I was very young - first apartment. One day I was happily doling around the kitchen enjoying the bright sunlight shining in. By chance I happened to open the cabinet below the kitchen sink. I think I was going to get the suntan oil or something insignificant. Oh what is this a big big tupperware bowl. Plastic bowl with a lid on it. What a pretty blue bowl! I opened it and the awful nasty liquid sloshed out of it. Taken back I almost fainted from the over whelming stink! The liquid sloshed with my sudden movement of terror, on to the floor where my flip flops (sandals) immediately slid my body to the floor, with a mighty plop of my but the whole big bowl flew into the air and I was covered with maggots and rotten potatos! I had been so smart to put the potatos in the nice plastic bowl months before when moving in to the apt, (or perhaps a friend helping move did it). So meticulous! Ha

 

[Tadpole]

I ruined my plum jam this spring. I don't like terribly sweet jam, so I added an unmeasured splash of lemon juice to the pot.

Now it's way too sour. Just can't bring myself to throw it out yet.

 

[breezyhill]

canning disasters

i just gathered up all 23 jars left over from last years garden, of green tomato relish. yuck. why did i ever think that would be good?

i rinsed it, to get most of the vinegary-salt taste off, and then gave it to my chickens. i don't know that they liked it any better.

breezyhill

 

[Dinghy]

I'm glad I'm not the only one with failures!! I tried the green tomato thing too. Did them a couple ways. Nobody liked them pickled, they were sort of mushy. Haven't even tried the relish yet! I just hated to have all those little tomatoes go to waste and a guy at work gave me recipes for canning them. He thinks they're great. I should have loaded them up and sent them to his house!
BeeTree, I almost gagged reading about your potato mess! There is nothing worse than the smell of rotten potatoes (ok, maybe rotten eggs!). I recently threw out a bag that I had forgotten about in the cellar. I can still smell it from the compost pile when the wind blows!
Alan, I never heard of canning orange juice. I hope you get it to work out. I made orange juice jelly a couple times and it's pretty good. One batch jelled and the other one didn't though. I made it for my grandaughter who loves orange juice, then we found out she's allergic to oranges.
Beet flavored applesauce sounds like a no go right off the bat!!!! I'm not too crazy about beets! My mom made dilly beans one year and they weren't too bad. My daughter ate them by the jar full, but wouldn't touch beans any other way.
It's fun to hear what everybody else has tried. Maybe when we find new recipes we should post them first to see if anybody has tried them and how good it turned out!

 

[Gingergirl]

Yeah, green tomato mincemeat was a bust.

Fermented pickles with our well water was a disaster too...the sulfur in our water permeated the cukes (even though it had been through the RO.) I have to BUY water now for my pickles.

 

[CopperTopMom]

I canned carrots one year.......YUCK!!!!!! No one would eat them so finally the pigs got them. There was nothing wrong with them they were just mushy and tasted nasty (the flavor change from pressure canning was not nice). Won't do that one again. Kids and dh don't much like canned corn either. Freezing works better for it.

coppertopmom

 

[blueberry]

Dinghy,

I tried the beet flavored applesauce when I was new at canning, and would try anything

I 'hope' I know better now but no guarantees

 

[Charlie]

Home Made Smelt Sardines. Several varieties. By far the worst thing I ever put in a jar. They are now re-named "Cat Food" and even the cats hate the ones with hot sauce.

 

[breezyhill]

canned smelt sardines...

that's just too funny.

 

[Tadpole]

Ugh, Charlie! I think you win first prize in the most awful canning category!

 

[ShepInTheValley]

ROFL - oh THANKS Dinghy for starting this thread! You guys made my day and I got to laugh some. Beetree - oh my gosh... I can't IMAGINE how horrible that was, LOL. I've had rotten potatoes and rotten eggs both to deal with many times, but man, to fall and have that mess all over... BLECK. I might have started upchucking!

Garlic jelly huh? Well, I can see why you'd try to make something that you could use for garlic bread. It's too bad it didn't work out.

I helped make pickles years ago as a little girl, when my girlfriend's family processed a bunch. But the first time I tried to make them on my own, they didn't look so appealing so we never tried eating them, LOL. We're not all that big on pickles anyhoo... so it's no big loss.

Bleck Charlie! LOL. Tadpole, you might redo that plum jam and just try adding more sugar.

 

[RWH]

feeling MUCH better about canning

The Absolutly WORST thing I tried to can was Brownie fuged chocolate cake.
I saw it on the food network some lady was making a Killing on shipping it around the country.

How hard could it be????? ( VERY)

Chocolate and carrot cake for that matter need special storage technics. I prefer in the Dump!

the cake had turned but you couldn't tell until you had gotten about 5-6 bites in. Then like a well developed salsa it came and kicked you in the jaw. Right in that place the grape juice gets you at.

The children are now suspusious of ANYTHING that is not a jam. My proven specality.

 

[AnnCats]

I just had my worst failure! We got LOTS of corn free for the picking, and decided to can it... it's been years and years since I canned corn.

Thank God for Green Giant... I'll NEVER can corn again!

The taste changes, it gets a bit hard and bicky, and even the smell sent the kids to other rooms. Not bad, just a kind of caramelized corn smell that isn't at all appealing... had to air the place out on a 100 degree plus day.

Pigs got the rest of the corn, and the canned corn came on sale at 33 cents a large can this wekk. Got my cases and I'm ready to go for the winter WITHOUT the home canned corn.

 

[Gingergirl]

Ann,

Had the same thing happen the first time I canned corn. I had already frozen alot and didn't want to use any more freezer space. But the corn kept coming. So I decided to try canning it. It boiled off, carmelized, just awful flavor and smell. Turns out it was too mature or starchy for canning. Young corn cans beautifully. (A freebie isn't always so free.)

Now, I can the young ears and freeze the slightly older ones as they seem to handle freezing (cut from cob) okay. Eat the old ones. This year, I'm also trying out dehydrating the slightly older ones. That seems to be going well too.

Don't give up!

 

[DustMusher]

Saurkraut actually this was not really canned, but we tried to cure our own. One weekend was spent shredding cabbage on an antique cabbage shredder and I think we kept most of the finger parts out of the kraut. Then we spent hours pouring boiling water into 10 and 20 gallon ceramic crocks, picking grape leaves and washing them for a lid, cutting wood circles for a press and collecting bricks to top the wood lids.

This was back in the '60's and we were getting the directions from an Aunt who used to make kraut and my parents were 'remembering' from when they were kids......

Got it all done, had the crocks in the basement to cure, and we went away for a weekend. Seems that was the time that the kraut turned, and unfortunately the crocks were too near the air intake for the furnace.

Walked into the house Sunday night and my parents and I about passed out from the smell. We actually went hunting for the cat to make sure it had not died inside.

Carrying those foaming, smelling crocks up the basement stairs is a close to hell as I ever want to get. It took me years before I could even open a commercial can of kraut.

DM

 

[monkeyface]

Ground turkey meat!!! I found it for 3# for $1.00 and decided to put it up. The ones that I had left unseasoned were good, but the ones I had seasoned, salt, garlic, pepper , that sort of stuff were unpalatable. Don't add salt or garlic, it just gets stronger and stronger.

 

[cipher]

Salsa from the blue book. Too wierd tasting, totally vinegar smell and taste. Ooky!

The worst, though, had to be the minced corned beef. Was trying to make my own corned beef, like the minced up type you can buy.

I bought a crock, several (!) whole corned beef briskets, and then proceeded to "corn" them in the crock for a long time in the fridge with the kosher salt. (They were "corned" already). Anyway, after I had corned them, I took out my meat grinder and got my jars ready. I ground up the lean corned beef, and put that into jars. Soon enough the salt started reacting with the steel grinder and bits of rust started staining the meat here and there. I picked it out and canned the rest according to the blue book.

It's inedible! So salty it would choke anything. Tastes like rust. Just AWFUL! A starving person would not be able to eat it.

yech!

 

[Dinghy]

I tried the salsa too and didn't like it. Maybe if we drained it and added some sugar when we open it, it would be better. I hate to taste vinegar in anything. I love the one kind of store bought salsa, but can't think of the name of it right now because I'm so tired. I had really hoped mine would turn out close. I tried two different recipes and wasn't happy with either one.

 

[Gingergirl]

Ground beef, ground turkey, ground corned beef...sounds like ground anything doesn't work too well in the canner.

 

[fruit loop]

My peaches were a disaster

I tried to make peach preserves. Don't know what I did wrong. The peaches didn't turn brown, but they didn't gel right. They didn't taste bad, though, and I used one jar to top ice cream. Made great peach sundaes. Unfortunately, you can't eat hundreds of peach sundaes.

 

[Gingergirl]

Fruit Loop,

You can eat hundreds of pancakes. My preserves that don't thicken up are used like fruit syrup. Sometimes I don't let them thicken up.

 

[fruit loop]

Thanks, GingerGirl!

I love fruit-topped pancakes! Now I know what to do with the booboos! THANKS!

 

[Melodi]

We have had several spectacular failures, so far not with the canner, but with other methods of food storage. The worst, was probably the lovely, hard-waxed cheese that we lovingly put in a plastic container to age. The we forgot about it for awhile. Until one afternoon, our kitchen also smelled like one of the cat's had died in it. Opening the plastic, to discover a putrid, seething, mass of goo, was right up their with my rotten potato experience in collage (this time stored in an ice chest). Yes, we should have known better, but we didn't.

Our most recent disaster was a plastic bucket full of fermenting beer that went off. We couldn't figure out what is was for several days. By which point, no one was willing to go into the kitchen. Except for my husband, who has almost no sense of smell and couldn't figure out what was wrong with the rest of us..until he found the bucket...almost no sense of smell is not the same thing as NO sense of smell

And, to the canning newbies out there, its not that many things don't can well, its just that most traditional methods of food storage are not an exact science. Something may turn out wonderful one year (like the baby corn) and horrific the next year (nasty canalized corn). The mystery may be easy to explain, like the ages of the corn or it may be harder to figure out. Best thing to do, is not to make to many large batches of any one thing, if you have a choice. Vary your recipes, even if you have a lot of the same major item to can. That way, if the salted stuff tastes good, but the unsalted is only fit for the chickens, you still have 1/2 of your original produce put away.

In general, I find that most stuff does keep better in the freezer, but even with a large one, we can't store everything there. And we can't even get Mason Jars over here in Ireland. So we do a combination of both. This year, I may try pressure canning for the first time, just to practice. Everyone I've talked to says that the results are better for frozen than canned meat. But in a doomer scenario it might be necessary to can as well as salt down freezer meat quickly.

Oh, that was another disaster, the first time we tried to cure pig meat...it was ghastly, horrible and we had to throw out the meat from two, entire animals. However, I'm glad we figured out what was wrong (wrong time of year, not enough salt, soaked too long, lots of stuff) because the home-cured and smoked meat my husband makes now, is some the best stuff I ever had. But again, we should have tried our first experiment with a small amount of meat. That way, we would not have wasted so much.

Good thread, and some good laughs....

Melodi

 

[ShepInTheValley]

Yep, good thread and lots of laughs. Thanks for that. A hearty laugh is good for the soul.

I guess I've been very lucky. I canned some spaghetti sauce that I'd prepared... all spiced up - perfecto. Then I canned it. It had a funny taste to it. I added more tomato paste, water, and seasonings which helped... but you could still taste the odd taste a little. Someone told me not to add the spices when you can cause it changes once it's canned. I started just canning the tomato sauce only after that. I figure I can add the spices later.

I've canned meats with no problems, but everything was cooked before I jarred it, even tho I still had to pressure can it the normal amount of time. I know they say you can pack it raw, but I haven't.

One time when I canned apple jelly it turned out more like apple syrup.... just too runny. Delicious tho. So I marked the jars "Apple Syrup". LOL. Really good to add to a hot cup of tea.

 

[Dinghy]

I tried canning spaghetti sauce a couple times too. I cooked it until it was nice and thick, with all the spices in it. Then I pressure canned it. It came out even thicker and tasted bitter. Next time I will can it when it's thinner and add very few spices. I use it for chilli and just thin it down with a jar of Ragu and then it's not too bad. But it was such a disappointment because it had tasted so good to start with! Somebody told me that adding green pepper could make it bitter too, but the store bought stuff has it in.

 

[A.T.Hagan]

Well, I'm going to have to add one to my score. My very last batch of pear preserves for this year was a recipe that called for ground cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. Sounded tasty.

And in fact the finished product is tasty. Unfortunately, it's also so dark as to be quite unappetizing in appearance!

Ah well, that lot will probably get used in making spice muffins.

The gingered pear syrup that was to have been preserves is actually working out pretty well as a syrup on pancakes and French toast so I won't count that as a failure, but rather a product that we had not originally planned to make.

If Frances doesn't blow them off the trees I've got persimmons coming on now. Probably simply freeze the puree as my persimmon butter attempts from last year were disastrous.

.....Alan.

 

[Gingergirl]

Melodi,

You make a good case for the Learning Curve inherent in many of the methods for preserving foods. To be able to rely on a last minute (after Tshtf) preservation of fresh and frozen foods without the necessary equipment is of course unrealistic. But rarely do people consider the skill and experience that is involved.

I began canning 20 years ago. My failure rate (seals and recipes) wasn't bad, but no where near my sucess rate now. Those 20 years were not fraught with the stress of crisis. It is my expectation that in such a situation, I would have a very short window of time (if at all) to convert fresh and frozen foods to dried and canned. I would also expect that my failure rate on seals would be much higher due to my mind being distracted while processing.

Learn and gain experience NOW.

 

[ShepInTheValley]

Dinghy - "But it was such a disappointment because it had tasted so good to start with! Somebody told me that adding green pepper could make it bitter too, but the store bought stuff has it in." My experience was the same... the sauce was perfecto! And I figured if they are able to make sauce you can buy at the store with these ingredients, why can't we?

Gingergirl - Exactly... this is no easy accomplishment with everyday type of stress. I cannot imagine what it would be like learning to can under the enormous pressures of how bad things could get.

Have any of you gotten those reusable canning lids? I'd like to know how they work and the best places to get them, if anyone has experience with them.

My neighbors just brought me over some more apples and peaches... and another has some pears for me. Why does everything have to ripen all at once?