I’m veering a bit off the beaten canning path today. I find myself in need of small kitchen appliance advice and I know of no better place to turn than you lovely, well-informed people.

So. Here we have my kitchen. It’s not a large space (it has a footprint of 80 square feet), but as you can see, I manage to squeeze a lot in there. This is where nearly every cooking project you’ve seen featured on this site was created. Never let it be said that you need a giant, gourmet kitchen to make good stuff.

Here’s my primary small appliance area. Microwave (that curvy, space-age looking device), toaster oven, Vita Mix (best blender in the whole, wide world) and beloved Soda Stream.

And now to the toaster oven, the focus of our little tour here. I am a devoted user of toaster ovens. Yes, they’re good for morning toast (that then gets slathered in homemade jam). However, they’re also great for roasting sweet potatoes, reconstituting leftover pizza and baking up a few frozen cookies when a late-evening dessert craving strikes.

Up until last summer, I had an ancient Black & Decker that was paneled in fake wood grain (much like my cabinets) that I bought at a thrift store in the first weeks I moved to Philadelphia in 2002. It was ancient but highly functional. However, after eight years of heavy use (and who knows how many before it came to me), it slowly stopped working effectively. It started taking three full toasting cycles to get a nice brown on a slice of bread and so Scott and I decided to replace it.

Because that original model had been so good to us, we bought what we thought was the newer model of the same toaster oven. Sadly, it has not proven to be as wonderful as my thrift store oven. Ten months in, the spring on the door has already broken. The rack is really hard to scoot in and out. And it heats really unevenly. All in all, it’s been a stinker of a toaster oven. I use it at least once a day and so the decision has been made that as soon as we get through tax season, we’re buying a new toaster oven.

This is where you guys come in. I’m looking for a reliable, unfancy toaster oven that can fit in the space over my microwave. If you have a toaster oven you love, please let me know. Alternately, if you know a particular model to be poorly built and frustrating to use, please tell me that too. Thank you all!

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Earlier today, I got an email from a reader. After many months of anticipation, she had finally opened a jar of garlic dill pickles she made last summer, using the recipe I posted in August. Only they were far, far too spicy for her. She was afraid that she was going to have to throw out the entire batch.

Upon reading her email, I felt terrible. I never post a recipe that I haven’t tried, tested and truly appreciated. So to hear that someone has made something according to my instructions, only to find it inedible, deflates me. It also got me thinking about the way I approach the creation of the recipe. I write for my taste buds, using the ingredients I have in my kitchen. Thing is, no two palates are exactly alike, so there’s no absolute guarantee that what worked for me will be as delicious for another.

As we head into another canning season (I know so many of you are planning your gardens and signing up for CSA shares with your summer canning in mind), I’d like to encourage a bit more herb and spice exploration. This doesn’t mean that I endorse wild experimentation or grand recipe deviations, as we all know that to keep our canned goods safe, it’s important to keep our acid and sugar levels steady and adhere to the basics of the recipe.

But I do want you to know that it’s okay to gently tweak the spices. If you know that you can’t handle a great deal of heat in your food, please, please reduce the amount of chili or cayenne that the recipe calls for. If you’re a cinnamon fiend, feel free to increase the amount you include in your blueberry jam. Also, keep in mind that a small amount of spice can increase in flavor over time, so if you’re making something in July that you don’t plan on eating until February or March, adjust accordingly. Most of all, remember that you’re making those pickles or that chutney for you, and so the way it tastes should always, always please you.

Additionally, get to know your particular spice rack (they are all different). Sniff and taste your way through the bottles, making sure that you’re familiar with their potency. Toss the things that smell like dirt or nothing at all and replenish the stash before embarking on a big cooking project.

Going forward, I am going to try to write my recipes with this “season to taste” mindset. I will continue to tell you what I did, but I will also include notes at recipe points where variation and adjustments are okay. Because really and truly, my goal here is to show you all that canning is accessible and enjoyable. And if you end up with something you can’t eat, that defeats me.

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More than three weeks ago, I asked for your burning canning questions. I intended to be a good canning blogger/teacher and respond right away to those queries, but then life intervened and I’m only now finally circling back around to get you some answers. So here we go…

Jewel asks: I have a few sauce, chutney, and jam recipes that are not specifically meant to be canned, but that I would love to put up. In most cases I believe that the sugar content is high enough for water bath canning, but I want to be safe. Is there a way to tell if a recipe is appropriate for canning? Can you point me in the right direction?

Answer: The best way to determine if your recipes are safe to canning is to look for comparable recipes that have been designed to be canned and determine from there whether the proportions of fruit, sugar and vinegar (in the case of chutneys) are similar to your recipes. I know I always mention it, but my favorite volume for this type of comparison research is So Easy to Preserve.

If you can’t find a similar recipe but are determined to water bath process your recipes, Steve Dowdney includes instructions in his book Putting Up that can walk you through the steps of checking the pH level in your product, in order to determine whether they’ll be safe for water bath processing.

Deb asks: I made applesauce recently. All the jars sealed very well, in a couple the applesauce came up and out of the jar a bit before sealing. I imagine there is applesauce caught in the lid seal area. I can pick the jars up by the lid edge, so they are very tight, but are they really ok?

Answer: It is totally normal to have some siphoning (the technical canning word for when some of the contents of the jars seeps out during processing) with applesauce. However, as long as the jars seal post-processing, they are still safe and shelf-stable. When filling the jars, make sure that you leave 1/2 to 3/4 an inch of headspace, as it will help prevent the siphoning, but rest assured that your applesauce will be perfectly safe for storage in your pantry (or, in my case, the back of my coat closet).

Tracy asks: Tiny bubbles appeared in my applesauce a day or so after canning. Is this normal?

Answer: Yep, totally. I also find that I get tiny bubbles in my processed sauerkraut and in less juicy whole tomatoes.

More q&a after the jump…

Jaime asks: I was wondering if you have any handy tips about adjusting processing time if using a different sized jar than called for in a recipe. Is there a rule of thumb on this?

Answer: Unfortunately, I’ve learned that there’s no specific formula you can depend on to adjust processing time. Typically the processing time will be 5-10 minutes more for a quart sized jar than a pint, but you can’t always assume that. When it comes to processing half pint jars, the rule of thumb is to process them just as long as the recommended time for pints (if the recipe calls for small jars and you want to can it in larger jars, look around for a different recipe or suck it up and use the recommended jars). Again, I recommend looking for similar recipes and extrapolating from there.

Lo asks: How do I can my own creations? That escabeche I love so much? The salsa I can’t get enough of? Aren’t there worries over having ENOUGH acid or somesuch? What about my favorite marinara?

Answer: Like I said to Jewel above, the best place to start is to look for comparable recipes that have been designed for canning. However, some recipes just don’t take to canning well. That fresh salsa that you make during the summer and love so much? There’s no way to can it and have it taste anything like what it does when it’s fresh. As far as the escabeche goes, there are lots of recipes out there that are designed for canning. Take a look at them, and if they line up fairly closely to yours (particularly when it comes to the amount of vinegar) you can use your recipe.

Jessica asks: I was just told that if a canning recipe calls for lemon juice I should always use bottled lemon juice for acidity control. Is that true? I’ve always just used real lemons and wasn’t aware that was a problem.

Answer: It is recommended that you use bottled lemon juice because it has a consistent and dependable level of acidity. This is particularly true when you’re using lemon juice to ensure a safe level of acidity (when canning tomatoes, for example). However, when it comes to recipes where the level of acidity isn’t crucial (for instances, when you’re adding lemon juice to a batch of jam to balance the sweetness), you can use fresh lemons.

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• How to Check That Your Seal is Good
• Taking Canning Questions at The Kitchn

I got a question tonight from a reader of this blog about seal quality and as I was writing her back, I realized that there may be more of you out there who could benefit from a brief seal-testing tutorial.

When it comes to canning, sometimes you miss the pinging sound that gives you auditory confirmation that your jars have sealed. Just because you didn’t hear it doesn’t mean that the jars didn’t seal. Here are some ways to test….

1. Press down on the center of the lid. Does it move up and down or does it feel solid and concave? Solid and concave means a good seal, movement means no seal.
2. Tap on the lid. Does it sound tinny or hollow? Tinny means sealed, hollow means poor or no seal.
3. Unscrew the band you used to hold the lid in place during processing. Now attempt to pick your jar up holding onto nothing but the lid. If you have a good seal, you should be able to do this easily. You’ll know pretty much right away when you remove the band whether your seal is good.

How else do you guys check your seals? And, while I’m answering questions, who else has got one?

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I’ve gotten a couple of questions lately about the loss of syrup when canning whole fruit. Here’s the story. From what I’ve found and read, the loss of syrup isn’t a major problem unless the jars loses multiple inches. Ideally, you don’t lose too much in the processing, but sometimes it happens that upon removing the processed jars from the water, some liquid will bubble out as the air escapes (the official word for this loss of liquid is siphoning). However, as long as the jars sealed, you should be okay. You may get some discoloration in the fruit if you wait a long time to eat it, but if you use it in the next few months, you shouldn’t notice any loss in quality.

For next time, try to do a more complete job of removing the air bubbles from your jars before processing. Make sure the sealing compound in your lids is quite soft and tighten the rings more tightly than you typically do. Also check and ensure that your jars are completely covered with water during processing, as low levels can increase the chance of losing the liquid from your jars.

And, if you haven’t figured it out from the picture above, you can also can Seckel pears (the tiny, crispy ones) whole, just like the plums I did a couple of weeks back. The only change I made to the recipe was that I added a couple of teaspoons of powdered ginger to the syrup, for a slightly different flavor profile. I can’t wait to open those babies up!

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As is my norm, I’m a bit last posting the latest giveaway winner. But better late than never, right?

The lucky winner of this half pint of peach jam is commenter #8, Adrienne Bruno. Congrats Adrienne, I’ll be in touch soon to get your mailing address.

When I first started writing this blog, I was really good about replying to each and every comment you all left. However, since then, life has gotten a little more complicated (wedding planning will do that to a girl) and I’ve gotten a little lax when it comes to replies. You’ve all been asking some really question though, so I wanted to call a few of them out.

Tenaya asked: Why do garlic cloves turn blue in pickling solution? This happened when I made some pickled asparagus based on one of your recipes. It didn’t turn completely blue, but certainly blue-ish. It happened after I heated the garlic in the hot pickling solution, if I remember correctly.

Garlic has a tendency to turn blue when combined with an acid, particularly if it’s very fresh and heat is involved. For more about this, here are a couple of threads on Chowhound that go into bluing garlic. One thing I do in an attempt to avoid bluing garlic is to not include the garlic in the hot brine solution, but instead poke a couple of cloves in among the packed veggies, so that they don’t spend to much time in solo contact with the acid solution. Good news is that though it might not be particularly nice looking, blue garlic is perfectly safe to eat.

More questions/answers after the jump…

Tara asked: I used a new recipe for beets and will admit that I did taste the brine and thought it tasted kind of vinegary but I forged ahead anyway, adding fennel fronds, mustard seeds, and peppercorns to the jars. Well……..the spice seems ok, but those beets are sour like nothing else. Way. To. Much. Vinegar.

Any ideas on how to fix it when I open them? I was thinking maybe drain half (or more) of the brine, add water and let sit in the fridge for a day before I want to eat it-or maybe add sugar and water. Anyone else have this problem before?

Tara, I think your potential solutions are good ones. Adding sugar would definitely give the brine a sweet balance and soaking them in water for a bit will reducing the level of pucker. Another thing to consider would be to chop them up and add them to a salad to other dish that needs a vinegar-y kick. A pasta salad would be a good foil for too-tangy beets.

Emily wonders: I’m pricking my grape tomatoes before I can them but the skins still crack. Anything I can do?

Unfortunately, as far as I know, tomato skins will always crack when exposed to heat. So if you want to make your pickled grape tomatoes maintain their integrity, you might want to make a batch that doesn’t get processed and just stays in the fridge.

Jane wants to know: Also how does everyone store their jars???? I have 2 large racks full of full jars and a in the basement I have the part under the stairs for my new jars.

Living in a small apartment, I store my jars anywhere I can. I have boxes of them under furniture, tucked into cabinets or stashed at the back of the coat closet. Mostly, I just go for any spot that doesn’t get too much light and seems fairly cool (although my apartment maintains a fairly consistent temperature year round, so I don’t have any spot that’s significantly cooler than the rest).

Kim says: i have not canned or jammed the past couple of years and i miss it! i have frozen–do you think i could make jam from frozen in the winter? a few years ago i made a jam or jelly(cant remember which) using peach peeling and scraps. it was from recipezaar…called blushing peach something by dibs. it was awesome!

You can make jam from frozen fruit, I’ve done it before and, considering the two huge bags of frozen cherries I’ve got, I will probably do it again. The thing to remember is that you want to use frozen fruit that’s in good condition. Don’t go trying to salvage fruit with freezer burn by making jam out of it, it just won’t be good. And if you used peach peels and scraps, you probably made jelly.

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