One of the great things about canning is that you don’t need a whole lot of special equipment in order to do it. Yes, you can buy specialty pots, with lifting racks and the capacity for six or seven jars, but when you’re just getting started, you can get by with nothing more than a large pot, some standard kitchen tongs and your jars.

The pot you see above has been my go-to canning pot for the last few years. I bought it at a thrift store in college for $2. The lid was missing a handle so my dad made one for me with a scrap of wood he had in the garage. This pot easily holds five wide-mouth pint jars or six half pints, which is often as much as I make in a single batch of jam or pickles. The primary thing you need in your canning pot is depth, you want to be able to comfortably submerge your filled jars so that water comes within a half-inch of the top of the jar.

The next thing you need is a sturdy pair of tongs. You use these to move the sterilized jars out of the water, put the filled jars into the water bath and then remove them again after the hot water bath is finished. It’s important that your tongs are strong and dependable, as you’ll be moving hot stuff with them. If using tongs worries you (you do need to be intentional in your grip when you use tongs to move hot, filled jars), many stores also sell specialty jar lifters. I have one of these lifters, and while I appreciate the very sturdy hold it gives me, it’s a bulky, single-use tool. I find that I return to the tongs more than I do the lifter.

Beyond those two most basic tools, there are a few things you can have that make the filling of jars easier. The first is a wide-mouth funnel. This channels your jam, marmalade or tomato sauce into the jars and keeps it off your countertops. Then, depending on what I’m canning, I’ll either use a ladle (stainless steel is preferable, because it doesn’t retain flavors) or a two-cup Pyrex measuring cup to fill the jars.

The main message I want to communicate here is that to get started in home canning, you really don’t need a ton of fancy equipment. If you do a few batches of jam and determine that it’s something you really enjoy, by all means, buy the big canning pot with the rack (and if you plan on canning more than 6-8 quarts of tomatoes this summer, I would recommend it). However, you can do a lot with a deep stock or roasting pot, a pair of tongs and some jars (you can reuse the jars and rings over and over again, but you will need to buy new lids each time, they are the only single-use part of the process).

That’s it. Go forth and can!