Thursday, November 13, 2008

Canned pinto beans

Ok, I am going from a few notes and mostly memory on this one, so hopefully I get it right. I haven't made these in 2 1/2 years (since E became allergic), so I am having to guess a little at what my notes meant. I use my pressure cooker, which doubles as a canner, but only does 5 wide-mouth pints at a time, so adjust as needed to fit your canner.

I usually start with 15-16 cups of dry beans (this will make about 25 wide-mouth pint jars of beans). Put them in a large bowl or other container and cover with PLENTY of cold water. Let stand for 12-18 hours in a cool place. Drain. Put about 8 cups of soaked beans in a large pan (this will do approx 5 wide-mouth pints). Cover beans with cold water by 2 inches. Boil 30 minutes. Pack hot beans into prepared hot jars leaving 1 inch headspace. Add 1/2 tsp salt to each pint, 1 tsp to each quart and 1 clove minced garlic +/-. Ladle hot cooking liquid or boiling water over beans, leaving 1 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust 2 piece caps. Process pints 1 hr 15 minutes and quarts 1 hr 30 minutes at 10# pressure in a steam pressure canner.

All the other directions are either specific to your pressure canner (i.e. how to actually get it ready to process and how to measure processing time, etc) or are common to all types of canning (i.e. how to prepare jars and lids for canning, how to adjust lids, etc). If I left out anything major, leave me a comment and I'll fix it. Mmmm. I'm already thinking of yummy bean burritos.

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