Home Bottled Pineapple

Home canning is a great skill to help preserve in season produce. Many people use it to preserve food grown at home, but it can also help you take advantage of store sales. While home canned pineapple may not be much cheaper than canned from the store, the taste is incredible and there is no comparison. I love home canned pineapple, and once you've had it, you'll never want to go back to tin cans. Fresh Pineapple often comes on great sales from the middle of December to the middle of February and that is a great time to preserve it for year round use.

Food

• Ripe Pineapples
• Sugar

Supplies

• Water Bath Canner
• Regular Mouth Pint Mason Jars
• Regular Mouth flats
• Regular Mouth rings
• Canning Funnel
• Jar Tongs
• Ladle
• Picture
• Rubber Spatula
• Cutting Boards
• Chef’s Knife
• Paring Knife
• Plastic Knife
• Pot and Lid
• Liquid Measuring cups
• Dry Measuring cups
• Rag
• Pineapple Corer
• Canning Bowls
• Marker
• Approved Recipe (I recommend Ball Blue Book or This One)
• For first time canners I recommend buying a kit like this Starter Kit because it contains all the canning essentials.

Starting with a clean work area is key in canning. Clean your counter space and sink with a disinfectant. Make sure all of your tools and equipment have been washed and sanitized. Wash your pineapples under cool water and check to ensure that they are free of mold and debris. I found that it takes 6-7 pineapples to make a canner load of 9 pints.

After washing cut off both ends of the pineapple. Place the corer on the top and lineup the core (the hard center) with the hole in the middle of your corer. Push the corer down removing the skin and core. Set them aside (they are great for compost or feeding to livestock). Alternately, there are other types of pineapple cutters/corers that work as well. You can also cut the rind off and the core out carefully with a knife, but it will drastically increase your processing time. Place the large pieces in a bowl until you have them all done. Use your paring knife to remove any seeds or dark spots that remain. When ready take the large halves out and place them on the cutting board. With the chefs knife make four cuts with the length of the pineapple. Then make approximately 8 (depending on the size you want) cuts the other way. Place these in another bowl until ready for use.

According to the Ball website "2. Check jars, lids, and bands for proper functioning. Jars with nicks, cracks, uneven rims, or sharp edges may prevent sealing or cause jar breakage. The underside of lids should not have scratches or uneven or incomplete sealing compound as this may prevent sealing. Bands should fit on jars. Wash all in hot, soapy water and dry well.

3. Pre-heat your Ball® canning jars in hot (180°F) water. Keeping jars hot prevents them from breaking when filled with hot food. Leave lids and bands at room temperature for easy handling."

This was copied and quoted directly from the Ball website. This is an important step and doing it incorrectly can introduce dangerous bacteria in to your canned food. You can of course use any mason jars intended for canning, but the importance of making sure your jars are clean, sanitized and hot was to important for me to paraphrase.

I chose a light syrup for my pineapple. If your recipe allows, you can use fruit juice or other concentrations of syrup. Read your recipe for details. For the light syrup I prefer, I mixed 5-3/4 cups of water and 1-1/2 cups of sugar in a saucepan and heated until dissolved. This will do 9 pints of pineapple. Once sugar is dissolved, add pineapple and simmer for 10 minutes.

Using your canning funnel, ladle hot syrup and pineapple into jars. Fill jars to 1/2 inch headspace, use extra syrup as needed to top off jars. Headspace is the amount of air from the top of the jar until the top of the food. Using a plastic knife or canning spatula remove air bubbles from jars. Do this by inserting it to the bottom of the jar edge and move it around the bottom of the jar.(WARNING : Do NOT use metal knife to remove bubbles.) (WARNING : Jars are HOT handle with care.)

Fill water bather approximately 1/3 full with water and place on stove over high heat. It is important that your water is hot when your hot jars of pineapple are placed in it or the jars could crack.

Wash rings and lids in hot soapy water. rinse thoroughly in hot water. To keep them warm until you put them on the jars, you can keep them in some hot water. Ball no longer recommends boiling their jar lids before use. If you are using a different brand, please follow manufacturers recommendations.

With a clean warm, damp rag wipe off the rims. Make sure to use a new section of rag on each jar. You may have to rinse your rag in hot water occasionally before your batch is done. Center the flat on the clean jar im. Add your clean canning ring and finger tighten the ring on the jar. (WARNING : Jars are HOT handle with care.)

Place hot jars in hot water with tongs. Once all jars are in the water bath canner, ensure that they are fully submerged in water, If they are not, add more hot tap water until they are submerged by 1 inch. Put lid on canner. Bring canner to a full boil. At my altitude I processed the jars for 20 min. You should always consult a current canning recipe to make sure you have correct recommended times, and adjustments for altitude. At sea level my recipe only requires 15 min. (WARNING : Water and jars are HOT handle with care.)

Once processing is complete, turn stove off and let jars sit in canner undisturbed for 5 minute. Pull from canner using jar tongs, and place right side up on a towel in a draft free area. Make sure they have an out of the way area to cool. If there is the risk of a light draft happening during the cooling prosses, cover your jars with a light kitchen towel. Do not touch the jars while cooling.

Approximately 6-8 hours later the jars will have cooled. You can now check the seal on the jars. To do this, press the center of each lid. If the lid pops down when pressed, put it in fridge and eat immediately. Jars that have sealed, should have their rings removed. Sometimes a ring will be stuck, rinse under hot water until the ring is loose. Wash all jars in hot soapy water to remove any residue. Dry bottles with a clean kitchen towel. Label your jars. This can be done simply with a Sharpie or you can make stickers and affix them. You are now ready to store your jars. For maximum storage length, store in dark, dry, cool place. Current canning recommendations are to store jars without rings on them. Enjoy your pineapple!