Canning day can be a daunting concept for people who haven’t canned food before. There is the question about what equipment to buy, where to buy it, and how much to spend. What can be reused from year to year is another question to understand before canning day. Preparing step by step, before the actual work begins, can make canning day much simpler and more enjoyable.
Step 1 (Before Canning Day Arrives)
Shop for equipment. Yard sales are a good place to start if you are on a budget. Another idea is to ask family. Sometimes, older relatives have stopped canning and may be willing to share or sell canning equipment. Our older generation holds a wealth of knowledge too. Maybe it’s a good time to reconnect with mom, grandmom, or an aunt and get a canning lesson, too! For tomatoes, peaches, apples, most other fruits and all pickles, you can use a hot water bath canner. For meat, vegetables, and combination meals you will need a pressure canner. If you are just starting out, I recommend starting with hot water bath canning. It is a less expensive way to try canning.
Pressure canner on the left, hot water canner on the right.
The first thing to look for would be a large stock pot or an actual Hot Water Bath Canner. The canner should come with a rack for the jars to sit on, if you are buying one new. If you find a canner without a rack inside, you can purchase a replacement rack for a few dollars. Another solution is to use a dish towel on the bottom of the canner. This is important so that the jars are not bouncing on the bottom of the canner during boiling which could lead to cracking. If you decide to can using a large stock pot, keep in mind that the pot must be deep enough so that the jars are completely covered with water when in the canner being processed.
Also, purchase a utensil or tool kit including the tongs, lid lifter, and funnel. These sets are usually available for well under $20.
Hot Water Bath Canners are available at most retailers, some hardware stores, farm supply stores, and online retailers.
Step 2
Shop for your supplies. This includes the jars and the lids. Most new jars will come with new lids. The jars can be reused but the small disc type lids need to be replaced each time the jar is used for canning. If your recipe calls for salt, lemon juice, alum, or any other ingredients, make sure you have them in your pantry. 
Step 3
Have all equipment accessible. Don’t be looking all over the house for the tongs, jar lids, etc. when canning. I used to keep the canning and dehydrating equipment, empty jars, and other canning paraphernalia in a downstairs storage room. It was inconvenient to have to run up and down stairs when in the middle of canning a recipe. This year, I emptied out two upstairs cabinets and brought everything upstairs. Canning Day is now so much easier! Everything is nearby and ready for me to grab it when needed.
Step 4
Before the actual canning day, do some preliminary work. Break the job down into two days. This is particularly helpful if you lead a busy life and have lots of other tasks during the day, too. Breaking the canning tasks down into two days makes it much less exhausting. Wash the vegetables or fruits and chop if necessary. If the fruit needs to be peeled this can be taken care of the day before, also. Store the peeled, chopped, prepared fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator overnight. Place the cut up fruit in a container, cover with cold water and a tablespoon of lemon juice to prevent browning. The night before canning day, wash the jars you will need in the dishwasher and leave them in there.
on canning day, my kitchen quickly turns into a mess!
I quickly run out of counter space and have to use the floor for draining washed dishes
Step 5
Ask for help. Canning can be exhausting. If you garden, there are times when the harvest is coming in faster than you can process it. Asking for help from a family member or friend can make the job easier and more fun. Make some memories while preparing food for the winter. When I get a good buy on produce I will see if a friend wants to can with me. Then we share the results of the day’s work.
For more information on canning and preserving the harvest, please read this post: Canning and Preserving the Harvest
And if you are feeling time crunched, you will love this by Homespun Seasonal Living titled Canning Beans for the Time Crunched.
Wonderful information. To make things easier for me in my small space I make stations on the counter. Cutting and prepping on the left side of the sink, cooking and filling jars on the right side of the sink also the left side of the stove, actual canning on the right side of the stove and I have even set up a small folding camping table to hold jars until they are ready to be sterilized. I also asign a small counter top space to hold the jars once they have come out of the canner and cooled enough (after a few hours because cardboard hold the heat) and I can put them in the boxes to finish cooling or setting. I create a circle all within a small 8 foot by 8 foot townhouse kitchen and just move along. Four stations in all. Otherwise I would be tripping all over things. I guess that’s why years ago women had canning kitchens in their basements.
Terrific tips! I always find that organization is key, isn’t it? Early in the day I make a plan for dinner – leftovers, pizza, something in the slow cooker. It can be exhausting to tackle that at the the end of a long day of canning. Also, when I’m skinning a lot of tomatoes and must wash my hands frequently, I keep a few inches of soapy water in the sink so I can quickly wash my hands. Those delicious acidic tomatoes can sting! I always save the juice from squeezing out the excess tomato seeds and cook it down a bit. Makes for a fantastic and much needed Bloody Mary at the end of a productive day! 🙂 Happy canning.
exactly right Donna! great tips thanks – Janet
I am blessed to have my mom living next door, so we do it together. We have come up with a system that works for us in our smallish kitchen. One thing that we added this year was to use a small potpourri crock to keep the lids hot. Since stove top space is minimal, this works great! We have done so much this year, it’s great! Thanks for all your helpful tips!
It is such a wonderful blessing to have your mom close by. I would love that and also to have my daughter close by. I really love the tip of using the small crock pot to keep the lids warm. thank you for sharing that.
– Janet
Small crock pot for lids is a fantastic idea! Thanks!
This is the first time I have visited your website and I am very impressed. I will keep following you and sharing in your great ideas.
Many blessings
Thank you Ronda. I am very glad to have you following along on our story – janet
When I am canning tomatoes, I always plan a few days ahead and freeze some containers of water. I use Tupperware containers or pint-size deli containers. Since I peel my tomatoes by dropping them in boiling water for a minute, then plunging them into ice water, these big ‘ice cubes’ last longer that regular-sized ice cubes and I don’t have to change the ice water as often.
Another tip is to have dinner in the crockpot before you start a long canning day.
Thank you Julie. The ideas you added to the discussion are wonderful Especially the one about getting dinner going before you start! No one wants to cook after a day of canning!
Thanks for all the great tips….I use a propane cooker outside (for deep frying turkey) because my kitchen gets too hot.
I use the turkey fryer both for the water bath and pressure canner! I live in South Florida and our canning starts in Nov.and
generally goes until March or April. Long season so the pots are outside half the year. Thanks for the extra ideas!
Hi! I am completely new to canning. I purchased all the supplies I needed but, as I was preparing to start, I was reading the instructions on the canning pot & it says not to use on a glass top oven. So guess what kind of oven I have? That’s right, a glass top! So, any ideas as to what I can do now????
Gina, this is a safety concern and I won’t tell you that it’s ok to use your stove with the canner. However, I will tell you that for the last 20 years I have been canning on a glass stove top. I wish I had an outdoor gas range to can on but I don’t. I only have a glass stove top so that is what I use. I am not sure what the exact possible consequences might be, but perhaps a canning website such as Simply Canning, or The Organic Prepper might be of help with that question. Wishing you lots of luck with your canning. – Janet
Hi Gina,
The reason you have been told not to can on a glass top stove, is some canners are huge and the glass may not take the weight. If this happens the top will crack.
Check with your instruction manual what the maximum RECONMENDED weight is.
I hope this helps
Tony
thank you Tony
Another reason you can’t use a glass top stove is because it might not get hot enough to boil water in a large pressure cooker. Causing your pressure cooker to never reaching the pressure you need to can your food. I have that problem before. Then I had to pack every thing and make a trip to my daughters house to use her gas stove to finish canning my food.
Yes I guess that could be true. I make sure that my pressure is remaining steady.
Allot of very helpful information in this site and in so many of the comments also. This is my first year at attempting canning. So far so good, but always looking for more helpful info to expand this (now)hobby.
I grew up with relatives that canned all kinds of foods from their huge gardens on the farms. I remember helping to snap beans, but otherwise wasn’t around when the actual canning was done. The results were really good,.
Thank you for the helpful info.
Audrey I hope you grow to love the canning. I feel it is such a wonderful accomplishment when I have prepared the food my family will eat during the winter. I hope it blesses you also.
You can get propane stoves for not much money. I can on my back porch, on a propane stove, keeps the house cooler and the mess down, i set up a folding table to work on, have my produce ready, use a small crock pot for lids. I have a two burner stove so i can use both canners at once. A dish pan with soap, and a hose (potable) and i am able to can all day. Generally set up and prepare produce the day before.
Great comments… thanks for the tips.
It is okay to keep produce in the frig overnight to can the next day but don’t make the mistake I did and put frig cold tomatoes in a hot jar and put them in a hot water bath. Lost several jars this way until I figured out what I had done wrong. Happy canning!
Such a valid point Linda. Never mix cold and hot in a canner. I am glad you were not hurt by the glass breaking
If you get stuck for a rack on the bottom of your water bath canner you can use a layer of the canning rings…works well if you are trying to work with more jars than your canning rack will hold or using a smaller pot because you only have 3-4 jars to get sealed.
Great idea and one that I have used in the past also!
Thank you so much for all this helpful guidance! I think this really will make canning day easier for me – sometimes its a struggle, but hopefully this helps!
I’ve been canning and learning as I go, wish I’d had a lot of all these ladies good advice several years ago. I started out with a water bath canner which does just fine and I have a extra gas eye on my outdoor grill so I used it to can on which was fine but process seemed slow so I purchased a pressure canner and a large electric burner for about $50 and this works great for me, the burner is just hot enough on the highest setting that I do not have to worry about my cooker getting overheated and it stays perfectly in the range I need it to be for canning, all I do is set my timer once it starts to jiggle, I can usually get several cookings a day done with this method and my wonderful husband helps me a lot with loading and unloading the pot. I do have my set up on my covered back porch which leaves my kitchen free from the heat from the cooker, plus my kitchen is rather small so this just works for me.