If you are willing to grow your own ingredients and can often, then canning can be an excellent and cheap way to preserve fruits and vegetables!
Overview
Canning is one of the most well-known methods to preserve food. The ability to can food from your own kitchen makes it extremely accessible to the general public, which is attractive to the type of person who is interested in homesteading or anyone that wants to live a little more independently. One of the biggest questions that someone new to canning might have is: Is canning really worth it?
Accessibility is one thing, but cost is another. Canned food is great to put into food storage or to simply enjoy, and it is relatively easily done by the average person. But is this method of food preservation worth the cost of gathering all the tools and materials necessary? Is it cheaper and easier to simply continue buying all of your food from the store? This question can be answered by breaking down both the cost of canning food and all of the benefits.
Ingredients
The first and most vital ingredient to canning is the food itself. Most commonly, you’ll be preserving fruits and vegetables, but making jam or jelly is an option, too.
To weigh the value of fruit, I checked Walmart’s website in order to determine how much a jar’s worth (16 ounces) of raspberries would cost. If an ounce of raspberries cost around 45 cents, that would add up to about $7.20 to fill a jar.
I used green beans to represent the cost of vegetables, and they were a little cheaper, with about 23 cents per ounce. That added up to $3.68 per jar.
It should be noted that these are the costs for individual jars, and that food supplies are often proportionally cheaper when bought in bulk rather than in small quantities.
There is another option, however. If you have access to land and water, you can grow your own fruits and vegetables to can. Why buy from the store when you can can your own fresh foods?
Seed packets for both raspberries and green beans are sold for up to around $12, depending on the amount of seeds and the variety which you choose.
Although growing your own plants takes patience and effort, it also gives you a lot more food for a lot less cash. Personally, my family gets home-grown raspberries and forest-grown huckleberries for our jams.
Tools
Next, for canning, you will need the jars. According to Amazon, a dozen 16-ounce jars can cost from $20-30, but they have the benefit of being reusable. Just make sure to keep them nice and clean, washing them before canning.
Lids will usually come with a set of jars, but they aren’t reusable. Depending on the quantity you get, a large portion of lids will go for $20-30. This could last you for a good few batches of jams or preserves.
By far, the costliest tool to purchase for canning will be the vessel which you will use to can. If you’re just making jam or preserving fruits, then all you’ll need is a water bath canner or stock pot to cook the jars in. Fruits are generally more acidic than vegetables, so the temperature you’ll need to cook them at will typically be lower. For vegetables, you’ll need a pressure cooker to be able to cook at a high enough temperature.
You may already have a stock pot large enough to use for canning, but if not, water bath canners and stock pots go for anything between $40-300 (just $100 for stock pots). Some canners will also come with other tools that are useful in the canning process, so keep that in mind.
Vegetables, unfortunately, are not safe to can at the same temperatures as fruits. If they’re not cooked at a high enough temperature, there’s a chance you could get botulism from the canned food. So, in order to get rid of all the bad bacteria, you will need a Pressure Canner. Pressure canners cost around $130-420. A little pricey, but with it you’ll be able to preserve your vegetables safely. Some pressure canners also double as pressure cookers, which can be useful.
Some people recommend extra tools which streamline the canning experience. A nifty little tool called the jar lifter is commonly recommended by veteran canners. It can go from $8-15 and is useful for getting the jars in and out of your canners.
Another piece that’s useful for canning is a funnel, which costs $6-16. Be sure to get the correct size for the jars that you’re using – they will have either regular-sized mouths or wide mouths.
A candy thermometer can be helpful, and it goes for $10-20. It’s also really useful for cooking other things, for instance a dessert called Divinity.
Now we can add up the rough cost of all the tools necessary for canning. By adding up all the things essential for your first round of canning, including the water bath canner, a set of 12 jars that hold 16 ounces, a jar lifter, and a canning funnel, that adds up to around $93. I got this by choosing the most common or median of the prices. 192 ounces of raspberries will cost around $86, and that’s a hefty price to add, but if you can grow fruit yourself or get it from friends, family, or foraging, then that would drastically reduce the total cost of canning.
If instead of a water bath canner, you’d like to use a pressure canner, the essentials total comes out to roughly $298. Enough green beans to fill twelve cans would add just about $44 to that cost.
Conclusion
These prices can easily get into the hundreds of dollars when all the tools are added up, but keep in mind that most of this is the initial cost. After you have your canner, your cans, and your other tools, the only real costs to can again will be the lids and fruits or vegetables (if you decide not to grow your own or get them from somewhere else). If you’re gardening and canning more than once, the price is actually quite minimal.
So is it worth it to start canning yourself? If you are willing to put in the work, grow your own ingredients, and can often, then the answer is a resounding yes! It’s an amazing way to save your fruits and vegetables for later. But due to the initial cost, maybe try canning out with a friend or loved one first, to see if you really like it. And if you do, you know what it costs to start canning!