Previously canned veggies

[explorer]

Is it OK to re-can previous canned commercial veggies? Now I am interested in doing whole corn from #10 cans. I will use 1/2 pint jars. How long in the canner?

[Granny Smith]

Is it safe to jar already canned food?

Often people think that they can save money by buying larger containers of canned food, transferring the contents (or leftovers from the first use) to smaller jars and re-processing it. Others wonder if this is a way to save leftovers from any size can for a longer time than they will keep in the refrigerator.

There are several problems with these practices:
(1) We have no safe tested processes to do this. In some cases, the way the heat is distributed throughout the jar during canning will be very different if you start with already canned/cooked food than with fresh. Excessively softened foods will pack more tightly into a jar, or arrange themselves differently and the process time recommended for fresh foods will not be enough for the already canned foods. Underprocessing can lead to foodborne illness or at the very least, spoilage and loss of product. You definitely could not just transfer the food and "seal" the jar. You would need some heat treatment known to destroy any organisms transferred with the food.

(2) The expense and time of recanning foods far exceed the cost savings of bulk or large-quantity packaged foods. To re-can food, you now add the expense of a jar and lid as well as the energy to re-can the food.

(3) Most likely the quality of the food will be greatly reduced in canning the food for a second time. The heat of canning does cause loss of some nutrients, and a second round of canning will further reduce the nutritional value. Textural changes from heating will be added to those already produced.

Without tested processes for re-canning foods, there is no way to know how to reduce the canning process and the default (although not a recommendation) is to process for the full time and temperature as if starting from scratch. When you consider you are not even saving money and resources, it does not seem worth the loss of food quality to practice this re-canning of commercially canned food. Our recommendation is to not plan to do this.

www.uga.edu/nchfp/questions/FAQ_canning.html

You might be better off to dehydrate it.

[explorer]

I dehydrated frozen corn last year with good results. What I am looking for is veggies, corn at first, in about a 5-6 oz container that is of reasonable cost for a quick lunch when traveling.

How about canning frozen corn?

[Granny Smith]

Yep, you can do that. You could probably can canned corn, but it would be kind of mushy, which might not really hurt corn (but would be disgusting for peas or beans)

[Valerie]

Not to mention by time you lost nutrients from canning it twice, you wouldn't be eating much but cellulose that looked like corn.

[Granny Smith]

The corn might lose nutrients (not as much as you might think), but where do they go? (Into the liquid around them) If you use the liquid from the can to recan the corn, you wouldn't lose so much, especially if you didn't throw out the liquid when you ate it.

[Valerie]

Good point! I don't usually think about using that juice.

[Granny Smith]

People sopped up pot likker for generations. It has a lot of nutrients in it.


I probably spelled likker wrong, but I didn't know how it should be spelled in this instance.

[explorer]

It is spelled just fine. From an old pot licker.