What tastes better jams bought from the store or jams right from your own kitchen? Homemade is of course. Making your own jams, jellies and sauces isn’t as hard as one might think. It may take a little time and some effort but it’s well worth a day in the kitchen. It’s a sense of accomplishment and the compliments from friends and family along with saving a few bucks that makes it all worth while.

Once you have toiled to create the best sauce or jam and enjoyed the first batch over a warm plate of pasta or spread out on a steaming hot biscuit, you are left with one dilemma; how should you preserve your precious prize? One way would be to toss it in a zip-lock bag and hope that it tastes as good as when it was made. Why play Russian roulette with your raspberry marmalade and the snap-seal of some plastic bag when canning is obviously the way to go.

Canning is a great way to store your savory sauces and other tasty treats for later use. Canning works because it heats food to kill bacteria while sealing them in a glass or metal container, which prevents them from spoiling. Have canning supplies handy when you make your sauces or jams. This means that you can keep more of your food fresh for use during the off-season. Here are some of the things necessary for you to create your own delicious delicacy.

1. Boiling-water canner – Basically just a big pot, mainly used for canning jams, preserves, jellies and marmalades.
2. Pressure canner – Similar to a pressure cooker, the lid locks down to keep steam in. This canner is great for thick sauces that are full of fresh vegetables.
3. Canning jars – Commonly called Mason Jars; these are the glass jars that usually come with metal screw on lids. They create very tight seals and are perfect for canning just about anything.
4. Lids and bands – Lids, sometimes known as “flats,” should be new and never reused because they may not seal properly the second time. Bands are the screw on portions that go around the lids to help them stay locked in place.

Once you have all of those supplies, it is time to start making use of the vacuum effect that is so commonly used by large canned food distributors. When the jars are heated up in the canner, they become airtight and lock in the same flavor that was present before the canning took place. This is the best way to preserve your preserves and to store your sauces.

If there is usually not enough left to worry about going through the canning process, but you still want to save some for a use later in the week, just make sure that the container you are using can achieve an airtight lock. The best thing to do is to invest in a vacuum sealer. These gadgets will act the same way as a canner does, by extracting out all of the air, but can be used more efficiently on smaller amounts.

The most important thing, and this cannot be stressed enough, is to make sure that there is an airtight seal on whatever container you are using. This will keep the flavors of you goods locked in while keeping the flavors of all the other food in the fridge, locked out. Besides, the last thing you want is your grandmothers grape jam tasting like the fried catfish she made the day before or getting that freeze-dried taste from the frigid freezer temperatures. Practice safe storage and enjoy the fruits of your labors