Thursday, March 29, 2012

Canning dry beans

In a canning group I am in on facebook they talk about canning dry beans from the dry state. I have been wanting to give it a try and today is the day. In the canner I have 7 quart jars, 2 with black beans, 2 with pinto beans, 2 with navy beans and one with kidney beans. I used the same spices in all the jars. I think I should have used other spices in the navy beans but I will just use these two jars for chili. We like mixed beans in our chili anyway.

The spices I used were: 1 T. dry onion flakes, 1 t. garlic salt, 1 T. pinto bean seasoning (I had purchased this in a large jug from Sams a while back. It smells really good).

If ham ever goes on sale I would dearly love to make a whole canner full of navy beans with onion and ham bits in them. I love ham and beans and it would be so nice to be able to just pop open a jar of them at a moments notice.

I used 1 level cup of dry beans in each quart jar, then the spices and topped them off with boiling water with a 1 inch head space. I will process them in a pressure canner at 10 pounds for 90 min. Or one and a half hours.

Let me do a cost analysis on this.
7 cups beans (bought in bulk at the cannery, except the kidney beans). If a pint is a pound the world around and a pint has 16 oz. then a pint holds 2 cups. If I bought the beans in a 25 pound bag and each pound yielded 2 cups then a 25 pound bag yields 50 cups of beans.

The beans cost between 16.00 and 18.55 so I will use 17.00. Don't ask how I came up with it, it just sounded like a good number. 17.00 divided by 50 equals 34 cents per cup. Each dry cup yields 3 cups cooked or two cans store bought. So for 34 cents plus cost of propane I get a quart jar of beans. If I bought two jars at the store to equal the quart it would cost about .89 each or 1.78. By canning my own beans I am saving at least 1.44 less propane. This is times 7 for a canner full. So say its costing me .44 a jar for the propane which I don't think its that much but for arguments sake that's what I will use. I still save $7.00 per canner full of beans I can at home. Good enough for me, plus I know exactly what is in them.

Please let me know if I messed up on my calculations so I can fix them. Thanks

Edited to add: The beans are out of the canner and seem to be sealing fine. They sure smell good. In addition to making ham and beans I would also like to can up some baked beans and pork and beans from scratch. Sure is cheaper this way. I just need a huge room to put all my jars of food and I would can like crazy.

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