Yesterday I had two large packages of chicken breasts to get canned. I decided to do an experiment with the various lids to see if any of those made a difference in the siphoning. For those who don’t know, siphoning is when liquid from the jars is “siphoned” out during the canning process. Most of the time, the jars still seal but the jars are left with less liquid than I usually feel comfortable with. I’ve not been able to figure why it happens sometimes and not other times, nor why it happens with one or two jars in a batch of 7 – 14 jars and others seem fine.
After having canned 28 quarts of soup using the new Tattler metal lids and having no siphoning, I had about decided it was the jar lids causing the problems.
Yesterday I had 7 jars of chicken so I used 2 Tattler re-usable plastic lids, 2 Tattler metal lids, and 3 Ball lids. No siphoning on any of them.
I have left more head space in the jars, I’ve tightened the rings, loosened the rings, made sure there were no pockets of air in the jars . . cannot figure it out. It seems like for so many years, I didn’t have a problem with siphoning and then, all of a sudden, it happens. It doesn’t happen with every load . . it may only happen 3 or 4 or 5 times a year but still, there’s something causing it.
Someone suggested maybe it has to do with the speed at which the water in the canner heats up. I am going to pay attention to that and see if I can figure it out but I don’t think it’s the lids.
For this batch of chicken, I added Italian herbs, onion powder and salt. The garage where I was canning surely did smell good!
vivoaks says
I had that happen the last time I did canned pickled beets. The water was very red in the canner when I finished, and some of the cans were down a couple of inches. Like you, I had no idea why it was happening.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Something bright like that or something a bit greasy and a little bit of the siphoned liquid from the jars goes a long way. So, it was just SOME of your jars that did it too? That makes me think it isn’t heating the water in the canner up too quickly or they would all do it. I’m just at a loss as to what could be causing it.
Peg says
I get siphoning sometimes too. I thought it was bringing the pressure down too fast when the time is up. I have noticed less siphoning when I let that go slower but I still have some jars that do and some don’t. I’m interested to see what you figure out.