Can You Safely Can Previously Frozen Food?

Hey pioneers. Welcome to episode number 406. Today's episode, we are talking about canning previously frozen foods. This is a question that I've gotten asked quite a bit about and we are going to be talking about benefits of canning some foods that have been frozen, the exact steps you need to take if you do want to can previously frozen food, both from a safety perspective but also, a product that is good at the end, right? A good product. So we're going to be diving into this and it's one of my favorite topics because I use our deep freezer very intentionally for preserving food of course just in a deep-frozen state. But actually, I use it quite a bit with my canning as I do my whole year's preservation plan.

Now, I've talked about that in some previous episodes. So if you're watching the podcast on YouTube, we'll put it in the video description some links, if you're listening to it the old-fashioned way through your headphones or perhaps even on a computer, then we will have at the blog post that accompanies this episode, which will be @melissaknorris.com/406 because this is episode number 406. We'll have links to previous episodes where I talk about creating a preserving plan and go in depth to more of some of the things that we just don't have the time to fully encapsulate in today's episode.

So, can you safely can previously frozen food? The answer is, yes. Now, some of the reasons that you might actually want to use the freezer first rather than just canning food as it comes in fresh from the get-go, one is simply a matter of time. In the summer months when a lot of us, especially if we're talking fruit and vegetables, produce wise, that you're bringing in food, sometimes you just simply don't have the capacity to can all of that before it would go bad because there's only so many hours in a day and most of us are not canning 24/7 if you've got a day job, a family, all different things to do. Not to mention the heat in the summertime, it really does warm and heat up the house. So sometimes, I use my freezer purposely in order to avoid that. So that could be some of the reasons where you would put those foods in the freezer and then you're going to come back to them.

Now, I will definitely freeze my fruit that I plan on doing, especially jelly with any type of fruit syrup, with a fruit juice, with anything pureed up like a butter, a fruit butter like an apple butter or apple sauce. All of those work wonderfully well and even jam. When you have frozen fruit that you have fully thawed and then go ahead and can. One of the things to keep in mind, especially if you are looking at doing a fruit syrup or a jelly, which is where we're using the juice of the fruit actually, is frozen fruit that is then been thawed, will naturally the juice will come out of it.

So as you thaw it, you'll have a lot of juice in the container that you froze it in. So this works exceptionally well if you are doing fruit juice, which is then turned into fruit syrup and or jelly, which you're using just the fruit juice. I do this with the blackberries quite often. I'll do this with blueberries. It works really, really well. I don't however recommend freezing your peaches, pears or apples if you want to just have them in canned almost whole form. So with our peaches of course, we have to half them so that we can get the pit out. Same thing, we're getting the core out of our apples and pears. So usually, those are canned in the halves. Now when you freeze them and then you thaw them, you're going to have some discoloration and they're going to be much softer and mushier. So that's where knowing, okay, this is the end product I want out of this, is it best to actually freeze it so that I have it really good coming out the other side when it's in its canned shelf stable product.

So there is my answer for that. If you want it to be where you're canning it more in its whole form where you're just eating the fruit not into something else as the aforementioned, I would go ahead and can it at that point in time I wouldn't try to freeze it then thaw it and then can it into peach pie filling for example. But peach butter, 100%. So that's an important thing to note.

When it comes to meat, meat, actually so delicious. It doesn't matter if you can it fresh or if you can it frozen. Again, if you are butchering a whole animal, so if you're butchering it yourself, if you're a hunter, if you've got a deer or a venison, that is something where we will freeze a good portion of it and then I will can some of it.

When we're picking up our whole or... Usually, we don't keep a whole beef, but if you're getting a whole beef, half beef, quarter beef, et cetera, where you're getting it at a large amount and/or butchering it yourself, oftentimes, that's where I will put everything into the freezer and then if I need more freezer space or I have more time, because I have to tell you on chicken butchering day, I do not feel like after butchering the chickens and then getting them parted out or if we're freezing them whole, doing all of that, I do not have the energy to then can all of the chicken at the same time because we have to do all of the cleanup and everything else when we're processing it at home ourselves.

So I will can sometimes some of that chicken later, but it just buys me time so that I can deal with it at another day. So meat though, you can definitely thaw your meat all the way and then can it and there's no issue with texture, no issue with taste. It is delicious. All of the things. So highly recommend that if you're looking at your freezer and you're like, man, I am running out of freezer space. Look at thawing some of that meat and then canning it. Now, of course, I'm not going to can steak. I love steak in its steak format, probably not going to be canning my pot roast. Pot roast is one of my family's favorite cuts. But definitely, you can ground beef. Of course, whenever we're talking canning any of these things following updated safety tested procedures, et cetera for each of these food types. But you can pressure can ground meat. I like to take some of those tougher cuts, stew meat cans really well. Pretty much anything except the prime steaks. If you wanted to, you could can.

Now I'm not going to can up ribs because I like a good rack of ribs. That's not something I'm going to can, but you can can meat with the bone in, specifically chicken. Poultry. You can actually can it with the bone in. Sometimes that surprises people. Of course it takes up more space than the jar, but it is completely safe to can like chicken legs and all those types of things with the bone in, you absolutely can do that. I generally don't. I'd like to have more meat in the jar than putting the bone in there, but it is something that you can do. You do need to look up each meat type however, to know exactly how to can it, if it can be raw packed, if it has to be hot packed.

For example, ground beef has to be hot packed. If you try to can ground beef raw, it ends up creating a meatloaf, right? As it cans, it cooks in the pressure canner and if you don't pre-cook it, which is a hot pack where you put it in hot after it's been cooked, it all sticks together and it's too dense and so the heat can't evenly get through there when it's raw. So it's not safe to do that as a raw pack. Other cuts of meat, you can. In fact I have got a full video tutorial and recipe on the website for raw pack canning chicken, which is my favorite way to actually can chicken. It goes extremely fast. Very, very easy. So you can go and find that beneath the video description or as I mentioned in that blog post, we'll have links to that as well. So meat, wonderfully. Freeze your meat and then thaw and can it later.

Vegetables. This is where technically, safety wise, you absolutely can freeze vegetables and then thaw them and then can them from a safety standpoint. However, there's a little bit of where I would say use some caution and this is where we come to density and also, is the end product going to be good? Most people don't like super, super mushy vegetables. In fact, that's one of the reasons people say, "Well, I don't like to can green beans. I don't like canned green beans because they're too soft and they're too mushy. I like them a little bit where they have a little bit of crunch to them." Any food that you are pressure canning, which is going to be all non-pickled vegetables. So your vegetables, your meats, combination recipes, et cetera, pressure canned, the food fully cooks during the pressure canning process and it's going to be fully cooked when you open that jar of food and eat it.

So you're not going to get [foreign language 00:09:12] or stir-fry crunch factor on any of your vegetables when you can them. They're going to be fully cooked. So knowing that... Excuse me, that frozen green beans as our example, when you thaw them, they're already mushy. Even if you just blanched them, they weren't fully cooked going into the freezer, when they come out of that freezer and they're thawed, they're mushy. There is no way that I would want to take previously frozen green beans that had been thawed and then try to pressure can them. They're just going to be so soft. I just don't see palatable ways why anybody would want to eat them. But could you technically from a safety standpoint? Yes.

Here's my caveat on that. So some of your denser vegetables like that, as a green bean, corn, carrots, probably those types of things, probably fine, going to be mushy. Are you going to enjoy it? Probably not. So I personally probably really wouldn't recommend it. Safety-wise, okay. Here's the where I wonder about the safety and that is winter squash, because winter squash we already know has to be winter squash varieties. You can't do spaghetti squash. It can't be anything that's super stringy or is already really soft, which is why you can't safely pressure can zucchini for example because it's too mushy. Now I know zucchini is a summer squash not a winter squash. However, it's a density factor. It's not safe and it's not a good end product.

So I personally would not cube and freeze pumpkin or butternut, any of those winter squashes that are safe to can and then thaw them and then try to pressure can them because we're already having to take precautions to safely pressure can those, making sure we're not packing it too tight so that it isn't in a pureed format so that heat can get through because it actually is like a botulism concern, which is why you can't can at home puree pumpkin and do pumpkin pie filling at home. You can only can it in the cubed format and then you can puree it up at the time of serving. It's because of a density issue.

So I would personally not freeze butternut squash or pumpkin and then try thaw it and then try to press your can it. I worry that there would be density issues there, even though technically, the technical sources say yes, you can freeze vegetables, thaw them and then pressure can them. You have to look at the density and if there already is... Borderline isn't quite the right word there, but is there already concerns that that item can be too dense and is something that shouldn't be packed even tightly? I wouldn't feel comfortable pressure canning those if they came from a frozen state. Just my personal preference there.

So when you are freezing food to then can later, however, you do always have to fully thaw it. So you can have it be thawed in the fridge for up to two days before canning it, but you don't want to thaw it and leave it sitting in the fridge for a week or 10 days and then can it. It's like we don't can food that already has a lot of blemishes, a lot of bruising, et cetera because there's a higher bacteria load there and we only want to be canning food that is in its prime, right? Not bruised, not already starting to maybe go bad. So you want to make sure that it is fully thawed, no more than two days in the refrigerator before canning it. And if it's something that is a hot pack, not a raw pack, that item has to fully be brought up to that hot pack temperature just as if it was fresh.

And so that's if you have, for example, like you've frozen broth or you have frozen some of the vegetables that need to be hot packed. So for example, like leafy greens, has to be brought to that hot pack temperature and procedure just as if it was from fresh and then you can safely process it in the pressure canner. One of the other items that I get asked about a lot, and this is where I think confusion comes in, and that is with using frozen tomatoes in product. So if tomatoes are on the vine and that vine, your tomato plant, goes through a killing frost, it changes the acidity so much so on tomatoes, which are already borderline on being acidic enough to water bath can, which is why even water bath canning and pressure canning, you are adding acid to your tomato products or you should be if you're following updated, tested recipes.

So with tomatoes, if they're on the vine when the plant dies, that's where it alters the pH, too much to safely can. However, picking tomatoes that are on a plant that is alive and has not been killed and then freezing those tomatoes until you have time to make sauce or want to make sauce, et cetera, that is perfectly fine. It's not the actual act of the tomato being frozen that alters its pH state. It is what happens to the plant when it dies and the tomato's connected to it that alters the pH. So you can pick all of your fresh tomatoes off of your live, healthy tomato plants, put them bad boys in the freezer, which is what I do, and then drag them out later to make into sauce.

Now, I will use frozen tomatoes for tomato sauce. You could also use them for salsa. I generally don't use them for salsa. So hear me out. One of the great things about frozen tomatoes is when they thaw, the skins just slip right off, so you don't have to blanch them in hot water or even put them through a food mill if you didn't want to because the skins will literally, you just pull them right off. So that is great. It's pretty time-saving and it doesn't heat up. The kitchen doesn't use as much water, et cetera.

However, any fruit and tomato is technically a fruit you all, even though we tend to think of it at least in... I would say most of America thinks of it more as a vegetable and not really something that we eat in its sweet form like most fruits, it is technically a fruit. So when it's frozen and those cell walls burst because there's so much moisture in there, it does become more watery and more mushy, which is why it is perfect for turning into tomato sauce. But if you are wanting salsa that is more chunky and not watery, you probably don't want to use frozen then thawed tomatoes for your salsa. Now that depends on the type of salsa you're making and like I said, consistency wise, what is your preference?

So I usually only use my frozen tomatoes that I have then thawed when I am making tomato sauce. It works wonderfully and beautifully for that. So there are my tips, oh, one more tip I forgot on the fruit. So when you are using frozen fruit for canning, when it thaws, one of the great things like I mentioned earlier is you've got all of this fruit juice that just naturally comes out of the fruit. Make sure that you are saving that fruit juice when you are preparing your recipe. So of course, if you're doing jelly or syrup or fruit juice, that's what you're using anyways. But even if you're doing jam or a fruit butter or anything like that, pie filling, et cetera, make sure that you've saved that juice and use that in the liquid for the recipe.

So for example, for pie filling, we've still got the fruit that we're putting in there. So it would be the berry for in our blackberry example, right? You would be saving the blackberry because you actually want to have the blackberries in the pie filling. However, when you are home canning blackberry pie filling or any pie filling, you're going to be adding some type of liquid to that, in order to get it in the jars and you're going to be mixing it with the sugar and your clear gel for your thickener, et cetera.

So instead of using water, like you would have to with fresh fruit because you're not usually going through the bother of steam juicing or juicing fruit to do pie filling when doing it from fresh. But when you're doing it from a frozen and then thawed berry, you've got all of this juice that was already in the berry. So we're just simply putting it back in. You'll have a lot better flavor than if you would try to use water like you would with fresh. So make sure you reserve that juice, especially as I said, if you're doing pie filling or something of that nature. And use that in the recipe in place of if water was called for, go ahead and use the fruit juice that has just thawed and come out from those frozen berries. It works really well. It's going to give you a much improved flavor.

So if I do cherry pie filling, I always reserve that cherry juice that's come out of the cherries when they were being frozen and that's what I use back in. Now, if I don't have enough juice for the recipe, then of course you top that off with water to get to the amount of liquid you would need, but in most cases, you will definitely have enough of the juice. So just make sure that you reserve that when you're doing some of those other types of recipes aside from syrup that would only be using the thawed juice portion.

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Now onto our verse of the week. So today's verse, I'm reading from the amplified translation, and we are in 1 Corinthians 4:5. "So do not make any hasty or premature judgments before the time when the Lord comes again for he will both bring to light the secret things that are now hidden in darkness and disclose and expose the secret aims, motives, and purposes of hearts. Then every man will receive his due commendation from God." So I was reading in this chapter this morning, and what's really funny is I have read this verse before, but when I read this verse, because I almost did it again this morning when I read this verse before, honestly I read it, then every man will receive his due condemnation from God, which is completely wrong. That is not the word that has been used here. The word that is used here is commendation.

But I know for myself, I have really wrestled with the way that I view God, but really view myself thinking that it's through the way God views me. And it's not. So a wrong mindset, a wrong interpretation, a wrong view of the father's character. And that is, I tend to view myself very harshly and through condemnation, which I know is not from God. The enemy condemns. Satan condemns. God does not condemn. Jesus does not condemn. Now they will quicken your heart or they will breathe things to light that you need to work on. But it is from a point of correction, not condemnation. And for a really long time, really large portion of my life actually, I always felt condemned and thought that it was from God not realizing it was actually from the enemy and that it was a way to keep me from fully drawing close to God, from fully walking in the beautiful gift that Jesus gave us when he died on the cross is that we don't have to be in condemnation. That was one of the gifts of the cross.

And so I spent too long of my life feeling that God was always condemning me and I would even condemn myself coming from a point of like beating yourself up, but thinking that that was really how I viewed God, but somehow in my mind, that was how God viewed me or... I hope that that makes sense. I know if you've walked that path, you know what I'm trying to say. And if you've not been at that point, hallelujah, that you have not walked there. But I noticed this verse in particular when I read it today, that every man will receive his due commendation from God.

And one, the first part of this first is telling us, if you read the whole context of this chapter, I should say, let's back this train up just a little bit. And that is where the apostles at this time, we're speaking to the church because they were really getting into factions. Well, I follow this apostle versus that apostle instead of, I follow Jesus Christ. So honestly, sometimes I kind of view that as I think we get that way with denominations today. It's not necessarily a specific apostle, but I feel like we definitely can be like this denomination. Well, I belong to this denomination and we... Right? Instead of no, no, no, no, we're all under the body of Christ. Speaking of course to those who profess to be saved and to be Christians, to be followers of Christ.

So this was really talking about that and talking about how we all are under Christ and he is the one who examines us. And so we need to be careful that we're not making any hasty or premature judgments about specific apostles. And in this timeframe, speaking to apostles, I feel now a lot of that can be carried over into denominations, as I said, and even into specific people.

And that is our aims. So the motives of our heart, right? Because sometimes you can have deeds, people, things that look very good from the outside, but as God says, it doesn't matter what you do, if you do it without love. If you do it without love, even if it is still a good thing, but there is no love, there is no pure motive of heart. That's not what God wants. It needs to be from the heart, not just outward actions. So the very last line though, every man will receive his due commendation from God. And I actually looked up the word commendation because I tend to, my mind always put it to condemnation. It's actually, even though there's a lot of sound similarities there, the way the word sounds, commendation, of course, is the opposite of condemnation.

It is an award. So commendation is praise. It's the opposite of condemning someone. It is uplifting, it's accolades. And when you read this verse from that point, that the predetermined time when God comes back or chooses to disclose things, to bring to light the secret things that are at the moment hidden and disclosed, then every man will receive his praise from God, his accolades from God. And that brings completely different meaning to that verse and to the way that we think about things. Because if you look at something thinking that you are going to be berated and shamed, it makes you dread it. At least it does me. I don't know anybody that actually likes that. But if you look at it instead of the things that you did well, the things that are worthy of praise will be brought forward and be made known. That makes that a joyous occasion, right?

So anyways, I just wanted to share that insight because I'm sure that I'm not the only one that has probably had a wrong mindset on the character of God, especially when it comes to condemnation. And who does that really come from and who does that not come from. Condemnation does not come from God, that comes from the enemy. So thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. It was very fun to be back here with you. And until next week, blessings and mason jars for now.