Beans!

7 pint jars of plain navy beans and 6 jars of navy beans in tomato molasses sauce

I love to put things in jars. I spent a lot of time this weekend rearranging my cabinets, taking inventory of all the food we’ve put up. Much of it we’ve grown ourselves, like the tomatoes, carrots, beets, green beans, and pickles. There are a lot of things we just don’t grow but want to have on hand, but without the mystery ingredients that sneak their way into so many foods we buy ready-made.

My daughter-in-law and I made a trip to the closest commissary, one of the fantastic benefits of being retired military families. I only go to the commissary a few times a year, so it’s always an adventure and the car is always pretty full! One of the things I stock up on is dried beans. They are so inexpensive, versatile, and healthy. I usually have several pounds of dried beans on hand, but I like to have lots in jars, too, since I don’t always plan ahead for the time it takes to cook them. By canning them myself I can control what goes into the jar, reducing salt and avoiding preservatives.

One of the things I really dislike about recipe blogs is that you have to read through a life-story before you eventually find the recipe. I’ve talked enough, so here is how I used the 3 pounds of dried beans I bought yesterday. After processing I ended up with 6 pints of beans in tomato sauce and still had enough beans for 7 pints of plain beans that I can use a million ways.

• soak 3 pounds of navy beans overnight

• in the morning, drain beans and cover with fresh water, boil for 30 minutes. Don’t be shy with the water, cover the beans by several inches.

• heat your jars in the pressure canner, I put about 3 quarts of water in the canner to do this. You don’t really need to sterilize the jars since they’ll be under pressure for such a long time, they just need to be hot. Sterilizing jars is an unnecessary step in pressure canning but remember it is necessary when water bath canning.

• While the jars are heating, make the tomato sauce.

  • 1 quart tomato juice

  • 2 cups of water from the beans

  • 3 tablespoons molasses

  • 1 tablespoon vinegar

  • 2 teaspoons salt (always canning salt for anything going into jars)

  • 1 teaspoon dry mustard

  • bring to a boil

• fill pints jars 3/4 full with beans, add sauce leaving 1 inch headroom

• process at 10 lbs pressure for 75 minutes. Process the tomato beans in one batch and the plain beans in another, just in case you get a bit of siphoning.

In case you are curious, the beans cost about 31 cents per jar, not including the sauce ingredients, but those are pretty minimal especially since we grew the tomatoes.

You can tell we are huge fans of canning everything possible. Next time I go to the commissary I’ll pick up chicken and beef for canning. It’s so easy to do and handy to have on hand! I can’t wait to share that with you!