Canning Dried Beans: What To Do And What Not To Do
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Lynn cans Great Northern beans to fill the pantry for winter, and most of the video is about the one step the title is yelling about: sorting the dried beans by hand before they ever reach a jar. She tells the story of opening a jar she had canned straight from the bag and finding a grub worm sitting on top, then works through soaking, filling, brining, and three pressure canners. She finishes with 21 jars of beans for the nights she gets home from work and wants supper fast.
What Lynn shows you
- The "don't do it" is opening the bag and pouring straight into jars. She looks the beans a handful at a time and throws out rocks, grub worms, and any with little holes or a piece missing.
- She soaks the sorted beans about an hour so any bad ones she missed float to the top, skims the floaters off, and rinses them twice.
- Rather than salting each jar, she mixes a brine in a food-grade bucket - she says four gallons of water to a half cup of salt covers her 21 jars, which she works out as "one teaspoon of salt per jar if you do the math."
- One thick-cut piece of bacon goes in each jar for seasoning. She leaves an inch of headspace, wipes the rims with vinegar on a paper towel, checks every jar for chips or cracks, and puts rims on finger tight.
- She walks through canner water, the weight she uses for their elevation (a little over 800 feet, so the 10-pound weight), the 90 minutes dried beans take, and a splash of vinegar in the canner water to keep the jars clear. Take all of that as a description of what she does - follow her video and tested canning guidance rather than these notes.
These notes summarise the video — watch it for the full method. For canning and preserving, follow Lynn’s video together with current tested guidance from your national or state extension service.
