Save the Season

September 2026

Welcome to the twenty-third edition of the statewide UC Master Food Preserver monthly newsletter. Our mission is to extend culturally appropriate, research-based practices for preserving food in the home.

Each month, you’ll receive recipes, how-tos, and inspiration straight to your inbox. Thank you for subscribing and feel free to contact our helpline with any food preservation questions.

My Grandmother Would Have Bought the Steam Canner

Five canning methods, and what actually changed our minds about each one

By Paige Weisskirch

UC Master Food Preserver, Online Delivery Program Volunteer

Three prize-winning 4-H girls from Cabell County, West Virginia, demonstrate teamwork while canning farm products for visitors at the State 4-H Fair in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1921. Library of Congress.

Wax seals, open kettle canning, and the flip-and-seal trick your family swears by…these were all standard practice once, but all have been phased out after outbreaks and research finally showed what was actually going wrong. Meanwhile, one canning method spent fifty years locked out and finally got the green light once someone did the necessary research. Here's what actually drove these changes, from a 1919 botulism scare to a 2015 university study, and why "the old-fashioned way" was just the best available way, at the time.

Continue reading about outdated canning methods

Monthly Food Preservation Trivia

(Scroll to the bottom of the email for the answer!)

Pre-treating pears and apples before drying is recommended to prevent darkening, retain vitamins, and even enhance the destruction of potentially harmful bacteria. Which is NOT recommended for use in pre-treatment?

A) Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C)

B) Citric Acid

C) Lemon Juice

D) Table Salt

E) Sodium Metabisulfite

Seltzer water with a dissolved cube of prickly pear juice (photo by Marina Hsieh, used with permission).

Magenta Magic All Year Long

By Marina Hsieh

UC Master Food Preserver Online Delivery Program Volunteer

The brilliant magenta fruits of the prickly pear cactus, (aka “cactus pear” or “cactus tuna”), are ripe now in most climates! Juicing and freezing is an excellent way to compactly preserve this annual fruit for convenient year-round use, including in simple drinks, holiday jelly, shrubs or syrups for dry January mocktails, Valentine’s Day treats, or colorful vegetable brines.

Learn how to juice prickly pears and uses for the juice

Buried Treasure: Preserving Dairy in Bronze Age Ireland

By Sarah Donelson

UC Master Food Preserver Online Delivery Program Volunteer

Long before refrigerators, freezers, or canning jars, farmers in Bronze-Age Ireland used the environment around them to solve one of food preservation's oldest problems: what to do with milk when there's too much of it in one season and not enough in another.

Their answer was butter, which lasts days to weeks longer than milk. Churning milk into butter reduces the water and sugar (lactose) content, leaving a product that is about 80 percent fat, which inhibits bacterial growth. To further extend the safe storage duration of butter into other seasons, they made use of bogs.

Read about this historical method to preserve dairy

Bronze Age bog butter that was packed into a wooden vessel and buried in an Irish peat bog 2,200 to 2,400 years ago. Displayed at the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland (photo by Sarah Donelson, used with permission).

Fresh tomatillos and a jar of Tim’s Tomatillo Salsa (photo by Tim Long, used with permission).

What is Salsa???

By Tim Long

UC Master Food Preserver Online Delivery Program Volunteer

Salsa literally means "sauce" in Spanish and Italian. And of course, it is a music genre/dance style you may have seen on Dancing with The Stars — but I digress, we’re talking about food products here.

Traditional salsa is made from a base of fresh tomatoes or tomatillos, chili peppers, onions, garlic, and fresh cilantro, all seasoned with salt and fresh lime juice.

However, salsa can be made using ingredients other than tomatoes.

Continue reading about salsa beyond tomatoes

Monthly Food Preservation Q & A

Answer from a Master Food Preserver:

Lentil soup is a low-acid product that would need processing in a pressure canner to make it shelf-stable. Unfortunately, lentils are a challenging ingredient when it comes to preservation by canning. All of our reputable research-based resources (e.g., the National Center for Home Food Preservation, Ball, and University Cooperative Extension programs) recently removed lentils from their instructions for pressure-canning beans and peas. Currently, there are no research-based recipes for canning any type of lentils. Freezing your favorite lentil soup recipe is the only preservation method we can recommend.

The problem is that different types of lentils have very different characteristics when rehydrated and cooked. Some varieties, like French green lentils and black beluga lentils, retain their structure even after prolonged cooking. They stop absorbing water once they’re fully cooked and stay largely intact, like beans and peas. At the other extreme, red lentils take about 10 minutes to cook and break apart into a mush. Their starches continue to absorb water, even when reduced to a porridge. Other lentil varieties, like the commonly available green and brown lentils, behave somewhere in between these two extremes.

These differences affect how heat penetrates into a jar of lentils in a pressure-canner. Heat is transferred less efficiently in a thick “mush” than in a mixture of distinct liquids and solids. Unfortunately there hasn’t been research to determine the necessary processing to destroy spores of Clostridium botulinum, which causes botulism, for the many varieties of lentils, so we can’t recommend a method for making your lentil soup shelf stable.

Submit a Question to the Statewide Helpline

Upcoming Online Events

Salsa Beyond Tomatoes: Canning, Freezing & Dehydrating

Go beyond tomato salsas and explore how different ingredients, flavors, and preservation methods come together in salsas you can make and preserve at home by canning, freezing, or dehydrating.

Salsa can take many forms, from fruit-based versions to rich, oil-based chili salsas and dehydrated salsa you can rehydrate later. Join UC Master Food Preserver Online Delivery volunteers to explore salsa beyond tomatoes and safe, research-based ways to preserve it at home.

September 19, 10:00 am PT

Pregunte a un Maestro Conservador de Alimentos de la Universidad de California (En línea)

Únase en línea a los Maestros Conservadores de Alimentos de la Universidad de California para una sesión gratuita de preguntas y respuestas en español sobre métodos seguros y basados en la investigación para la conservación de alimentos. Un panel de voluntarios especializados en congelación, deshidratación, enlatado y seguridad alimentaria estará disponible para responder sus preguntas, compartir consejos y animarle a conservar alimentos de forma segura en casa.

September 23, 1:00 pm PT

Registro

tomatoes arranged in the shape of a question mark

Preserving Dairy at Home: Yogurt, Milk Kefir & Butter

Wondering what to do with extra milk or cream? Turn them into yogurt, milk kefir, and butter while learning the fermentation, storage, and food-safety principles behind each method.

Join UC Master Food Preserver volunteers for a free online class exploring how these foods are made at home, why each process works, and how temperature, fermentation, freezing, and storage affect quality and safety.

October 13, 7:00 pm PT

Ask a Master Food Preserver LIVE

Ask questions, swap stories, and troubleshoot home food preservation with UC Master Food Preservers using safe, research-based guidance.

Join UC Master Food Preservers for a free, interactive session focused on safe, research-based methods for preserving food at home, including fruits, vegetables, herbs, and more. Bring your questions about freezing, dehydrating, pickling, fermenting, canning, and more.

October 14, 7:00 pm PT

Tomato Basics and Preserving Peppers at Home Classes Now On Demand

Click the thumbnails below for two recent recordings. Visit our Recorded Events page for even more.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments regarding Save the Season, please email UC Master Food Preserver Community Education Supervisor Kelsie Matteucci kmatteucci@ucanr.edu.

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Monthly Food Preservation Trivia Answer

Pre-treating pears and apples before drying is recommended to prevent darkening, retain vitamins, and even enhance the destruction of potentially harmful bacteria. What is NOT included in a recommended pretreatment solution?

D) Table Salt

Acidic solutions made from ascorbic acid (vitamin C), citric acid, and lemon juice are recommended. If the consumer does NOT have a sulfite sensitivity, sodium metabisulfite may also be used. North Dakota State University Extension has recommended solution concentrations here: https://www.ndsu.edu/agriculture/extension/publications/food-preservation-drying-fruits

Did you get the trivia correct? (Click on the Thumbs up for Yes and Thumbs down for No)

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