Put a Lid on It

I'm sure you just read the post on jars and scratched your head.  Wide mouth?  Regular mouth?  What?

Jar openings come in two sizes:  Wide & Regular

A wide mouth jar is good for packing fruit and pretty veggies into.  A regular mouth is smaller, and good for soups, vegetable mixtures, and liquids.

Because you have two sizes of mouths, you, of course, will have 2 sizes of lids.  A wide mouth lid measures 3-1/4" across, and a regular lid measures 2-5/8" across. 

Now, for those of you under a rock, I'm going to share a dirty word:  BPA.  It's cancer causing.  It's found in the lining of the can you buy green beans in, water bottles, and hard plastic.  And it's found in many canning lids.  How does this affect you?  Well, it depends.  If you want to be 100% safe from BPA leeching into your precious canned food, you look for lids without the white lining.  It's hard, and will probably take some work.  That said, I don't mind using the white lined lids.  Why, you ask?  Because that lining would have to be touching my food to really contaminate the goods, and since it's at the top of the jar and a good canner leaves room for food expansion, not to mention the amount of BPA on the lid is very small, I think I'm safe.  It's like walking to the mailbox on a sunny day without sunscreen.

White lined lids:

Unlined Lid:

In the US, canning lids are interchangeable with other brands.  So if you have regular mouth Ball jars and can only find Kerr lids, you're safe.

I'm sure you're trying to figure out how that lid is going to keep your food from spoiling.  How does it hook to the jar?  Easy.  You're going to create a vacuum in that jar during the canning process AND you are going to heat of that waxy ring around the edge of the lid.  We do this by cleaning the mouth of the jar off with a clean cloth (after filling the jar) to ensure that nothing on the jar will prevent a clean seal.  While cleaning jar, you should be heating your lids in hot, not boiling, water.  I use a coffee pot.  Then you lift the lid out of the hot water, shake extra moisture off, line it up with the top of your jar, and set it on.  Then you screw the ring on hand tight, and process per your recipe's directions.  You know you did it right, when you hear the lids popping while they cool.

I like to write what the contents are and the date on the lids with a permanent marker after everything has cooled, so that I know not only what is inside, but when it was made.  I know, rocket science, huh?

Lastly, lids are the one canning supply item that you can NOT reuse.  Sorry charlie, but once a lid is used, that's it.  Why?  Because the wax seal is designed to seal one jar.  and unless you want moldy jelly like your neighbor's grandma, it's probably not the best idea to try to use the lid again.  As far as I know, rewaxing the lid is not recommended either.  Besides, by the time you pop that lid off, it will be bent at the edge, and unable to be resealed.

Now, go buy yourself a couple boxes of spare lids to go with your new jars, and if you got used jars, make sure you buy extra lids on top of the count you need.

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