Many gardeners plant green beans every year. Harvest snap beans when the pod is crisp, smooth, and before the seeds enlarge significantly. Do not harvest in early morning when dew is on the plants as this may spread bacterial blight.
Once harvested, they are a nutritious addition to many meals. But if you have a bountiful harvest, preserving them is a great choice. Green beans can be pressure canned, pickled, frozen or dehydrated. Use these resources to find methods to preserve green beans safely.
The National Center for Home Food Preservation continues to recommend peeling tomatoes for canning, unless specified otherwise, because most tested recipes were developed with the skins removed, and the processing times are based on peeled tomatoes. Skins may interfere with heat penetration during the canning process, leading to under-processing and potentially unsafe products. Additionally, removing the skins not only enhances safety by reducing the bacterial load but also improves the texture and flavor of the finished product. Tomato skins tend to leave tough, chewy bits and can impart a bitter taste to your canned goods.
Sometimes a jar in a canner load fails to seal upon cooling. This may happen because of a cracked or nicked jar, or perhaps because food is fouling the jar rim where the lid sits. Due to loss of quality, reprocessing of jars is not recommended.
If you do reprocess, follow these steps for a safe product:
Re-process within 24 hours. For a safe final product, you must have followed an up-to-date research-tested recipe on your first attempt, and you must reprocess within 24 hours.
Remove the lid and empty the contents of the jar into a large pot and heat to boiling.
Fill a clean jar with the heated food, remove air bubbles, and top with a new lid.
Reprocess using a tested recipe for a hot-pack product. If there is no tested hot-pack recipe, the product may not be safely reprocessed.
If you did not follow a tested recipe on the first try, all jars, sealed or unsealed, may be unsafe and should be discarded.
To preserve quality of food where jars failed to seal (and discovered within 24 hours of initial canning), refrigerate the jars and consume contents within one week. Unsealed jars may also be frozen for up to one year, be sure to adjust headspace to one inch before freezing.
When following a validated home canning recipe that calls for broth, it is essential to select the appropriate type for safety reasons. Reconstituted bouillon cubes, powders, pastes and bone broths are not suitable for home canning, as they often contain ingredients such as starches or gelatin, for which there is insufficient data regarding their impact on canning safety.
If the recipe specifies broth, a commercially prepared liquid broth—matched to the flavor indicated in the recipe—is an acceptable option. However, it is important to note that broth and stock are not interchangeable in home canning. Stock typically differs in composition and may pose safety concerns, making it unsuitable as a substitute in tested recipes.
The Kansas Local Food Summit will be held July 29-30, 2025 in Salina, co-hosted by the Community Resilience Hub at Kansas Wesleyan University. The Summit will begin with a day of optional workshops and tours on Tuesday, followed by a full day of speakers, interactive learning sessions, and more opportunities to connect with people from across the state on Wednesday.
K-State Research and Extension and the Heartland Regional Food Business Center is hosting a Food Business Start-Up Summit. This event will be in Lawrence, KS on September 11-13, 2025.
This isn’t your average conference — it’s a hands-on, get-it-done retreat for Kansas food and farm entrepreneurs ready to move their businesses forward. Apply as a Business Project Team with your key partners — be they funders, marketers, or farm managers — and dig into real challenges alongside peers and experts. Join us for three days of programming to help your business:
No-churn ice cream mixtures are easy to make and simply frozen in a deep pan or container.
The heat of summer is a bit cooler with a dish of cold ice cream. A special treat in itself, but can be more special when homemade ice cream is the star. While ice cream is a cold product, it can support the growth of bacteria that could cause foodborne illness.
Eggs are a key ingredient in traditional homemade ice cream. They help add rich flavor, a light yellow color, help prevent crystallization and add a smooth creamy texture. But raw or undercooked eggs that are contaminated with Salmonella can survive cold temperatures and lead to foodborne illness.
To make a cooked egg base: mix eggs and milk to make a custard base and then cook gently to an internal temperature of 160°F. This temperature will destroy Salmonella, if present.
Use a food thermometer to check the mixture temperature. At this temperature, the mixture will coat a metal spoon. Try to resist the temptation to taste-test when the custard is not fully cooked!
After cooking, chill the custard thoroughly before freezing.
Egg substitute products also may be used. You may have to experiment with each recipe to determine the correct amount to add.
Pasteurized eggs
Another option is to use pasteurized eggs in recipes which call for uncooked eggs. Pasteurized shell eggs are available at some supermarkets and cost more. Commercial pasteurization of eggs is a heat process at low temperatures. It destroys Salmonella bacteria that may be present. Pasteurization has a small effect on flavor, nutritional content and functional properties of eggs.
Egg-less Ice Cream
There are many homemade ice cream recipes without eggs, and these would be a good option for those allergic to eggs.
K-State Research and Extension and the Heartland Regional Food Business Center is hosting a 