Loading the canner and the boil
This is the lesson. Everything before it was getting you here. Jars packed, lids on, and now we make them safe to sit in your pantry for a year. Let's go.
Getting the jars in
Your canner should already have water heating in it, enough that once the jars go in they'll be covered by a good inch or two. If you're not there yet, get it going now, this takes longer than you think.
Use the jar lifter. Not tongs, not your bare hand, not a dish towel folded four times like I did the one time I couldn't find the lifter. Grip the jar below the neck, where it's straight-sided, and lower it in slow. Don't drop it from four inches up. Glass on glass at the bottom of a pot of boiling water is a bad sound and sometimes a broken jar.
Jars shouldn't touch each other or the sides of the pot. A little space around each one so the water can get to all of it. Full batch and you'll probably fill the rack that came with your canner, that's what it's for.
Once they're all in, check your water level again. If it dropped below covering the jars by an inch, add more hot water from the kettle, not cold straight from the tap. Cold water hitting hot jars can crack them. I learned that the annoying way, one cracked jar and jam water everywhere in the canner. Just don't.
The actual boil
Lid on the canner, bring it up to a full rolling boil. This takes a while, especially with a full load of jars, so don't get impatient and start your timer early. You want real boiling, not simmering, not water that's thinking about it.
Once it's rolling, that's when your processing time starts. Jam is usually 10 minutes, pickles usually a little longer, whatever your specific recipe says. And remember the altitude, we're up around 4,600 feet here in American Fork, so you're adding time to whatever the recipe says at sea level. I always have to go look at the chart for the exact number, I don't have it memorized and I won't pretend I do. Get a chart, tape it inside a cupboard door, that's what I did.
Keep the boil going the whole time. If it drops to a simmer partway through, that's not a full process anymore, so watch it and adjust your burner.
Steam is the one that gets you
Lifting that lid off partway through, or at the end, lift it away from yourself, tilted so the steam goes off the back, not straight up into your face and arms. I've said it in class before and it's worth saying again because people don't expect it. The water isn't what gets you. It's the steam. I've got a mark on my wrist from reaching over a vent that I cover up for pictures now, wore a bracelet over it to a wedding once so nobody would ask. Steam burns are sneaky, you don't feel it coming the way you'd feel a splash.
Taking them out
Time's up, turn off the heat, take the lid off, and let the jars sit in the water about five minutes before you lift them out. This settles them and helps the seal set properly, because pulling them straight from a rolling boil into open air is too much of a shock.
Then jar lifter again, straight up, set them on a towel on the counter with space between them. Don't set hot jars on a cold counter, and don't set them in a draft. They need to cool slow and even.
Do not touch the rings, do not tighten anything, do not press on the lids to check them. Leave them alone.
The sound
Now you wait. Somewhere in the next hour, hopefully sooner, you'll hear a little "tink." That's the lid pulling down and sealing. It's one of my favorite sounds there is, I still get a little thrill every time, and the very first time it happened I called my sister just to describe it to her. She did not care even a little bit. I didn't care that she didn't care. I still think about that sound the way some people think about music.
You'll hear a few tinks over the next while, not all at once, they seal at their own pace. If one doesn't seal by morning, that jar goes in the fridge and gets eaten first, no big deal, that's not a failure of the whole batch, just one jar.
This whole lesson is really patience and not touching things. You already did the hard work, packing and salting and getting the acid right. This part is staying out of the way and letting the water do its job.
Before next time
Let your jars sit undisturbed a full 24 hours before you check seals or move them to the pantry. We'll go over what a good seal looks like and what to do if one didn't take.