Looking for Home Canning Baby Food: Making and Canning Healthy Baby Foods at Home in 2024? Scroll down this page and follow the links. And if you bring home some fruit or vegetables and want to can, freeze, make jam, salsa or pickles, see this page for simple, reliable, illustrated canning, freezing or preserving directions. There are plenty of other related resources, click on the resources dropdown above. If you are having a hard time finding canning lids, I've used these, and they're a great price & ship in 2 days.
If you have questions or feedback, please let me know! There are affiliate links on this page. Read our disclosure policy to learn more.
Home Canning Baby Food: Making and Canning Healthy Baby Foods at Home
You can make home canned baby food which is more nutritious, contains no chemical additives and is more economical than commercially prepared baby foods. You make it, so you know the source and contents!But there are limitations. Home canning equipment, even home pressure canners cannot reach the temperatures and pressures of commercial equipment, so you cannot safely can everything you see on the shelf of the baby foods ailse at the grocery store.
What baby foods should you NOT can?
Do not attempt to can:
- pureed vegetables,
- red meats, or
- poultry
because proper processing times for pureed forms of these foods have not been determined for home use. Instead, can and store these foods using standard processing procedures. Puree or blend them at serving time. Heat the blended foods to boiling, simmer for 10 minutes, cool, and serve. Store unused portions in the refrigerator and use within two days for best quality.
The following fruit purees should not be home canned: bananas; figs; Asian pears; tomatoes; cantaloupe and other melons; papaya; ripe mango or coconut. There are no safe recommendations for these fruits.
And do not attempt to can the following, under any circumstances:
- dairy of any kind,
- eggs,
So what baby foods may you safely can?
You may prepare any chunk-style or pureed fruit with or without sugar, using the procedures for preparing and processing found on this website. Pack in half-pint, preferably, or pint jars and use the processing times called for in each recipe.
Here are the recipes. Remember that you may can without adding sugar, salt, spices or other sweeteners. When a liquid is called for water or a fruit juice, like apple or grape is a safe choice.
See this page for recipes of baby foods you can make and store in the refridgerator or freezer.
Purees / Sauces:
- How to make applesauce -
- How to make applesauce for a meal (not canning it) with NO special equipment
- How to make chunky applesauce
- How to make apple butter -
- How to make cranberry sauce -
- How to make jellied cranberry sauce -
- How to make cran-applesauce -
- How to make pear sauce -
Whole or chunky fruits
- Canning apples
- How to can blueberries (and raspberries, blackberries, currants, dewberries, elderberries, gooseberries, huckleberries, tayberries, loganberries and mulberries.) -
- How to can cherries -
- Fruit cocktail - can your own mixed fruit cocktail!
- How to can oranges, grapefruit, lemons, limes, tangerines, clementines and other citrus -
- How to make canned pears! In sugar solution, water, fruit juice
- How to make your own home canned peaches, plums, cherries or nectarines (in a light sugar, regular sugar, natural fruit juice )
- How to make canned Pineapple
- Strawberries (canned strawberries, not jam).
Juices: canning fruit and vegetable juices
- Apple juice - make and bottle your own apple juice!
- Apple cider
- How to make fruit juice - mixed juices, cherry, blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, other berries, etc. -
- How to make your own grape juice, scuppernong, juice, muscadine juice. -
- How to make home-canned lemon, orange or other citrus juices
References:
- USDA
- University of Minnesota Extension
- National Center for Home Food Preservation
- University of North Dakota Extension
- University of Maine Cooperative Extension
Illustrated Canning, Freezing, Jam Instructions and Recipes
[ Easy Home Canning Directions] [FAQs - Answers to common questions and problems] [Recommended books about home canning, jam making, drying and preserving!] [Free canning publications to download and print]
