Welcome to Country Made with Love
At Country Made with Love, we are a mother-daughter company that just wanted to save our excess fresh produce for later. Through lots of trial and error we found the supplies that worked best for us and that people really liked our stuff! Now we spend our time selling our yummy canned products at festivals and craft shows around our area. We want to share how we found the supplies, tools and recipes over the years to get the most out of our food supply and start canning. We think we've found the way to make the freshest and most delicious meals from locally sourced ingredients and save them for years to come. Our goal is to help you get the most out of your groceries and enjoy every bite!
If you’re new to canning, you need to gather the essential supplies to get started. Don’t worry; it’s easier than you think!!
Tools of our trade ~ 8 Things you need to get started!
Jars and Lids
Often, jars and lids are hard to come by and can be expensive if you wait till everyone else is canning to try and find them.
I would recommend stocking up so the jars are waiting on the food, not the other way around.
Canning jars vary in sizes, and their sizes are ideal for different foods.
- Half-Pint: This size is best if you want to can jams and jellies. They’re often referred to as jelly jars.
- Pint: Pint jars are great for canning vegetables, such as green beans, salsa, relishes, meat, or diced tomatoes.
- Quart: You can use quart jars to can tomato sauce and soups.
- Half-Gallon: This size is NOT meant to can with, unfortunately. However, you can use half-gallon jars to store dried beans and dehydrated food.
Canning Equipment
Finding the right equipment is key! It took us a lot of trial and error and Pots! to get it right!
These are some of the supplies that we have personally used and would recommend. There are many places to get supplies, but we found that most folks just use Amazon, so here are some links.
You will need a water bath canner. We have tried many to find what suites us. Try this one out. It will look like a large pot or kettle, but it is made specifically for canning.. The canner usually comes with a canning rack that stabilizes the jars and prevents them from cracking. Little things you will need include a canning funnel, magnetic lid lifter, a jar lifter, and a spatula, or we use a chopstick sometimes. These are all items that will protect you from burn or wasting any of your product over the sides! All of these things can be purchased individually, but there are some great all-in-one kits out there. Check out the one below.
The other two items are a large stock pot, whether you're making jelly or spaghetti sauce, the food needs to be prepped before canning. A good heavy stock pot is a must.
Canning Recipes
and Cookbooks
Lastly, the recipes to make all your food delicious, or a beginner cookbook. This one is user friendly and full of amazing tips and tricks from Ball. See our beginner recipes below that we found online.
Here are some of the books that we used when starting out, and still today to make the recipes that we know our family loves.
And that's it for the essentials! Now the tools you need are just waiting on your bounty!!
**Food items to keep on hand when canning will typically consist of lemon juice (bottled is fine), Canning & Pickling salts and spices, Pectin, Pickling Crisp (to keep those pickles crunchy), Cheesecloth, and plain ol' white vinegar.
Canning is an amazing way to get the most out of your money when it comes to feeding your family!
About us
Country Made with Love is a family-owned, mother-daughter business located in League City, Texas. We love to grow our own vegetables and gardening. Not wanting our food to go to waste, we learned to can our fruits and vegetables and even sell them to others here and there. We love the recipes we use and hope you will too.