Home Canning

Home canning, also called bottling or known colloquially as putting up or processing, is the process of preserving fruits, vegetables and meats by packing them into glass jars and then heating the jars until they form a vacuum seal that kills the organisms responsible for spoilage. Ceramic and glass vessels had been used for food storage for thousands of years, but canning itself, which relies on applying heat for preservation, was only invented in the first decade of the 1800s; before that, food was kept in non-perishable form or preserved with salt, sugar, vinegar or alcohol.