Food Preservation: Canning, Dehydrating, Freeze Drying?

[Shoeless]

I'd like to increase our pantry food storage.  Our local grocery stores have quite a bit of fresh produce at prices lower than what it would cost me to grow my own. 

I'm not really sure where to start with this.  How do I sort out which foods are best preserved via each method? I admit I feel very intimidated by canning (botulism!).  Plus, we don't eat very many canned foods (some canned tomatoes and beans in chili is about it). 

Any advice? Stories of "Here's how I do it..."? 

[Rosie_0801]

Maybe lactose-fermenting would suit you better? You don't get botulism from it.

[Shoeless]

7 minutes ago, Dreamergal said:

I am interested in canning too. Probably short term. But summer is coming and I am willing to hunt for produce and can, rather than try to grow everything and fail. I am terribly intimidated by canning too. 

We will probably buy a dehydrator too. The good ones seem to be in the $500 range. 

Is freeze drying different from just freezing stuff ? 

 

Yes. Freeze drying takes all the water out of the food.  You can then store the food in air tight containers on the shelf.  A good freeze dryer is very expensive, though. If I had a large family, it would probably be worth it, but there's just 3 of us, so I'm trying to figure out cost vs effort of various methods, too. 

[cjzimmer1]

31 minutes ago, Dreamergal said:

We will probably buy a dehydrator too. The good ones seem to be in the $500 range. 

 

Excalibur is a very good brand and they run $200-$300 depending on size/features.

[cjzimmer1]

Storing/preserving food is only good if you actually use those products.  So if you seldom use canned tomatoes,  there's not much point there for you.  We use them in chili, stuffed peppers, and various other casserole type dishes (I'm constantly just dumping various ingredients together so my casseroles are never the same twice but tomatoes is always a good way to bring things together) so it makes sense for me to can them.  I also can applesauce(homemade is so superior to store bought that I will never eat store boughten again),  pears and salsa.  I only have a water bath canner so I'm more limited on what I can do.  I could do jams with that too but we don't use much jam so there is no point spending time on it.  Ball has a canning book and really it's the best source for learning to can if you don't have someone who can sit with you and teach you for a batch or two. 

Dehydrate, very useful but again do you use/like those products.  I love dried fruit but most commercial stuff has sulphur dioxide (which helps preserve color) and I have some food sensitivity/allergy type reaction so I can't really eat much commercial stuff.  So for me it's makes sense.  I also discovered that dried pineapple without the obnoxious extra sugar added is divine.  I dry over 100 pineapples a year (because my mom, sisters, niece and nephews all ask for it for Christmas presents).  I also do apples, peaches, fruit roll-ups, onions and sometimes zucchini.  The process is quite easy but unless you have a good quality dehydrator the process is quite tedious.  And of course it's not worth investing in a good dehydrator unless you plan to get lots of use out of it.

I do a lot of freezing of fresh fruit simply because my kids love it and I'd rather feed them frozen fruit (with no sugar) as a dessert than ice cream on a hot day.  Freezer is definitely the easiest to start with.  Start with blueberries or grapes.  Wash lay out on a towel till somewhat dry.  Fill ziplock bag and freeze.

But really first look at what you are using, how was it prepared and then see if you can duplicate that.  If you are mostly using fresh, other than maybe throwing a few things in the freezer, I'm not sure I'd go gung ho on other methods of preservation until you practice using those products from the store to see if you like them.

[Rosie_0801]

Huh. You've all just reminded me I have been wanting to experiment making my own tempeh. Hmm.

[Pen]

Different things come out very different by different methods.  I prefer frozen berries to dehydrated ones, for example. But I prefer dehydrated apple snacks to frozen.  Dehydrated vegetables are extremely useful for soups. Frozen vegetables generally seem better to me to add to scrambled eggs (or tofu if I were vegan).  Freeze dried sounds awesome but I have not had that, except maybe commercially. 

[KungFuPanda]

I would only bother to can the food you really use and maaaaybe one “experiment” each year.  For tomatoes and beans it might just be easier to freeze them. 
 

I shied away from learning to can because my mom and grandmother canned SO much at once. It was intimidating until I learned you don’t HAVE to do so much at once. I bought a book called Small Batch Preserving and a jar insert that works with just a few jars in a regular pot. It’s just much easier for me to get my brain around processing 3-4 jars at a time.  https://www.amazon.com/Norpro-648-Canning-Basket-Removeable/dp/B005PON6BQ/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=norpro+green+canning+rack&qid=1586744262&sr=8-1
 

I HAVE a normal-sized canner, but I just use the smaller one so much more. 

[Shoeless]

2 hours ago, Rosie_0801 said:

Maybe lactose-fermenting would suit you better? You don't get botulism from it.

 

Hmm, I don't know if I've ever heard of it.  Off to do some googling...

[Shoeless]

1 hour ago, cjzimmer1 said:

Storing/preserving food is only good if you actually use those products.  So if you seldom use canned tomatoes,  there's not much point there for you.  We use them in chili, stuffed peppers, and various other casserole type dishes (I'm constantly just dumping various ingredients together so my casseroles are never the same twice but tomatoes is always a good way to bring things together) so it makes sense for me to can them.  I also can applesauce(homemade is so superior to store bought that I will never eat store boughten again),  pears and salsa.  I only have a water bath canner so I'm more limited on what I can do.  I could do jams with that too but we don't use much jam so there is no point spending time on it.  Ball has a canning book and really it's the best source for learning to can if you don't have someone who can sit with you and teach you for a batch or two. 

Dehydrate, very useful but again do you use/like those products.  I love dried fruit but most commercial stuff has sulphur dioxide (which helps preserve color) and I have some food sensitivity/allergy type reaction so I can't really eat much commercial stuff.  So for me it's makes sense.  I also discovered that dried pineapple without the obnoxious extra sugar added is divine.  I dry over 100 pineapples a year (because my mom, sisters, niece and nephews all ask for it for Christmas presents).  I also do apples, peaches, fruit roll-ups, onions and sometimes zucchini.  The process is quite easy but unless you have a good quality dehydrator the process is quite tedious.  And of course it's not worth investing in a good dehydrator unless you plan to get lots of use out of it.

I do a lot of freezing of fresh fruit simply because my kids love it and I'd rather feed them frozen fruit (with no sugar) as a dessert than ice cream on a hot day.  Freezer is definitely the easiest to start with.  Start with blueberries or grapes.  Wash lay out on a towel till somewhat dry.  Fill ziplock bag and freeze.

But really first look at what you are using, how was it prepared and then see if you can duplicate that.  If you are mostly using fresh, other than maybe throwing a few things in the freezer, I'm not sure I'd go gung ho on other methods of preservation until you practice using those products from the store to see if you like them.

 

Point taken.  We really only use canned tomatoes for chili or soups every now and then. Maybe 1 can every other week, so canning our own tomatoes is probably not a great use of time or fresh tomatoes. 

We would probably eat a lot more dried fruit than anything else, and my husband would probably be really excited if I could make beef jerky. I love dried fruits, but don't buy them often due to price at the grocery. 

We mostly either eat fresh or frozen veggies. Maybe I'm over thinking this, and what I really need to do is buy another freezer and also buy a dehydrator.  We have a smaller chest freezer, but maybe it's time to get a bigger one.

[prairiewindmomma]

A few thoughts.....I grew up eating what we grew, literally. 
 

1. If you are doing this to increase food supply, you have to plan to do this for things you will actually eat in a way that will actually supply nutrition.

2. I am not a fan of freeze dried or dehydrated anything. I used to have a dehydrator and after a decade, I donated it. It wasn’t getting enough use. 
 

3. Canning....most things aren’t cost effective to can. It is cheaper to buy jam. Unless you are buying 25# boxes of tomatoes or growing your own, it’s cheaper to buy canned tomatoes, etc. Historically, people have canned either because they have massive gardens or because they want specialty stuff like a certain salsa, etc. At HEB prices, I would just stock up on stuff at the store.

4. I freeze berries, meat at good prices, etc.  I do have good savings from doing this.

5. If you are wanting to stock up your pantry, I would look at rice, beans, etc. Those things will eventually become available again.

[cjzimmer1]

17 minutes ago, MissLemon said:

We would probably eat a lot more dried fruit than anything else, and my husband would probably be really excited if I could make beef jerky. I love dried fruits, but don't buy them often due to price at the grocery. 

Dried fruit is expensive because it takes a lot of fruit to achieve any weight after you remove the water.  So if you are buying fruit at the grocery store (and even on sale), and then dehydrating you will probably be paying more per pound than just buying it in the grocery store.  If you want economic savings you have to find a bulk source of cheap produce.  We have an amish community about an hour away from us.  They get apples shipped in from Michigan and Washington.  If I buy the #2 apples (meaning they are misshapen, not evenly colored, have bruises, stem pokes in the skin or other blemishes), I can economically dehydrate. #1 apples even in bulk are too expensive (and bulk for me is less than half of grocery store prices) to preserve.

Beef jerky would be good (it's always been on my list of things to try) but again, it's going to be as just expensive if not more than to buy it because it takes a lot of meat to make a pound of dried jerky.

Preserving your own food is reasonable in only a few circumstances 1) you are willing to pay extra because the home preserved version is superior to the store version (aka  my applesauce), 2) you grow your own food and need to preserve the extras, 3) chemical sensitivities to preservatives 4) you enjoy doing it.  Meaning you will never save money unless you produce the food yourself.  

I'm not trying to discourage you, I've just known so many people who think "hey I'll save money doing it myself" and after a year or too give it up.  It's a lot of work and food is pretty cheap in the US so you need to have an extra reason to make it worth it because saving money isn't really likely.

[Shoeless]

@cjzimmer1 I hear you, and I appreciate the advice! 

Beef jerky would probably just be a once in a while kind of thing.  We make homemade ice cream all the time, and while it's really delicious, it definitely isn't cheaper than store bought. (It's way better, though!)

I do have a source for cheap produce, even cheaper than HEB prices for some of it. I don't usually buy from the produce terminal because I have to buy in such large quantities.  That's fine, if I have a way to store/preserve what I buy. Otherwise, I might as well wait for sales at HEB. 

 

[Pen]

Some vegetables you can either blanch then freeze or else grind up with oil like for a pest and freeze... that could work well for any thing it is suitable for with probably no additional equipment needed.  I don’t care for frozen apples, but frozen homemade applesauce is great.  

A lot of frozen fruits work well in smoothies even if they won’t go back to normal as a fruit (like bananas and apples become mush if defrosted ime)

[slackermom]

My preferred method of preserving fresh food is freezing. I have done CSAs on and off for about 15 years, and always got a glut of tomatoes for several weeks in the summer. I would roast the excess in the oven and then put them into quart-size freezer bags. I also do some big batch cooking on a fairly regular basis, with things like turkey chili or beef stew where I can incorporate a bunch of veggies that need to be used up asap, then divide into small batches that are easy to freeze and later reheat. I got into the habit of doing that because my ex gets major migraines from onions and garlic so almost everything needed to be made from scratch. 

I once read some advice about food storage and I try to stick by it: Store what you eat, and eat what you store. It may sound silly, but it makes sense to me. Don't waste precious storage space on food you would only eat if you had no other options, and keep it in rotation so it gets eaten before it goes bad. 

Obviously if we lose power for an extended period, my freezer stash is not going to last as long as canned or dried stuff, but I have those things on hand too. I just don't spend any time or energy on canning or drying. 

[Arcadia]

Making kimchi 😂

My family likes pickles and kimchi, not because we are preserving vegetables.

[Carrie12345]

I only have a basic level dehydrator that is used “for fun” at my house. Hours and hours of run time, and the family gobbles down everything in no time. I feel like it would need to run 24/7 for food storage, and even then I have concerns about judging safe levels of moisture, because most dehydrated foods are never completely dry. After some length of time, depending on the item and preciseness of the processing, nasties will start to grow.

I’ve always wanted to can (and have equipment) but, like others have mentioned, it’s still cheaper to buy canned foods. Someday, when I have a gas stove, I’ll get around to it for other reasons (fun, keeping local foods, keeping meats that can’t be lost in a power outage,) but definitely not for economics.

I am still hooked on the idea of a freeze dryer. Dh and I decided a long time ago that we’d be happy with the investment, but we currently have zero space to run and store one. They’re pretty big, kind of loud, and sensitive to temperature/humidity. And, yes, expensive. However, I do think they’re the one method that is, long term, cost effective compared to buying (some) freeze dried foods, particularly “complete meals”, most of which I think are gross.  That’s assuming regular use, not just a few experiments on a thousands-dollar machine. Storing freeze dried foods is also much easier than home canned or commercial canned.

For now, it’s just commercially packaged foods for us, with some repacked at home for the freezer or pantry.

[DawnM]

I am regretting selling my dehydrator.  I know it is replaceable, but UGH.  I got on a rampage and was of the mindset to get rid of stuff.  That is one thing I wish I hadn't.

I have never canned but would like to start.  My best friend cans a lot and she always has such a great stash.

[Rosie_0801]

As a non-American, I have to ask this.

Why are you people so big on applesauce?

[Acorn]

@Rosie_0801

In my part of Midwest US, apples are inexpensive and one of most plentiful harvests. We don’t have good storage to keep whole fruit for very long. Applesauce is then canned for preservation. We use it as a topping on pancakes, baking ingredient and by itself. I prefer nonsweetened and chunky so I usually don’t eat store bought applesauce because I don’t like their recipe.

Edited April 13, 2020 by Acorn

[cjzimmer1]

1 hour ago, Rosie_0801 said:

As a non-American, I have to ask this.

Why are you people so big on applesauce?

For us, my kids love to eat it for breakfast or as an afternoon snack.  I use it to replace oil in the majority of my baking.  It's a great easy on the stomach food when your sick.  Plus like Acorn said it's one of the cheapest produce items available.  My mom grew up dirt poor (they had no refrigerator or freezer so they had to wait until my grandfather came home from work each night to find out if they would have any meat that day or not) but they had applesauce nearly every day  because they apple trees and could can them and store them much longer than just fresh apples.

[73349]

@Rosie_0801 also applesauce is something our doctors recommend as food when we're sick--it's high in moisture, easy to eat, nutritious, etc. IMO the best we have is a brand called Vermont Village.

Re: canning, be advised that it might be very expensive to can tomatoes unless you can get very cheap ones, and it's time-consuming. I used the water bath method with a high-acid recipe and I think it took me the better part of two days to get sauce made and a few gallons canned, and the difference from store-bought was not very noticeable in the finished meals. It doesn't help that I have a flat-top stove, though. You might do better to find a brand you really like.

Freezing is a lower-investment method; I use it for broth and fruit (cut, freeze on a flat pan so pieces don't stick together, repackage into a jar).

This is a great resource for recipes and safety: https://www.ballhomecanning.com/recipes/

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, Rosie_0801 said:

Why are you people so big on applesauce?

You've clearly never had it fresh and warm with cinnamon on top. 

No seriously, it's a snack, a light dessert, and handy when you're recovering from a bug. But it's also something you can make in a small batch just because. So when people are down and I want to conjure my MIL, I cook down some apples and make applesauce, serving it warm. Yum.

9 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:

A few thoughts.....I grew up eating what we grew, literally. 
 

1. If you are doing this to increase food supply, you have to plan to do this for things you will actually eat in a way that will actually supply nutrition.

2. I am not a fan of freeze dried or dehydrated anything. I used to have a dehydrator and after a decade, I donated it. It wasn’t getting enough use. 
 

3. Canning....most things aren’t cost effective to can. It is cheaper to buy jam. Unless you are buying 25# boxes of tomatoes or growing your own, it’s cheaper to buy canned tomatoes, etc. Historically, people have canned either because they have massive gardens or because they want specialty stuff like a certain salsa, etc. At HEB prices, I would just stock up on stuff at the store.

4. I freeze berries, meat at good prices, etc.  I do have good savings from doing this.

5. If you are wanting to stock up your pantry, I would look at rice, beans, etc. Those things will eventually become available again.

This is so spot on. I grew 40 tomato plants last year, so I was able to can tomatoes till my legs gave out, haha. We only have 3 people in our house right now, so we don't burn through them. It's mostly fun for me. I mean, garden tomatoes are better than store canned tomatoes, sure. Buying the big box at the farmer's market would have been easier. But when dd was home and a teen we went through a LOT of tomatoes. And my dh likes homemade ketchup. Homemade canned spaghetti sauce is amazing, though there are some ($4-5 a jar) bottles I like. So for saving money, you really asking what the most expensive products are you can put up or what you can't buy easily at the store.

I like growing peppers, because they're easy to put up. I freeze bell peppers and can banana peppers, jalapenos, etc. 

I cannot fathom drying fruit at home. Make a migration to Trader Joes every few months and stock up.They have the kind with no sulfur, no problem. 

Someone mentioned small batch canning. This is another book in that vein.                                             Not Your Mama's Canning Book: Modern Canned Goods and What to Make with Them                                       It's really popular on some canning FB groups, and it does a good job of connecting what you would be putting up with the RECIPE you'd want to use it in. 

Edited April 13, 2020 by PeterPan

[Carrie12345]

1 hour ago, Rosie_0801 said:

As a non-American, I have to ask this.

Why are you people so big on applesauce?

I’m not particularly huge on applesauce, though I do like it. My kids, however, will go to town on giant jars of the stuff.  If I take one out, I expect it to be gone in less than a day. Same with pickles (which I absolutely hate.). People are weird.

[PeterPan]

25 minutes ago, whitehawk said:

it might be very expensive to can tomatoes unless you can get very cheap ones, and it's time-consuming. I used the water bath method with a high-acid recipe and I think it took me the better part of two days to get sauce made and a few gallons canned, and the difference from store-bought was not very noticeable in the finished meals. It doesn't help that I have a flat-top stove, though. You might do better to find a brand you really like.

Hmm. I have canned on both my smooth top stoves, no problem. I have really big pots with long, long handled wooden spoons. When I do it, I can run two big (HUGE) pots, one on each burner. But even with that, yeah if I've got a 1/2-1 bushel of tomatoes it's a full day. Maybe you were doing some unnecessary steps? You can leave the peels on for some things. I've gotten more hack, using an immersion blender before running through the food mill, etc. I don't know, I find canning tomatoes very methodical and soothing. I hate that I forget how each year, lol. But once I get in the groove, it's my peaceful spot. That and Disney. And cruising. 

My dd is so ADHD that canning tomatoes drives her crazy. You definitely have to be game for repetitive tasks, because you're chop chopping, peeling, whatever, over and over. But if you have  big enough scale tools, it isn't that big a deal. I have two canners. Or maybe 3? I forget. You can flip the lid and use your pressure canner to water bath, so I can run both burners at once. My SIL does open kettle, but not me, lol. 

Another trick people will do is to cook down a batch of sauce in a big electric roaster, the kind you use for your turkey. I've done that before. It's not necessarily easier, but it has a lot of surface area to make it go better. Some years I've done it, but once the liner pan is groady from turkeys it doesn't work so well, lol. 

Edited April 13, 2020 by PeterPan

[PeterPan]

On the freezing/canning grocery store stuff, just my two cents, but I'm not sure I'd bother with putting up store tomatoes. My SIL just bought store frozen fruit and made jam. It was a way to keep herself busy with the quarantine time, and I thought it was really smart! So maybe trying some small batches of stuff would let you get the bug out of your system. But for TOMATOES I'm going to be more of a snob and say to wait for nice ones. When they're really good, really good, you can taste the sun. 

It's also the variety. I grow/can the varieties my MIL said, and she was really finicky. It probably makes a difference. 

Edited April 13, 2020 by PeterPan

[Miss Tick]

I will dry beans, can tomatoes, freeze chopped chard or spinach, and store butternut squash. After decades of experimentation these are the things I can do and we will eat. I don't do all of them every year, either. I haven't been able to get greens to grow successfully in ages (no clue why) and I kind of rotate through the others.

[Zoo Keeper]

Here's a website that has nice step by step of canning various things.  pickyourown.org

I've used it for years for techniques and recipes. 

 

Rosie, another reason for applesauce is to make your own apple butter (I make mine in the crock pot-- the house smells so wonderful!)   Good stuff! 🙂

Edited April 13, 2020 by Zoo Keeper

[PeterPan]

7 minutes ago, SusanC said:

store butternut squash.

I've got a butternut squash on the shelf in my mudroom. I wonder if it's any good? I close the door off to the house in the winter, so it stays kind of cool. Maybe op needs to dig a ROOT CELLAR, hahaha. That would get out all that nervous quarantine energy, just set those kids to digging! 

[PeterPan]

8 minutes ago, SusanC said:

dry beans

My MIL canned beans she grew in her garden (not just green beans but regular beans). I've been wanting to can store dried beans, because I think I could save some money with it. Just haven't gotten it done. Maybe that would be a good quarantine project, hmm. 

There's a lot of manual labor in raising and preserving some of those beans. Was that tedious? I haven't decided what we're growing this year. There garden is there, ready, but I don't need so many tomatoes this year, lol. I told ds we might grow green beans or corn. I really like putting up corn in the freezer. Doesn't take too long and WAY better than store corn. I put it up in tiny bags, sandwhich size. It's just enough to go in a batch of soup or mix with limas for lunch.

[Miss Tick]

Ok, so raising them was the easiest thing ever. Just plant and then keep the weeds down. After frost I pull up the plants by the roots and store them in open trash bags in the garage. Then, when the mood takes me (that didn't happen until March this year) I pull off the pods and pop out the beans. Tedious, but not terrible.

I tried canning green beans in my first garden and they were terrible out of the jars. Blech. I don't know where I went wrong, but that was such a huge disappointment I never tried again. Plus, canning acidic tomatoes seems safer.

I had about 65 butternut squash last summer. I kept some in the garage and some in the furnace room. Just last month I finished the last of them and they were starting to think about reseeding themselves. The necks start to get stringy. They still taste fine, though. I just scrape that part out like the seed cavity. If your squash looks good on the outside, it is still good.

[G5052]

We had a nice garden at our other house. We canned tomatoes, salsa, jam, applesauce, and green beans. IMHO it was a huge amount of work. Since then, I'm much more prone to freeze or dry excess produce. It's far less work, and you can buy good canned goods. The Ball canning book was my reference. 

That said, I made so much salsa that I could get a batch on the stove in an hour, working by myself. IMHO the salsa declined after a year. though. It was still good, but pretty much like store bought after a year. It wasn't something I'd do a lot of. 

I liked the dried herbs in the winter, but the quality declined after about a year. If I buy herbs now and don't use them all, I usually dry them and use them up that way. 

When we moved, I gave my water bath set-up to a friend. You can get that sort of thing very reasonably to try out canning. Pressure canning is more of commitment. I still have my canner, but probably will sell it this spring as I haven't used it in several years. I'm going to keep my drying set-up. Not long ago, I was cleaning out the garage and found some canned beans in with some cleaning supplies (LOL). Needless to say, they had spoiled and looked very disgusting. If you preserve, you have to plan to get it eaten.

Edited April 13, 2020 by G5052

[PeterPan]

54 minutes ago, SusanC said:

I had about 65 butternut squash last summer. I kept some in the garage and some in the furnace room. Just last month I finished the last of them and they were starting to think about reseeding themselves. The necks start to get stringy. They still taste fine, though. I just scrape that part out like the seed cavity. If your squash looks good on the outside, it is still good.

Haha, maybe I should grow butternut squash! I buy the at the local amish store for like $1.50 each, so I'm not sure it's worth the effort. But 65, what a haul!

55 minutes ago, SusanC said:

raising them was the easiest thing ever. Just plant and then keep the weeds down. After frost I pull up the plants by the roots and store them in open trash bags in the garage. Then, when the mood takes me (that didn't happen until March this year) I pull off the pods and pop out the beans. Tedious, but not terrible.

That sounds like good tv watching work. 

[PeterPan]

@Dreamergal You've gotten sucked in to the Dark Side. 

I think if you start off with nice quality produce, that's what matters. There are times of the year produce is really nice and times where it is cardboard. So just roll with what is fresh and nice quality (ripe, not picked green, not cardboardy) and you'll be fine. Like blueberries and strawberries right now are in and pretty nice. They must be peaking somewhere, because the prices are low and the quality good. So that's where I'd start, with whatever is good quality when you walk in the store. And that let's you start *small* too, with just a batch, a dozen jars. Technically you can waterbath in any pot you've got. So if you start small like jam and you have a large pasta pot, you can put a silicone trivet ($3 in the canning section) in the bottom and be good to go. That way your only expense is literally the jars. It's just a really low cost way to start. 

For tomatoes, while you can can (haha) big tomatoes, I'm a huge fan of romas. So if you have something that size that is coming in really fresh and nice quality, they're a nice thing to can. That way you're not fiddling with cutting and whatnot. You just peel, pop in jars, add your salt and citric acid, top off, boom. Saves you a few steps and they're so good. 

Just make sure you're getting the Ball Blue Book of Canning so you have the instructions on steps, exactly what to include, etc. The supplies you need, like the citric acid, should be in the canning section of your store. Changing any facet of what you're doing alters the ph and hence the safety. So especially starting out, read through all the options and pick a version that has been tested so you can follow the instructions. So like topping off with liquid vs. mashing the tomatoes down for the juice alters the processing time. You'll want the Blue Book to sort out all that. 

Good luck! 

Edited April 13, 2020 by PeterPan

[PeterPan]

https://www.freshpreserving.com/blog/classic-strawberry-jam  These recipes are from the Ball site, so they're reliable. If something says it's from a County Extension office or a university, that can be reliable too. Everything else, like stuff people post on blogs, should be approached carefully.