Waste Not Water: Canning on a Hydro-Budget

What a summer we've had. Because the last dairy farm in the town of Manlius finally succumbed to low milk prices and high land taxes we had to move into our Fixer-Upper investment house before it was done being properly renovated. All the main living areas had electricity before we moved in or immediately thereafter (I put a light fixture in the kitchen ceiling and hooked up a couple of wall outlets within the first week or so), but we've spent the summer with no water save that provided by the garden hose--which is often suspiciously black, unfortunately. So potable water is obtained from WalMart's kiosk at a rate of $.35/gallon or sometimes from the church's taps if our supply happens to be low on Sunday. For most of the summer the hose produced water when the well's breaker was switched to "on," since the system hadn't been tested under pressure yet, so we tried to fill as many buckets as we could at a given time--which translated to being as sparing as possible in our use of water in between,

All this had its share of accompanying inconveniences, like occasionally having to run to WalMart at 8:30 PM because we'd run out of water in the course of the day and that's the time Ben gets home from work, and cooking a lot less rice and other boiled foods than I might otherwise have preferred (pasta has been a very rare occurrence this summer). But take into account the vast quantity of green beans, sweet corn, and tomatoes the garden produced this year, and the situation becomes yet more dire: we had to have a way to preserve all this beautiful bounty, but by necessity without over-expending our precious water.

Some of these tips are fairly situation specific, while others are valid conservation measures that anyone could implement, whether for fiscal or environmental reasons.

Water Bath Canners are Hydro-Hogs

Many home canners use a water bath canner exclusively for all their canning needs, and it serves them very well; the big pots are comfortingly familiar and not as scary as a pressure canner, and if your water is cheap and plentiful they serve their purpose admirably. If, on the other hand, your water is expensive and/or scarce, the three plus gallons it takes to cover seven quart jars of produce to the depth of one inch is a luxury that you don't necessarily have to afford.

My chosen alternative is the pressure canner. It takes only a gallon and a half of water to reach a respectable level. Because it requires so much less water, it also takes comparatively shorter time to reach a boil, and even with the slow cool down it requires it still takes less time to pressure can tomatoes than it does to water bath can them.

The other option (and one of which I may avail myself next summer) is the steam canner, which looks a bit like an upside down pot with a very deep lid. The base has a rack on it and requires only a few inches of water; jars are placed on the rack and the "pot" is placed over them and fastened in place. When the water is boiled, the very hot steam fills the air around the jars, quickly heating them to a safe temperature for high acid foods. This method takes considerably less water than a water bath canner and significantly fewer BTUs than a pressure canner (though it can only be used for high acid foods, so if you're canning green beans or meat, stick with that pressure canner).

Don't Discard Your Water

At least, not after a single use, or even two. My general method for conservative water use while pressure canning is to can as much as I can in one day, and if possible even do another batch or two the following day. There generally is some leakage in the course of pressure canning, so after I can the corn the water might well smell like corn, and after I can tomatoes it's usually taking on a red tinge. I work around this by canning mildly flavored/lightly colored foods first, leaving the worst offenders for last. If I'm intending to use the water a second time the next day I'll make sure I leave the lid on properly--remember, that water reached temperatures far above boiling, so as long as you don't drop anything into it, it's fairly sterile to begin with. After a couple of days it starts getting questionable and I'll start a new batch, using the water to water the basil on my porch or soak the pig's feed for the next day.

Consider Alternative Canning Liquids

Certain foods, like green beans and sweet corn, are usually packed into the jars with water to cover. This water can be pre-boiled home water up to a point, unless there's a specific problem with your water (like if, for example, it's black.) But what if water's too scarce to justify using it thus?

An obvious answer is to make more pickles. Pickled green beans are a popular alternative to simply canned ones, and the water is cut with plenty of vinegar (more expensive than water, but also less versatile--let your conscience be your guide).


This summer I also tapped a water source that's generally overlooked: tomatoes. If you're already canning tomato puree, it's very little trouble to set a few quarts aside; poured over your green beans or sweet corn in the jars, it will lend flavor and create  a pantry item that's very easy to incorporate into soups when winter comes. If you're using a mechanical method to reduce the liquid in your tomatoes )namely straining) you'll obtain a fair amount of lightly flavored water, even more appropriate to canning than the puree; the finished product will be virtually indistinguishable for the product obtained using purified water.

Reduce Canning Volume

Finally, I and many other survival-level canners tend to put up tomato puree in its immediate state fresh from the food mill: grind the tomatoes, put puree in jars, churn the next batch while the first one is canning. It seems simpler and faster, and the end product is very versatile. In a reduced water-use situation, however, when running a water bath canner alongside the pressure canner doesn't make a ton of sense, I found cooking down the puree to half its original volume (or even further) to be a very sensible option. Given a wide enough pan, cooking down fourteen or more quarts of tomatoes to fit in seven quart jars doesn't actually take significantly more BTUs than heating a water bath canner and boiling it for 40 minutes. Once thus reduced, the thick tomato sauce can go in jars, be pressure canned quickly, and take up both less canning water and ultimately less shelf space. And it's unlikely that I'll complain in the winter that I don't have to cook down tomatoes for a few hours to make marinara.


Depending on what part of the world you live in, water conservation might not seem like a major factor in your planning. Especially here in the northeast, usually we end up struggling with having too much water as opposed to not enough. But on a global scale, fresh drinking water is a major choke point for quality of life, and in a dry year everyone might find themselves under water rationing. Or, who knows, your well could start putting out water that's black. If that happens, good water conservation habits or at least mindfulness of places where you could reduce your water usage will stand you in good stead.