patandchickens
Deeply Rooted
There's three different things here, y'all.
1) canning lids have to be heated to soften the sealing compound. Follow mfr's instructions, but generally just sitting them in very hot water for 5 min or so will do it. You SHOULD NOT boil or dishwasher or oven-ize them... it can warp the lid or damage the sealing compound.
(Canning rings do not need to be preheated or sterilized or anything like that in any way, just need to be clean of anything sticky or large rough particles of rust. Do not dishwasher or boil or heat your canning rings.)
2) glass jars should be reasonably hot if you are ladling hot food into them, to eliminate the possibility of thermal shock breaking the glass. This is not 'sterilizing' them, it is just warming 'em up to a more or less random but "warm to hot" temperature. Any of the methods in this thread will work fine for that, there is no reason to get all crazy about it because you are NOT trying to kill germs.
3) sterilization is when you are actually killing whatever germs are on a surface, and for glass jars it requires raising the temperature of all of the glass itself (not just its surrounding liquid or atmosphere) to near-boiling-point and leaving it that way for a few minutes. (To kill very resistant things like C. botulinum spores, you actually need to get *hotter than* boiling, achievable only in a pressure canner). This almost always occurs WHILE YOU ARE PROCESSING IN THE CANNER, rather than needing to be done as an initial step. The exception would be un- or minimally-processed goods, which *do* benefit a bit from having the jars truly *sterilized* first.
Pat
1) canning lids have to be heated to soften the sealing compound. Follow mfr's instructions, but generally just sitting them in very hot water for 5 min or so will do it. You SHOULD NOT boil or dishwasher or oven-ize them... it can warp the lid or damage the sealing compound.
(Canning rings do not need to be preheated or sterilized or anything like that in any way, just need to be clean of anything sticky or large rough particles of rust. Do not dishwasher or boil or heat your canning rings.)
2) glass jars should be reasonably hot if you are ladling hot food into them, to eliminate the possibility of thermal shock breaking the glass. This is not 'sterilizing' them, it is just warming 'em up to a more or less random but "warm to hot" temperature. Any of the methods in this thread will work fine for that, there is no reason to get all crazy about it because you are NOT trying to kill germs.
3) sterilization is when you are actually killing whatever germs are on a surface, and for glass jars it requires raising the temperature of all of the glass itself (not just its surrounding liquid or atmosphere) to near-boiling-point and leaving it that way for a few minutes. (To kill very resistant things like C. botulinum spores, you actually need to get *hotter than* boiling, achievable only in a pressure canner). This almost always occurs WHILE YOU ARE PROCESSING IN THE CANNER, rather than needing to be done as an initial step. The exception would be un- or minimally-processed goods, which *do* benefit a bit from having the jars truly *sterilized* first.
Pat