Because canning butter is not an approved method, everyone has a different way of doing it.
I personally felt safest using my pressure canner to can butter.
Some people let the jars self-can in an oven, while others use a water bath.
You do whatever you feel comfortable with.
- Power outages are a serious problem. If the power goes out or a freezer goes bad, the butter will eventually go bad.
- Butter is expensive and that could result in a lot of wasted butter and money! Imagine if you were building your food storage of butter only in your freezer to find that an extended power outage has struck. Do you have a plan to use that butter quickly? If not, can it now!
- Soft butter is always at hand, and you don’t have to deal with that cold, hard butter on your bread.
- Canned butter has a longer shelf life, so you don’t have to worry about it going bad anytime soon. It can last up to 5 years on your pantry shelf.
- Canned butter is more convenient to travel with. If you go camping, you don’t have to worry about lugging around butter in a cooler. Just bring your canned butter in a jar.
How to Can Butter and Ghee Safely
To make your own canned butter or ghee, you’ll need unsalted or salted butter, 1/2 pint jars, a heavy-bottomed skillet, new lids, pot holders, and a cookie sheet. If you want to start with your own homemade butter, you can find a recipe here.
- Unwrap your butter sticks.
- Heat your jars by heating them in the oven at 250F. We will be doing a hot pack, so the jars need to be hot.
- Melt the butter on low heat in a large pot.
- Stir to keep from burning.
- Fill your hot jars with the butter, leaving an inch of headspace.Wipe the rim of the jar with vinegar and put on a hot lid.Pressure can the jars for 75 minutes for pints and 90 minutes for quarts at the pressure required for your elevation.Let the canner cool down before removing the jars.Shake the jars every 15 minutes as they cool to mix the liquid back with any solids.Wipe off the jars and store them in a cool, dry place.
1st thank you fir the information. I don’t have a pressure canner? Can I do a water bath if so how long?
The recipe says to use 1/2 pint jars. Yet the pressure canning says 75 min for pint jars & 90 min for quarts. Nothing about 1/2 pints OR how many pounds of pressure if the pressure canner has that feature.
More information Please
Pressure goes by sea level elevation. So you’ll have to find out what your sea level elevation is and that search the pounds of pressure for your elevation.
I would assume that the 1/2 pint pressure time would be half of what the ping pressure can is .
60 mins
Half pints I’ve read, are done as piny
jars.
I believe pints and half pints require the same amount of time.
Yes, that is correct 1/2 pint jars are canned the same time as pint jars. That is, as far as I know standard practice.
If I make my own butter from scratch would I still need to melt it down before canning it?