Canning Coleslaw

My Canning Cellar

http://buymeacoffe.com/mycanningcellar
Equipment: large stockpot, a cutting board, a vegetable peeler, a large sharp knife, the two largest bowls I have, several measure cups, a food processor, a canning funnel, a jar lifter, a stainless steel scraper blade, and a slotted spoon, a paper towel soaked in white vinegar, and my Presto digital canner, and my 16 quart stainless steel water bath canner.
Ingredients (netted me 7 pints and 1 and half pints of brine)
2 cups apple cider vinegar
3 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons celery seed
3 teaspoons ground mustard powder

2 heads of cabbage
4 carrots
2 onions
1 orange pepper
4 tablespoons canning/pickling salt

The first step I did was put the vinegar, sugar, water, celery seed and the mustard powder together in the stock pot and let it come to a boil, then let it boil for 2 minutes.

Chopped the cabbage into strips, used food processor for onions and carrots, cut up pepper.

I put the cabbage, carrots, onions and salt in one of my large bowls, then dumped it into another slightly larger bowl and mixed it up to distribute the salt as evenly as I could. And as a FYI, if you use your large Pampered Chef collapsible bowl like I did, then the carrots will stain the inside bottom. The brine was left in the stockpot to cool as the cabbage mixture settled with the salt.
After letting the slaw mixture sit for one hour, I rinsed and drained it twice. It was easier to do this step in halves as there was so much of it and even my largest colander was a bit too small. A larger colander with smaller holes that pieces of chopped carrots can’t stick into, is on my wish list.

Then I added it all to the brine which I had put into the larger water bath canner as my regular stock pot was too short.

This is a water bath canning food because of the acidity of the vinegar and because the brine was only lukewarm by the time everything was ready to be put together, I had filled the canner with lukewarm water and while I did warm up the jars, I by-passed the jar warming cycle on the digital canner. The food temperature has to match the jar temperature has to match the canner water temperature in order to protect the jars from shock which could cause them to break.

Using my canning funnel and slotted spoon I put an equal amount of cabbage mixture in each jar pushing it down but not trying to make a solid pack, poured in the brine to one half inch head space. Wiped rims with vinegar cloth, put lids on, finger tightened rings.

After the jars were done processing, which was 20 minutes for my altitude of just over 1000 feet above sea level and yes with the Precise digital canner I do have to adjust water bath manually, I removed the canner cover and let the jars set for another 10 minutes, just to help in case they are still boiling pretty good, it made me feel a little safer, then I removed them using the jar lifter and set them on a dish towel on my canning table, where they sat for 24 hours.

I actually did two more cabbages worth but was out of raw bell pepper so I only used cabbage, carrots and onions, and I added the previously made brine to this bunch. My first 7 pints had about one inch brine on the bottom, so I extra packed the last batches with the cabbage mix, and the jars look totally full.

We opened a jar of the coleslaw and it did indeed stay crispy, this is definitely a go-to recipe and method for me.
Total was 17 pints of cabbage coleslaw and one pint of brine.
This is an example of the stainless steel scraper:
https://tinyurl.com/bwwjvscu