Canning Peas {How to Can Peas}

Follow this step-by-step tutorial to learn how simple canning peas can be. Having canned peas on hand means your favorite soups, stews, and side dishes can be ready in a flash. 

Home-canned peas are so much better than what you can find in the grocery stores. They taste better and fresher, and are also among the easiest vegetables to pop into a pressure canner to stock your pantry.

Don’t be intimidated. You can do this, and I’ll help.

HOW TO CAN PEAS

*I’ll walk you through it here with photos, and a detailed and printable recipe card is available at the bottom of this post.

Wash and clean your jars. It is no longer necessary to sterilize jars before canning (hurray!), but you should make sure they are preheated enough to not crack when placed in hot water.

You can put them in a clean dishwasher and run them through a quick wash cycle, or place them in a large pan with some water in a low-heat oven (my lowest temp is 170˚F) until you need them. I’ve even just put hot tap water in them before and left them on the counter.

Wash your lids with hot, soapy water and place them in a clean bowl for now.

Choose young and tender peas, discarding any that look shriveled or spoiled. <— as in they don’t look fresh. Not that they demand a new car for their 16th birthday.

Overall, you’ll need about 4.5 pounds of peas per quart jar. For seven quarts, you’ll need about 31.5 pounds. For nine pints, you’ll need 20 pounds. A US bushel is 30 pounds and will net you 5-10 quarts. (source)

Add 3 quarts of water to your pressure canner and put it on a burner set to high. Make sure there is a canning rack in the bottom of the canner.

Raw Pack: Add peas to the jars, and carefully ladle in boiling water, leaving 1 inch of headspace at the top of the jars.

Hot pack: cook peas in boiling water for 2 minutes. Strain, then add peas to jars and carefully ladle in clean boiling water, leaving 1-inch of headspace. Headspace is defined as the space between the top of the food and the top of the jar.

Using a long utensil (I prefer a plastic chopstick), remove all the air bubbles from the jar. Clean the rim of the jar very well with a hot damp rag. Any food debris left on the rim may impact the seal of the lid in the canner.

Place a clean and new lid on the jar. Add a ring, and tighten to fingertip tight.

Using canning tongs, gently place the jars in the canner. Lock the lid. Soon, steam will start coming through the vent pipe (I call it the steam chimney). Allow the steam to pass through for about 10 minutes. Then put the pressure regulator (I call it the chimney cap) on top.

Pretty soon, the air vent will pop up. That is a sign that you’re starting to build pressure inside the canner (get excited. This is happening!).

When the dial gauge reaches 11 pounds of pressure, reduce the burner temp to medium and start your timer. The pressure must stay at 11 or (a little bit) above for the duration of the cooking time. You’ll likely need to adjust the temp on the burner a few times depending on your stove.

When the time is up, remove the canner from the burner and allow it to sit until you hear a distinctive “click” of the air vent dropping. Remove the pressure regulator and carefully remove the lid (Pro tip: I always use oven mitts when I take the lid off because the steam is super hot).

Let the jars sit for 5 minutes in the canner and then carefully lift them out with canning tongs. Pro tip: allowing the jars to sit in the canner with the lid off can help reduce the siphoning of liquid in your jars. Siphoning is when liquid seeps out from under the lids and reduces the overall amount of liquid in the jar.

Place hot jars on a towel where they can sit undisturbed for 12 hours.

After a few hours, to check for sealing, gently press down in the middle of the lid. If the lid has no give, it’s sealed. If you can press the lid in and it pops a bit, your jars are not sealed.