Canning Orange Juice

[Jeepers]

Another canning question. Can you can bottled orange juice that you get from the store? I saw another video of a person doing it. Guess who has been marathon watching Youtube canning videos?

 

I know some people ask, "Why would you want to."  I get that a lot but the truth is I'm only one person here and a big bottle of juice will go bad on me before I can drink it. And the little plastic bottles don't store very well and need to be refrigerated. It would be nice to have a few pints of orange juice stashed away in the pantry. It might be my imagination but I think home canned lasts much longer than store packaged food.

 

Every winter I buy 2 jugs of cranberry juice just in case I get some funky kidney issue thing going on and can't get to the store or don't feel like going out, and every year I end up throwing it out. Straight cranberry juice is getting harder to find too. It's mostly cran-apple or cran-grape etc. One year of sitting on my shelf and it gets cloudy and changes color. Not at all appetizing. I'm wondering if it is the plastic as opposed to glass containers?

 

I digress. Does anyone know of a reason not to can store bought orange juice? Or maybe from the 100% frozen concentrate juice? It would be nice to have a few pints or even half-pints of juice stored on the shelf.

 

 

Edited July 24, 2017 by Jeepers
All of the title didn't get posted.

[snapshotmiki]

Not sure what Violet would say, but I haven't heard from her for quite a while.  You can buy straight cranberry concentrate unsweetened.  Keep it in the fridge and mix it up as needed.  Very cost effective, too!

[Daelith]

Depends on who on You Tube your watching as to whether I would trust it or not. I have a few ladies on there that I like and trust their methods. 

Never heard of recanning OJ myself though. You can safely can oranges, grapefruit and other citrus fruit. And you can also can other fruit juices.  Might want to do a little research or contact Ball and ask about it.

[Jeepers]

I thought about freezing it but my fridge freezer is usually pretty full of everyday (not long term storage) food. It's pretty small too. And then there is the power outage issue. I was watching some of The Kneady Homesteader videos and in a few of her older videos she mentioned the big power outage in 2003 (I think). I went through it too and it was awful and it was for 'only' five days. NOTHING was open because there was no power to operate anything. And it was DARK. I had my wind up radio for updates. I'm not sure how others went through it but thankfully I was able to hole up in the house. I tend to forget about that until something jogs my memory.

 

Anyway...I was thinking about how you can can your own fresh juice so why not bottled juice. No way could I buy that many oranges and squeeze them myself to make enough juice to can. I'm going to start looking around in my area for 100% juice and organic inn my area.

 

I can't remember where I saw it. If I bookmarked it, I'll post it.

[Christy]

Can orange juice be canned safely? I didn't know that.

[Jeepers]

Here is the Youtube video I was talking about and started me thinking.

 

 

 

[Andrea]

One year I canned fresh squeezed orange/citrus juice from our citrus trees.  No one, including me, liked it.   Here is the link:  

Since then, I usually freeze our excess juice.  I also dehydrate a quart each of lemon and orange peels and use those in my herbal tea.  The lemon is especially useful because I can grind it up and sprinkle it as a seasoning over fish and chicken. 

 

But instead of going to the trouble of canning bottled juice, why not simply buy smaller size bottles of juice and store those?  Or, simply buy the cans of 100% orange juice?  I know they are a bit pricey, but I buy them when we camp or go on road trips.  The 12 oz aluminum cans won't break during travel and while you can't store them indefinitely, they usually have a shelf life of about a 12-18 months.  There is also cranberry juice concentrate that I buy from our local health food store and it lasts for months in the fridge.    Amazon sells:   

[kappydell]

orange juice (and oranges) may be canned.  the only down side is that some of the vitamin C is destroyed by heat.  Otherwise, I haven't seen a down side to it, except maybe flavor.  I have read several accounts where they canned OJ according to directions for grapefruit juice and it came out quite bitter.  Maybe canning the frozen stuff (which is a blend) would work better?