Canning season is upon us, and I’ve been writing canning-related pieces for several websites. If you’re new to home canning or experienced but looking to learn more about key ingredients and tools, these articles and product reviews provide valuable insight and suggest supplies you may want to keep handy over the next few months.

You can also find plenty of info on the basics of home canning, how to get ready to can, and other canning topics here on the blog. Beyond the new pieces I share in this post, you’ll want to check out the roundup of my go-to canning cookbooks for The Spruce Eats.

Personally, I’ve started my canning season with tart cherry pie filling, which I canned up using recipes from Preserving With Pomona’s Pectin and The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving so that I can compare the two versions and decide which I prefer. I’ve also made a batch of Roasted Raspberry Syrup, a particular favorite in my sister’s house. Using other preserving techniques, I’ve been playing with rhubarb, currant, cherry, mixed berry, and other shrub variations and keeping my fermentation crock full with curtido, an El Salvadoran cabbage slaw preserved with pickling salt, based on recipes from my pickling cookbook.

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Favorite Pickling and Kosher Salt

My recent piece for the Taste of Home dives into the particulars of pickling and canning salt, like the one I use for curtido. If you’ve ever made pickles and ended up with cloudy brine or dark, unattractive pickles, the type of salt you used could be the culprit. My article explains what to look for and how to use salt when pickling, whether you’re making quick, refrigerated, canned, or fermented pickles.

In my kitchen, I keep two types of salt for pickling and canning. Morton Canning and Pickling Salt has a fine grain the breaks down about as quickly as granulated sugar when heated, and it’s what most canning recipes are intending when they call for pickling or canning salt. In room-temperature brines and dry-salted ferments, it takes more stirring effort to break down, so for those uses I prefer Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt. You do need to use care when swapping the two in recipes: the large Diamond Crystal flakes weigh about half as much as Morton’s pickling salt grains. I explain more about this in The Complete Guide to Pickling.

Learn more about pickling salt in this article.

Favorite Canning Tools and Supplies

I’ve been writing about canning tools and supplies for a couple of years now for The Spruce Eats, and I recently updated my canning supply roundup for that website with brief reviews of some of my favorite canning tools, many of which I inherited or have been using for decades. This includes hand-me-down water-bath canning kettles from my great-aunt and mom, a digital scale I love so much that I own two, and canning jars that I seem to adopt every time someone cleans out an attic or garage.

Don’t be fooled by the article’s title—the list of products goes beyond the tools I own and use regularly when pickling and water-bath canning. You’ll also find a brief review of one of my tested-and-approved pressure canners and several other essential or nice-to-have canning supplies. In short, this article has everything you need to get started with water-bath or pressure canning or to round out your current toolkit.

Learn more about my favorite canning tools in this product roundup. You can find recipes that use pickling salt and canning tools and supplies in the recipe index and more of my work off the blog here.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.