Well this was my first attempt at canning "Q" sauces. I am hosting a vintage motorhome rally here at the beach and I am giving the attendees some great "Q" sauces to take with them to remember this trip.

First problem: Finding sauces that would cover a wide variety of folks sweet, not spicey at all, sweet with a smokey flavor with a little "kick" and a mustard based sauce. All of the recipes come from this forum. The mustard base sauce is Prisonchef's recipe, the tomatoe based recipe, is from page 12 "sweet and smokey BBQ sauce" in the Best of CS booklet. By the way these sauces are over the top! Try them.

Second problem, how do you can 45 1/2 pints of sauce in a short time?? So not to spend all day doing it.

Here is some pictures of my set up. First of all I tape my recipes on the kitchen cabinets for easy reading and maximise the counter space while cooking and measuring. I also take notes on first impressions and any changes I have made to the recipe.


We have a small kitchen. This will be the last time for that. We are planning a commerical kitchen in the house on the drawing board.

There really is no need for the special canning pot and racks etc. I used a big stainless pot on my fish cooker to boil the water it was perfect. That burner got the water boiling very fast.

This is the rack I used to keep the jars off the bottom of the pot. This helps to keep the jars from breaking and making a huge mess. Very simple wire rack and a "spacer"


My custom spacer can be purchases and ANY grocery store, just one thing, you gotta like Tuna fish


NOTE: I drilled holes in the cans to allow the water to circulate and the boiling bubbles to come through the can and not tip them or try to make them float.

I then loaded the 1/2 pint jars full of "Q" sauce onto a wire rack on top of the custom "spacers"
and then doubled the layer with another wire rack.

here is another view of the racks loaded, keep in mind this is how it is loaded in the boiling water. I took this picture to show how it looks inside the pot.


After boiling for a full 20 mins I removed the jars and placed inside and waited for the distinctive "ping" when the jars cool enough to seal the lids

I hope this is helpfull to some folks. This project really did not cost much at all and did not require any "special equipment" I can hardly wait to watch the folks grabbing their jars of sauce. It will look like a blue light special. Thanks for indulging this long post.

Great!

Frayed, excellent idea of boiling the jars... Heck I used to do them in the dishwasher, and that killed a lot of time.... Excellent idea and I will be using your idea the next time I can tomatoes or anything else.

Thanks again

Bull

Hippie, bbqbull, Thanks guys, Bull it really worked great. Keep a close eye on the jars boiling they have a tendency to move around if the boiling water is a hard boil..worked great for me!

Frayed,
They sure looked good.That's nice you did that for your friends. "Good Job"

scott,
thanks for the pics and the doubling up idea.
that sure was something i never thought of but will give it a try
jack

Jack,Thanks. I just did not want to spend alot of time canning..I canned a bunch of sauce. Heck I spent alot of time cooking the sauce in batches, 4 butts this week.. Got them on sale several weeks ago..069/lb Grocery meat mgr ordered 13butts and got 13cases..he had to get rid of em..at .99/lb they sat..at .69 9cases sold that day! and by the way I am always thinking how "use what you got"

Inquiring minds wanna know, how does the Mustard Sauce look from your experiance with it. I have never done it before, it sure tastes good. I really did chuck the other..

scott,
the mustard sauce was developed for pork since my farmers market buddy "dennis the plant guy" wanted some. it is kind of close to maurice's and the base recipe is mike mill's, but we threw in some overtones of what cottons bbq in jacksonville is like for my wife peggy. the only thing we can think of on the lines of why it took off at the market for brisket is 2 new yorkers getting it on their sandwiches and it just went from there.
glad we are even now you got a recipe you can use and i got a way to double my canning speed!!!!
pretty cool forum !!!!!
jack

This layering idea on canning is just amazing! What a smart fellow! Thanks for all the pictures.
Peggy