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"<br />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.
