Your first batch, start to finish, without a recipe
Sources last opened 2026-08-26.
The short version
This page is the whole of a first boiling-water batch except the one part that has to come from somewhere else: the process time. That comes from a tested recipe for your food, in your jar size, adjusted for your altitude, and NCHFP publishes them free.
Read that recipe first, all the way through, and write down four things before you start: the jar size, the pack style, the headspace, and the time at your elevation. Everything on this page is what happens around those four numbers.
For a first batch I would choose something with a process of 10 minutes or longer, because that removes the jar-sterilising step entirely [F-2.4]. Jam is the traditional first batch and is often processed for less than that; a fruit or a pickle is an easier start.
Choose the recipe before you buy the fruit
The recipe decides the jar size, the headspace, the canner and the time, so it decides your shopping. Choosing it last is how people end up with eight pounds of peaches and a procedure written for quarts they do not own.
Go to NCHFP, or to your state's Extension service, and pick a procedure for the food you want. Read the whole thing, including the paragraph above the table, which is where the preparation steps live. Then find your altitude band in the table and write the time down. If you do not know your elevation yet, start there — it changes the number and it is a one-off job.
What you should not do is take a time from one page and a method from another. A tested process is a single coherent set of instructions, and the parts were validated together.
Set the canner up before you fill a jar
Water level first, because it is the constraint that determines everything else. At least 1 inch of briskly boiling water has to stand over the tops of the jars for the whole process, and at least 2 inches for any process over 30 minutes [F-2.2]. Fill the canner with the empty jars in it and the rack in place, and see where the level sits before it matters.
Then heat the water to the figure your pack calls for: 140°F for raw pack, 180°F for hot pack [F-2.3]. Keep the jars hot in a second pot or a dishwasher cycle until you fill them [F-2.3].
Have boiling water in a kettle standing by. It is the cheapest insurance on this page, and it is what you top the canner up with if the level drops.
Filling
Work with the recipe open in front of you. Fill to the headspace it specifies, because the figure belongs to that recipe and the three common figures are not interchangeable [F-2.7].
Remove trapped air along the inside of the jar with something thin and non-metallic, then check the headspace again — it usually drops once the air is out.
Wipe the rim. The guide's own instruction is to "adjust the headspace and then clean the jar rim (sealing surface) with a dampened paper towel" [F-8.1]. A trace of jam on the sealing surface is one of the two ordinary causes of a failed seal, and the other is siphoning.
Fit the lid and the band according to the lid manufacturer's directions. Load the jars into the canner with the lifter, upright, not touching.
The process itself
Cover the canner. The clock starts when your recipe says it starts, which for boiling water canning is a full rolling boil, and the timing is the recipe's time for your jar size at your altitude.
Then one job: keep it boiling. Not simmering, not "mostly boiling" — the guide says maintain a boil throughout the schedule, and if it stops at any point, bring it back to a vigorous boil and begin the timing again from the beginning [F-2.5]. Nothing else you do in the next stretch of time matters as much as that.
If the level drops toward the jar tops, add boiling water gently at the side.
The end, which lasts a day
Heat off, lid off, and wait 5 minutes before you lift anything [F-2.6]. Then lift the jars straight up, keep them upright, and set them down with an inch of space between them somewhere out of a draught. Do not tighten the bands. Do not press the lids. Do not move them again for 12 to 24 hours [F-2.6].
You will hear the lids go down over the next hour or two. It is a satisfying noise and it means a vacuum is forming, which is worth exactly that much and no more. It is not evidence about the temperature the food reached; that evidence was created during the process, by the boil you maintained.
After the cooling period, take the bands off, test the seals, wash the jars, label them with what they are and the date, and store them without the bands on [F-11.1]. Anything that did not seal has three tested options, not one: check the rim for nicks, change the jar if you find one, fit a new lid and reprocess within 24 hours using the same processing time; or adjust the headspace and freeze it instead; or refrigerate a single jar and eat it within several days [F-9.9]. All three are in the guide, and the deadline belongs only to the first.
What went wrong, if something did
A jar cracked. Usually thermal shock — cold jar into hot water, hot jar onto a cold surface, or a jar sitting directly on the base of the canner instead of on the rack.
A jar did not seal. Food on the rim, a damaged rim, a band done up hard enough to stop air escaping, or siphoning during cooling. Reprocess, freeze or refrigerate it, as above [F-9.9], and if you want the longer version there is a page for it: I did something the internet told me to.
A jar lost liquid. Common in raw packs, and not a reason to open the jar [F-11.2]. Excessive loss usually means the boil was violent, the cooling was rushed, or the jars were lifted before the five minutes were up.
You are not sure the boil held the whole time. Then you do not have a processed jar, and the honest answer is to treat the batch as refrigerated food rather than shelf-stable. That is an irritating outcome and a much smaller one than the alternative.
Preheating is not sterilising, and the guide says so in the same breath
Bring the water to a simmer (180°F) and keep the jars in the simmering water until it is time to fill them with food. A dishwasher may be used for preheating jars if they are washed and dried on a complete regular cycle… These washing and preheating methods do not sterilize jars.
USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2015 revision, p. 1-14 and p. 1-18
The link above opens the document itself, so a printed page number leads somewhere. What this document is, and who maintains it.
Opened and read by this site on 2026-08-26.
Two separate jobs get confused here, and the guide separates them in one sentence [F-2.3].
Preheating keeps the jars hot so they do not crack when hot food goes in and so the load does not chill the canner. A simmer at 180°F does that, and so does a full dishwasher cycle. This is what you do for every batch.
Sterilising is a different operation with a different purpose, and it is required only in a narrow case: jams, jellies and pickled products with a process of less than 10 minutes must go into sterile empty jars [F-2.4]. Anything processed 10 minutes or longer in boiling water does not need presterilised jars, and neither does anything going into a pressure canner [F-2.4].
The canner water gets a preheat of its own, and the figure depends on the pack: 140°F for raw-packed food, 180°F for hot-packed [F-2.3]. That is not fussiness. Loading cold jars into hot water breaks them, and loading hot jars into cool water lengthens the climb to a boil, which is time the food spends warm without being processed.
If the boil stops, the clock goes back to zero
Keep the canner covered and maintain a boil throughout the process schedule… If the water stops boiling at any time during the process, bring the water back to a vigorous boil and begin the timing of the process over, from the beginning.
USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2015 revision, p. 1-18, step 7
The link above opens the document itself, so a printed page number leads somewhere. What this document is, and who maintains it.
Opened and read by this site on 2026-08-26.
This is the rule that decides how you set up the stove, and it is the one most often discovered halfway through a batch [F-2.5].
Read it exactly as written. Not "add the lost time". Not "carry on and add a few minutes at the end". From the beginning, with the full original time.
The reason is that the schedule describes a continuous exposure at a specific temperature. Heat moving into the centre of a jar is a slow process, and it reverses when the temperature drops. A schedule interrupted in the middle is not a shorter schedule; it is a different one that nobody has tested.
Two practical consequences. Bring the canner back to a boil before you start the clock, not as you start it — and if you add boiling water mid-process to keep the jars covered, add it gently at the side so the boil is not knocked down. A stove that struggles to keep a full canner boiling is a stove to find out about before you have jars in it, not during.
The five minutes at the end, and the day after
When jars have been boiled for the recommended time, turn off the heat and remove the canner lid. Wait 5 minutes before removing jars… at least 1-inch spaces between the jars during cooling. Let jars sit undisturbed to cool at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours.
USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2015 revision, p. 1-18, steps 9 and 10
The link above opens the document itself, so a printed page number leads somewhere. What this document is, and who maintains it.
Opened and read by this site on 2026-08-26.
Three instructions, and the first is the one almost everybody skips [F-2.6].
Heat off, lid off, then wait 5 minutes before you lift anything. The contents of the jars are above boiling temperature at the surface and are still moving. Lifting immediately is how you get siphoning — liquid pushed out past the sealing surface, which leaves food on the rim and costs you the seal.
Then space. At least an inch between jars while they cool, on a rack or a towel, out of a draught. Jars crowded together cool unevenly and slowly, and a cold draught on hot glass cracks it.
Then time. 12 to 24 hours, undisturbed [F-2.6]. Undisturbed means not moved, not tipped, not pressed on to see whether the lid has gone down yet. The vacuum forms as the contents contract, and it forms across that whole period, not in the first few minutes.
Note what this passage is not about. None of it is a test of whether the food was processed properly. It is a description of what a processed jar needs in order to seal, and a seal is a different claim from a safe process.
What people ask next
Do I have to sterilise the jars?
Usually not. Sterile empty jars are required for jams, jellies and pickled products processed less than 10 minutes [F-2.4]. For anything processed 10 minutes or longer in boiling water, and for everything going into a pressure canner, washing and preheating are enough — and the guide is explicit that washing and preheating are not sterilising [F-2.3].
I lifted a jar out and half the liquid had gone. Can I top it up?
No. The guide's instruction is that if a jar loses excessive liquid during processing, do not open it to add more liquid [F-11.2]. Opening it breaks the vacuum that is forming and contaminates the contents. Some drop in level is normal in raw-packed jars, because air is exhausted during processing and the food shrinks [F-11.2]. Liquid loss is a quality problem rather than a verdict on the process: food left above the liquid darkens over months. What decided whether the food was processed was the boil you maintained, and that question is already settled by the time you see the level.
My canner boiled over and the water dropped below the jar tops.
Top it up with boiling water from a kettle, added gently at the side of the canner, and if the boil stopped at any point, start the timing again from the beginning [F-2.5]. Water that is at least 1 inch over the tops is the standard, and at least 2 inches for any process over 30 minutes, which exists precisely because long processes lose water [F-2.2].
When do I take the bands off?
After the cooling period. The guide's sequence is to cool the jars for 12 to 24 hours, then remove the screw bands and test the seals [F-11.1]. Leaving bands on in storage hides a failed seal, because a band can hold an unsealed lid in place.
Should I preheat the lids?
Follow the directions that came with your lids. This is a live contradiction between sources: the 2015 guide refers in passing to "the preheated lid" while containing no lid-heating procedure anywhere and telling you to follow the manufacturer's directions, and the current manufacturer advice, reported by University of Maine Extension in 2023, is simply to wash lids in warm soapy water [F-8.1]. It has a page of its own on this site. For a first batch, the manufacturer's leaflet is the right authority and the guide tells you so itself.
Read these yourself
NCHFP — How do I can? (tested procedures by food)
nchfp.uga.edu
NCHFP — Using boiling water canners
nchfp.uga.edu
USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2015 revision
nchfp.uga.edu
University of Maine Extension — No need to preheat canning jar lids
extension.umaine.edu