Canning Seafood Stock at Home Requires a Safety-Validated Recipe, But None Exist. . . Yet.
Recipes for home canning chicken and other meat stocks that have been proven to be safe are readily available, but when it comes to seafood stock, the cupboards are bare—there are no research-based, validated recipes for safely canning seafood broth at home. That’s important, because improperly canned foods can support the growth of the deadly bacteria C. botulinum, which causes botulism.
But security and peace of mind are on the way for home canners. Scientists from UMD Extension are collaborating with colleagues from the University of Georgia Extension and the University of Maine Cooperative Extension to validate the safety of seafood stock recipes.
“A flavorful stock can build layers of flavors in a soup or rice dish, and I've used stocks to replace water when making homemade tortillas,” said principal investigator Shauna C. Henley, a senior Extension agent with the University of Maryland and the Department of Nutrition and Food Science. “There are personal blogs and videos of unsafe and un-validated recipes for consumers, so it’s important to identify a validated recipe that is safe.”
When canning low-acid foods like meats and vegetables, boiling water bath canning alone won’t ensure safety as it can for fruits, which are more acidic. Canning meat and vegetables requires a pressure canner, which raises the temperature of the food to 240℉ (28℉ above boiling). But not all ingredients heat up in the same way, or over the same time period, which is why the testing and validation is so important.
To ensure the recipe they tested would be tasty, the team reached out to a commercial food manufacturer that was willing to share their recipe for lobster stock. They adapted the quantities for home cooks, preparing it with ingredients like fish heads, backbones and shrimp shells. Then as they went through the canning process, they searched for the lowest temperature spot in their quart-sized canning jars. They also analyzed heat penetration data to see how well the stock transferred heat to those cold spots during the canning process.
The next step for the team is to publish their data for the scientific community and then release and market their recipe to the public.
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Co-principal investigators on the project include Rohan Tikekar and Chengchu Liu from the University of Maryland, Carla Schwan from the University of Georgia Extension and Kathy Savoie from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
Support for this project was provided by the National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (NEAFCS). This story does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of this organization
