Home canning times
Tested home-canning processes only: pick a product from the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning as published by the NCHFP, your canner (boiling water, dial or weighted gauge), jar, pack and elevation, and read the process time and pressure exactly as published — with the whole table, the recipe's own page, and plain warnings about untested recipes and low-acid foods in boiling water.
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How to use it
How to use it
Read the warning at the top first: a process time is only safe with the recipe it was tested with — its ingredients, preparation, headspace and jar filling. Follow the link to the NCHFP page for those.
Product and canner — search or pick one of about 240 products: fruit, tomatoes, salsas, vegetables, meat, poultry and seafood, pickles and relishes, jams and jellies, sauerkraut. Enter your elevation (feet in US units, metres otherwise), then choose the canner, jar size and pack (hot or raw). Choices the tables never use for that product are dimmed.
Process — the minutes (boiling water) or the minutes and gauge pressure (pressure canners) for your elevation, with what the elevation adds over the 0–1,000 ft figure. Where the table offers alternatives (tomatoes at 5, 10 or 15 PSI, chicken with or without bones) each option is shown; use both numbers from one row. Notes appear when they apply: half-pints taking the pint time, pre-sterilising jars for processes under 10 minutes, acidifying tomatoes, and pressure-canner basics.
The published table — every row of the product’s tables, your cell highlighted.
The tool refuses rather than guesses: a low-acid food in a boiling-water canner gets a clear stop (there is no safe time), a jar size or pack style not in the table gets "not tested", and an elevation above the tables gets "ask your county Extension office".
Food safety
Low-acid foods — vegetables, meat, poultry, seafood, soups and most mixtures (pH above 4.6) — must be pressure canned: botulinum spores survive boiling and need 240–250 °F, which only a pressure canner at 10–15 PSI reaches. Do not change a tested recipe’s proportions, thicken or purée it, or add low-acid ingredients. Open-kettle canning, oven, microwave and dishwasher "canning", dry canning and canning powders are not recommended by the USDA. Have a dial gauge tested every year. Water boils cooler at altitude, so always use your elevation.
Limits
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Only processes published by the NCHFP from the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning (2015) and the NCHFP pickle, jam and ferment pages; nothing is interpolated or computed. The tables were transcribed by script on 2026-10-17 — the NCHFP page is the authority if they ever differ.
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Three source tables have a mistyped elevation heading (sliced apples, whole berries and crab meat); the Guide’s standard bands for that canner are used and the tool says so.
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Headspace, preparation and fill directions are not repeated here: they are on each product’s page.
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Steam canners: the NCHFP points to University of Wisconsin research directions; they are not covered here.
Sources: USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 539 (revised 2015), via the National Center for Home Food Preservation (nchfp.uga.edu): each product page, "Ensuring Safe Canned Foods", "Selecting the Correct Processing Time" (whose worked peach examples are in the tests), "Equipment and Methods Not Recommended", "Sterilization of Empty Jars" and "Tomato acidification directions".
Related: fermentation salt and timing (sauerkraut and pickles before they are canned), brines and cures, kitchen conversions.
Linking to an example
Elevation in feet.
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Product id (the NCHFP page’s last path segment) |
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Elevation, feet |
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One of the presets below |
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example= |
Shows |
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Snap beans, pints, dial gauge at 3,000 ft: 20 min at 12 PSI (open) |
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Peaches, hot pack, quarts, boiling water at 2,500 ft: 30 min — the Guide’s own example (open) |
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Crushed tomatoes, quarts, boiling water near sea level: 45 min, acidified (open) |
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Chicken, quarts, weighted gauge at 5,000 ft: 90 min boneless or 75 min with bones, at 15 PSI (open) |
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Strawberry jam with pectin, half-pints, boiling water at 4,000 ft: 10 min (open) |
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Whole-kernel corn in a boiling-water canner: no safe process (open) |
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