# Canned goods too old?



## Crikket (Sep 17, 2012)

I have several jars of tomato sauce that I canned a year and a half ago... how long will they stay good??


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## 1shotwade (Jul 9, 2013)

Decades! As long as they are still sealed. In 1990 we opened a sealed can of green beans that were canned in 1956.The taste was a little off so we pitches them but I think they were still safe.

Wade


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## suitcase_sally (Mar 20, 2006)

I agree. Slowly, the item will lose the vitamins so the jars aren't as nutritients (sp?) but I have things in my cupboard that are 5-7 years old. I don't save pickles that long because they tend to go soft, but most other things are good. Keep your goods in as dark and cold an area as you can. The colder, the longer they last.


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## Crikket (Sep 17, 2012)

Great! Thank you :thumb:

So why have I heard so many times that you shouldn't keep home canned good over a year?? :huh:


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## suitcase_sally (Mar 20, 2006)

Because that's for OPTIMAL quality. Think of it like this - If you fix a big old plate of fried chicken for supper, and if you're a good cook :hysterical: , the chicken is just great! But you have more than you can eat at one sitting, so you put some away in the fridge for tomorrows supper. Next day, you have fried chicken again. It's not quite the same, but is thoroughly fine for eating. You could even have that chicken next week and it would be fine.


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## Waiting Falcon (Nov 25, 2010)

Depends! 
If you keep your canning in a cool place.......not freezing and definitely not long periods of time at 100 degrees. Either freezing or excess heat can change the food.
otherwise yes, indefinitely ...but then canned goods have never lasted around here due to consumption !
Date and rotate, use older before the fresh.


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## Crikket (Sep 17, 2012)

Ok, so has nothing to do with something being wrong with it, just has lost it's prime taste c:

Alright so now my ? is, I'm not impressed with how it turned out, which is why it's still on the shelf!! What would be the best way to make it more flavorful? I made it with onions, garlic and some spices, but just came out so bland... had never made my own sauce before :help: It's not gross, just not 'tasty'!


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## northergardener (Dec 12, 2007)

If you are use to store-bought, one big difference is they put a bunch of sugar in it.


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## Waiting Falcon (Nov 25, 2010)

Different tomatoes have different qualities,..high acid , bland, sweet etc. There are 100's of different tomatoes.
Do you like spices? you can add, onion salt , garlic, parsley, Cavendars, sugar , citric acid.. your choice.
But if they were low acid tomatoes in the first place when you canned them and did not add acid..... they just might not be good.


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## BlackFeather (Jun 17, 2014)

I'm using tomatoes from 2008, still good. I have it almost gone, some how it got missed,I have beets from 2009 I'm using and I have some canned tomatoes from 2010. Most of my stuff I'm using is 2 to 3 years old right now. I store my jars in the cellar where there isn't a lot of light and it is cool.


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## 7thswan (Nov 18, 2008)

Basil will help the taste alot.


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## Tyler520 (Aug 12, 2011)

properly canned food will remain edible indefinitely...years upon years because it is a sterile condition and the bacteria required for decomposition cannot present themselves.

Now, this doesn't mean it will necessarily taste the same, or have a "pleasant" mouth-feel due to physical and chemical breakdown of the minerals and nutrients, which may separate over a very long period.

...and again, it all assumes it was canned properly.

interesting article via the FDA: http://web.archive.org/web/20080115081538/http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/CONSUMER/CON00043.html


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## DEKE01 (Jul 17, 2013)

when I was a kid, ~1970, my fam was visiting my father's boyhood home in the NC Smokies. Relatives we visited lived in a mobile home next to a grand Southern style house that had a foundation collapse when Dad was a kid. So some 30 years had passed since the house was abandoned. Few people went in the old house because it was like a Ripley's Believe it or not house where every room was tilted at odd angles with fallen sections of ceilings. From doorway and windows, I remember seeing broken sections of stairs, collapsed ceilings, the kitchen floor sloped about 2 ft from one end to the other, etc. 

Dad was stubborn and decided to do an explore. Through a broken basement window, he handed out many jars of canned food. I can't remember what it all was, but most of it went to feed the pigs and chickens of the 2 old ladies we were visiting. Dinner that night included 30+ year old stewed tomatoes and a blackberry cobbler made from the basement treasure. And we took away a few jars which mother made sometime later. 

I suppose in that basement, the food had been protected from light, heat, and cold.


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## Tyler520 (Aug 12, 2011)

...and also to bust another urban legend:

many studies have confirmed that nutritional loss is so small as to be considered negligible. in fact, the cooking process can sometimes release ADDITIONAL additional beneficial chemicals that you cannot metabolize in raw form - for example, cooking tomatoes releases 10 times more absorbable lycopene than a raw tomato


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## Texasdirtdigger (Jan 17, 2010)

Hmmmmm. I opened a jar of vegetable soup mix today....that I canned in 2004......Tasted great. Just store them correctly...dark, cool and dry......if they sealed well.....there shouldn't be much of an issue.


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## Werforpsu (Aug 8, 2013)

i find sugar is a necessity for me to like spaghetti sauce but i don't can mine as spaghetti sauce, I can tomato sauce and make it into what I want after opening.


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