Canning ideas without vinegar?

Hi! I just signed up for this site, I love it so far. I would like to learn how to can foods but I don't like vinegar at all. I guess when I think of canning I think canning=vegetable soaked in vinegar haha. So, I was hoping that you could share your favorite things to can All I can think of currently is strawberry jam. Thank you!

Hi Ash

Welcome to Permies!

You can pressure can all kinds of things without vinegar. I only use vinegar if I want the flavor. You only need vinegar if you are water bath canning low acid foods. Those same foods can up fine in a pressure canner.

This lady did a giveaway here in February, and her book is excellent
Welcome Angi Schneider, author of Pressure Canning for Beginners and Beyond!
Our reviews of it  Pressure Canning for Beginners and Beyond by Angi Schneider
Her book on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Pressure-Canning-Beginners-Step-Step/dp/1645673405/?tag=pfa12-20

I recommend it, I was one of the reviewers and I really liked it, explains things well, and has excellent sounding recipes.

I don't use vinegar in my canning, unless it's something like... well... nope. I don't use it, in canning. There are other ways to get acid into the things that actually need it. But, I can't think of anything that actually needs it, in pressure canning - only water bath. So, for example, if you're doing a low acid tomato, you can add lemon juice or citric acid, and still get away with using the water bath method. I hope this helps!

If you would like to make cucumber pickles, sauerkraut, or other "pickled things" without vinegar,  you should try a food preservation method called lacto-fermentation.  you can preserve food for months and years using this method.  There is a book titled Fermented Vegetables that is a great read for people interested in pickling.  If you really want to go down the fermenting rabbit hole, Sandor Katz has several books on this subject.  

My sister was the canning queen and she made a lot of salsas, chutneys and things like bbq sauce (kind of a "meal starter/ convenience food" concept)  as well as dilly beans and okra (which are pickled) and a variety of fruit preserves like marmalade, peach butter, and strawberry vanilla preserves. I typically lacto-ferment my pickles (or make quick fridge pickles) so I don't can them  but I do like whole fig preserves, blackberry jelly, and plum sauce.

Non pickled vegetables are trickier to can since they are lower acid, except for tomatoes (which I would can if I had access to good ones in large quantities), and since I don't have a pressure canner, I do not can low acid foods. The aim of canning is to preserve food in an environment that is hostile to pathogens; sugar and acid, along with an anaerobic atmosphere (created by removing oxygen from the jars in a water bath or pressure canner) make the foods unlikely to grow pathogens and the process of canning is there to kill potential pathogenic bacteria that may have slipped in. So while I am maybe more chill about canning that some, I try to keep the basic chemistry in mind to keep the food preserved and safe.

So besides the canning to remove oxygen and kill bacteria,  you need either an acidic environment or a sugary environment. There are a lot of lower sugar types of foods, but you can only go so low before the chemistry gets a little iffy for preservation. And if vinegar isn't your thing (and you don't follow the FDA's canning guidelines to the letter) the Italian method of preserving vegetables under oil, called "sottoli," (usually after somewhat dehydrating them) to keep out oxygen. There are some really intriguing treatments of zucchini, eggplant, and mushrooms, peppers, and artichokes using this method. But it is at your own risk and not necessarily what most Americans think of as "canning."