I actually prefer the vinegar based and just canned 7 quarts. I will add a little mayo if I want when they are opened but usually I don't...I love cole slaw and I love growing cabbage because it produces such great quantities...did I mention that I love cabbage.

Hey Ruthie - share your recipe that you can will you? I've never seen one for canning and that may be a solution for my problem. ;)

Dave

This is my first year to can it and haven't opened a jar yet but on the yahoo canning group that I belong to everyone was raving about this recipe. They say that it stays very crisp just the way cole slaw should be. They all do agree though that this recipe is way to much sugar and was too sweet for most folks so everyone was cutting back to about 3/4 cup of sugar instead of the amount called for in the original recipe. I make one almost identical and it gets raves anytime I serve it and I always take it to potlucks. If you have a favorite dressing I think you could rinse all the vinegar etc from the canning and use your own dressing. You might have to adjust the ingredients a bit but it should be a pretty good substitute. Here is the recipe...

Coleslaw to can or freeze

1 medium head cabbage

1 large carrot

1 green pepper

1 small onion

1 teaspoon salt

SYRUP

1 cup vinegar

1/4 cup water

3/4 cups sugar

1 teaspoon celery seeds

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

Shred together vegetables. Add the salt. Let stand 1 hour. Drain
water from vegetables. Rinse twice and drain well again.
Boil syrup ingredients together for 1
minute, cool. Add syrup to vegetables. Pack into quart jars and
process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes, or put into freezer
containers and freeze. Leftovers may be frozen. This slaw may be
drained before use and mayonnaise added, or used as is.

These are the notes of one of the members...also I added chopped celery to mine because I always put it in my coleslaw. It is the vinegar that preserves the mix not the sugar so I think you can add even less than 3/4 cup but when I made it, I had a huge container full because I grew my own cabbage and onions so I used the 3/4 cup and I made about a triple batch of the liquid/brine.

Oh and they all say that the only thing they do is open the jar and add mayonnaise to serve it. I'm not a big mayo person but I love coleslaw...My non canning recipe calls for all the chopped ingredients, and equal amounts of oil, vinegar and sugar....That's way too much oil and sugar for me so I just mix it till it tastes right...but it is soooooo good.

DedeÂs (another canning group member) notes:

4/19/08 used 6 one pound bags of coleslaw mix with carrots.
Added one large red bell pepper, diced, and one medium sweet onion, diced. Triple the syrup, but double may have been enough. Got 9 pints.
GOOD STUFF.

That seems like a lot of low-acid vegetable and not much acid to be BWB for such a short time.

As far as I can tell, a similar big-batch version of this recipe was in Farm Journal's Freezing & Canning Cookbook, but that's way back in 1973. I don't know of any updated or tested rendition.

Carol

Yeah I think I'd freeze that one, Ruthie. Even if I leave out the green pepper (which I don't care for all that much) it is still low on acid. And all the water in cabbage is going to dilute the pH even more over time.

I wonder if we waited to add the onion, carrot, and pepper at serving time and just canned the cabbage and other ingredients with say double the vinegar what the taste would be like?

Thanks for posting it Ruthie. ;)

Dave

That is ONLY a freezer recipe. Someplace along the line, someone with no food preservation safety training has added their own made up processing. If this has been more than 24 hours since you canned it, I would suggest you throw it away. Enough botulism can be in there to end it for you.... If less than 24 hours, pop the lids, remove enough for headspace expansion and freeze it.
Sorry, the only safe way to can cabbage is make sauerkraut and process the sauerkraut or add a small amount of cabbage to a vegetable soup that would be pressure canned. The cabbage will get stronger once processed in the soup, too.