NCHFP:

Is it safe to jar already canned food?
Often people think that they can save money by buying larger containers of canned food, transferring the contents (or leftovers from the first use) to smaller jars and re-processing it. Others wonder if this is a way to save leftovers from any size can for a longer time than they will keep in the refrigerator.

There are several problems with these practices:
(1) We have no safe tested processes to do this. In some cases, the way the heat is distributed throughout the jar during canning will be very different if you start with already canned/cooked food than with fresh. Excessively softened foods will pack more tightly into a jar, or arrange themselves differently and the process time recommended for fresh foods will not be enough for the already canned foods. Underprocessing can lead to foodborne illness or at the very least, spoilage and loss of product. You definitely could not just transfer the food and "seal" the jar. You would need some heat treatment known to destroy any organisms transferred with the food.

(2) The expense and time of recanning foods far exceed the cost savings of bulk or large-quantity packaged foods. To re-can food, you now add the expense of a jar and lid as well as the energy to re-can the food.

(3) Most likely the quality of the food will be greatly reduced in canning the food for a second time. The heat of canning does cause loss of some nutrients, and a second round of canning will further reduce the nutritional value. Textural changes from heating will be added to those already produced.

Without tested processes for re-canning foods, there is no way to know how to reduce the canning process and the default (although not a recommendation) is to process for the full time and temperature as if starting from scratch. When you consider you are not even saving money and resources, it does not seem worth the loss of food quality to practice this re-canning of commercially canned food. Our recommendation is to not plan to do this.

If it were me, I'd use a 16oz portion, freeze a 16oz portion, and use the remaining in an omelet or something within a couple of days.

Agree with all of the above.

Important note: Big difference in the needed texture of twice canned tomatoes vs. twice canned peppers. Most recipes for tomatoes don't worry about them turning to mush. Not so with peppers.

So all the rest of the issue aside, the end quality would be very poor.

Dave

I heartily agree that canning the remainder would not produce a tasty product, and could be dangerous, as well as using lots of resources. We freeze these kinds of foods after opening the can, and find the frozen product suitable for many uses. Freeze in the quantities you would use in a recipe.
Renais

Thank you, and thanks to morz for finding that on the website. I thought I searched that whole site and didn't find that. Freezing sounds like the thing to do, I just wish I had more freezer space.

Marti, I wish I had more freezer space too. I bought new when we moved two years ago and thought an energy efficient 18 cubic foot would meet our needs now. It really doesn't. The bottom mount freezer to my refrigerator is full and so is the stand alone freezer :(

I miss my 23' 40-yr old Kelvinator that I left at the former house.