Autumn is the time of harvesting vegetables and fruits, the time of canning. One after another, shelves in pantries and mezzanines are filled with jars of all yummy. All this wealth should "survive" at least until spring - the season when fresh gifts of nature appear. How to sterilize cans in a microwave to kill all harmful microorganisms that can literally blow up any of them?
Typically, boiling in a pot, steaming, or heating in an oven is used for sterilization. Less often, a double boiler is used for these purposes. It turns out that you can sterilize cans in the microwave too. The main thing is to know how to do this.
Immediately it is worth warning that we are talking exclusively about glass containers. Lids are immediately excluded from the process because metal objects cannot be placed
in a microwave oven that heats objects with
microwave radiation . They will have to be processed separately, in a traditional way.
Before sterilizing the jars in the microwave, they must be carefully inspected to the last. Any, even the smallest crack or chip - and the bank will have to be used for other purposes: when it is heated, it will most likely burst. All containers must be thoroughly washed with baking soda, and then washed in running water.
Each jar that goes for microwave sterilization should have water - a layer at the bottom of about 1 cm. A 800 W device will sterilize such a jar in 3 minutes. If there are several cans, the sterilization time is increased to 4 minutes. Most often, 2-3 liter cans do not fit in the microwave. But there is a way out of this situation: they are sterilized lying on their side (of course, with water inside).
How to sterilize cans in the microwave and leave them dry? There are two such methods. First: if the cans are already dry. To keep them in this state, an extra glass of water is put in the microwave. Sterilization time - up to 2 minutes. About the same amount of time will be spent on drying wet cans. To do this, you need to put them
in the microwave without wiping and keep until they are completely dry.
With an empty container, everything seems to be clear. But the question is: how to sterilize jars in the microwave, if they are already filled with pickles, jams, etc.?
In the first version, preservation is used, which is already fully prepared for rolling, that is, filled with marinade or syrup. Cans without lids must be evenly placed in the oven, bring the liquid inside them to a boil and hold for two minutes.
For the second option you will need covers, only glass. They need to cover jars with prepared products and a small amount of filling (about a quarter of the volume). Sterilization time is 2-3 minutes, then the cans need to be removed and filled with the remaining filling that has been brought to a boil in advance.
After both options, the jars need to be quickly rolled up, put on a towel upside down, wait until they cool, then turn to normal position and send for storage.
Having learned the details of how to sterilize cans in the microwave, you probably already drew attention to the main advantages of this method - it takes very little time. At the same time, several cans are processed at once, and the kitchen in the process of harvesting for the winter does not turn into a kind of steam room. And if you follow all the precautions - both when working with the microwave oven, and when handling hot objects - then complete the preparatory "campaign" before everyone else, and you can stock up on yummy much more than usual.