Sanitizing Baby Food Jars for Yeast

I have a friend of mine with a young kid and he's been stocking me up with old baby food jars for storing washed yeast. One question I had though was what's the best way to santize the lids. I was going to boil them but they have a rubber seal under the lid that I'm worried I'd ruin in boiling water.

starsan sanitizer

Yeah, I would say that is pretty universal.

Q: How do I sanitize _______

A: Starsan

I use Star San also.

A word of advice...to reuse the lids, place the lid on top (naturally) and look to see that it is level all the way around. If you press down lightly the cap will "pop" into place. From there you can give it a slight turn and it will be on. There's no need to use a lot of muscle when turning the lid because many times they are very difficult to get off when you do.

If you don't follow these instructions your lids will probably be on at an angle and not seal properly.

At least try it my way, OK?

Boil'em right with the jars. Then use the water to wash the yeast. It works with Mason Jars, why not baby food jars????

Well, with mason jars you only use the lid once, I'm planning on reusing these jars quite often. I've not canned myself just assisted but I'm fairly certain the reason you only use them once is that boiling deteriorates the seal.

I don't have starsan so I'll go for the sanitizer I do have. Thanks for the advice on the lids HB, I'll give it a whirl. Sorry, no pun intended.

Dishwasher!

Roterdrache said:

Well, with mason jars you only use the lid once, I'm planning on reusing these jars quite often. I've not canned myself just assisted but I'm fairly certain the reason you only use them once is that boiling deteriorates the seal.

I don't have starsan so I'll go for the sanitizer I do have. Thanks for the advice on the lids HB, I'll give it a whirl. Sorry, no pun intended.

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Huh??? Bull. I've reused mason lids more than I can count.

Roterdrache said:

Well, with mason jars you only use the lid once, I'm planning on reusing these jars quite often...

Click to expand...

I know Bernie said "Bull", but both of you are right.

As long as you don't pressure cook the jars with the lids on them and get them to seal while cooling then the lids seal life would be longer.

It's just a common practice to toss out the lids once you've canned tomatoes and such because you have to pry them off with a bottle opener and such which deforms them...plus the contamination of the food from the jar.

Bernie, I'm just going by what my mom always said and you know as well as I you should always listen to your mother. LOL!

Seriously though, I grew up on a farm and we kept our own garden and canned green beans and tomatoes for the winter. We never reused the lids and my mom always said it was because the process of heating them and then allowing them to shrink and seal would cause the rubber to be misshapen slightly which meant less of a seal the next time. I've seen episodes of Good Eats and other cooking specials that reiterated the same theory.

However, HB raises a good point in that boiling for a few minutes isn't the same as canning and you're letting the lids cool before you apply them so I'm probably going to take that approach.