Star San

This is waaaaay off the topic of beer, but cat I use star san to sanitize my canning jars and lids?
What say ye, homebrewtalk community?

You mean for long term shelf-stable storage of food? It won't work for that, but did you have something else in mind?

Ok, so I have to boil my jars and lids to sterilize them.

Yes, StarSan is just a sanitizer, it kills most but not all of the microbes. Canning requires sterilization to kill them all.

If you're just sterilizing water for, say, yeast washing, then you're good with boiling. However, if you're talking about food, it needs a pressure canner - boiling alone won't make it safe for storage.

JonM said:

If you're just sterilizing water for, say, yeast washing, then you're good with boiling. However, if you're talking about food, it needs a pressure canner - boiling alone won't make it safe for storage.

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High acid foods (fruit, tomatoes with citric acid added, pickled items) are processed in boiling water baths with clean lids. 2 inches of boiling water over the tops of the jars. The time spent in the water bath (half hour for hot-packed tomatoes in pints, for instance) is enough to sterilize the lids. Edit - I heat my jars to about 170-180 to sanitize them, in the canner, and use the hot water in the canner. Also prevents issues of breaking jars when you hot pack the contents.

Low acid foods, including tomato sauce with other ingredients like onions, need to be processed in a pressure canner. The heat and time at over 212 is enough that the jars do not need sanitizing first. The exception to pressure canning would be something like salsa with enough vineger or bottled lemon juice to lower the pH sufficiently.

I'm not so sure about jams etc, since they are only processed long enough to seal the jars.

Good point. Go with what stellatigre says!