There is big news in the canning world people, hot off the presses! This comes straight from my Master Food Preserver meeting this month, and you’ll start to see the recommendations coming out on the packaging soon. What packaging? Your canning lids! The tool you are looking at pictured below will never be needed again. Yep, that fun lid magnet that is either barely magnetic enough to pick up a hot lid, or so magnetic it picks up 4 (like the one in MFP class) is no longer a necessary tool in your canning kit. We no longer need to preheat our jar lids people!

According to new recommendations by the makers of Ball and Kerr lids, there is no need to heat your lids anymore. This is the last picture you’ll see on my blog of jar lids warming before they are put on the jars. They’ve been testing the lids, and with the sealing compound they make these days, they don’t seal any better if they are heated before going on the jar. So, you can start skipping that step. Wooohoooo 15 seconds saved! But really, I am quite happy to hear this because it always seemed unnecessary to me, but being a good little rule follower I usually remembered to do it. Or at least remembered at the last second and dipped my lids for a second into the canner that was warming up and figured that was good enough. Hopefully none of you bought this ridiculous tool recently or you’ll be looking for some other use for it. Good luck. That’s $9.14 well wasted. I guess if you ever needed to sterilize the lids for another purpose you could still use it?? Ha. But anyways, the official ruling is to just wash the lids as you would the jars, and use them. Remember, as always, they are still meant for single use. Happy canning!