Why Do You Need a Canning Funnel Even If You Can’t
Everyone should have a wide-necked funnel. I know this is a bold proposal. You probably won’t even be able to. Of course I can’t. Moreover, I am not going to do it. First of all, I don’t have a healthy tomato crop, and I’m nervous about the hobby that botulism can cause me. (This is due to my lack of vigilance; canning is great!)
Yet the funnel has become one of the most used pieces of equipment in the years since it entered my kitchen. This is because the wide-mouth canning funnel is the secret to efficiently storing leftovers.
I am a remaining fanatic. I’m also a big fan of storing these leftovers in glass jars (peanut butter or pickle, depending on the amount). Glass jars are great containers, both because their contents are visible and because they are free. But – here’s the problem – pouring food from the pot into the jar is inevitable. For many years, I imagined that losing a couple of chickpeas and forming a small puddle on the counter was just a price to pay for being a virtuous person in the world, eating leftover food. No.
It isn’t, or at least it shouldn’t be, due to the magic that comes with the $ 11 canning funnel. I’m partial to this one , although it’s more or less identical to every other stainless steel wide-angle funnel on Amazon. Here’s how to use it: prepare the jar, insert it into the funnel. That’s all. In my life after the funnel, I have not spilled a drop of soup. I haven’t lost a single noodle. There were no stir fried failures or random tofu cubes. You can just scoop up the material willy-nilly – close your eyes, pour directly from the pan, shove it in with your hands, there are no rules! – and all this will slide into the jar, without splashing. I realize by writing this down that it seems obvious – directing the contents of one vessel into the smaller opening of another vessel is literally what funnels do – and yet I haven’t actually seen anyone else use them for this purpose. … They are missing out.
Important note: While soups and stews are obvious candidates for a funnel, you can actually funnel anything that will eventually fit in a jar if the funnel opening is wide enough. Pour flour into a funnel or lentils. I just drove the meatballs away!
You need a funnel for canning wide mouth? That is, no, probably not. I am confident that it is possible to live a completely happy and prosperous life by cleaning up minor spills. But there are so few things we can control in our lives; the trajectory of our soup must be one of them.