Fresh or Bottled lemon juice for canning?

[chea...@home.com]

I'm new to canning so I apologize for dumb questions in advance.......want
to can some tomatoes and the majority of recipe's I've found say
specifically to use bottled lemon juice, none that I have seen say why that
is. I ran across these instructions today
http://www.pickyourown.org/pressure_canning_tomatoes.htm and
they say fresh or bottled is ok. I also am canning some salsa and I can not
find one recipe that includes fresh lemon juice. I would prefer to use
fresh lemon juice, but not sure it is safe........TIA

[zxcvbob]

The bottled lemon juice is reconstituted to a standard acidity, so you
*know* will work in your recipes (especially canning recipes) The lemon
juice is not a significant flavor component, so it doesn't matter that
bottled lemon juice doesn't taste as good as fresh.

I just looked at that web site and it's actually pretty good. You can
use fresh lemon juice here because you are pressure canning the
tomatoes. (I didn't verify the processing times and the amount of acid
with another source.) But I wouldn't waste fresh lemon on it; if I had
an excess of fresh lemons I would freeze the juice.

If you are boiling water bath canning, you definitely want to use
bottled lemon juice -- it's pretty cheap in the quart bottles -- or use
citric acid crystals.

[Kathi Jones]

"zxcvbob" <zxc...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:7ic88dF...@mid.individual.net...

there's no such thing as a dumb question!

........what Bob said ;-)

use bottled for canning and preserving, fresh for fresh made dishes...

:P

Kathi

[Wilson]

sometime in the recent past chea...@home.com posted this:

For me, it would depend on two things - first if I had a lemon tree and
second if they were hanging on the tree (in season,) I'd be using fresh
since it would be organic, non-pesticide treated and fresh. Otherwise,
bottled serves well for all the reasons stated below.

--
Wilson 44.69, -67.3

[jimnginger]

Bottled lemon juice is 10% acid and twice as acid as vinegar. Recipes
are formulated specifically to be safe with the proper ph level. In
using home squeezed lemons, you have no idea what there acid level is.
If the recipe is a wobbler on the safety side, your recipe may not be
safe if you use fresh lemons. The rule is is it says bottle lemon
juice, use it for safety.
Since I do not want to have lemon juice flavor many things I can, I
just use powdered citric acid which is much more acid but does NOT
have the flavor component that lemon juice does.
If you are going to be doing canning, get yourself some citric acid.
It is cheap and keeps forever if you keep it dry.
Jim in So. Calif.