Canning Corn {How to Can Corn}

How to Can Corn

I’m going to walk you through the process here with photos, and you’ll also find a detailed and printable tutorial at the bottom of this post.

Select corn that is ripe but not overly ripe. Kernels should be plump, and ideally, the ears will have been picked in the last 24 hours.

Husk the corn, remove the corn silk and rinse with cool water. Boil the ears whole for 3 minutes, and then transfer to an ice bath. Allow to cool and then remove the kernels.

Don’t cut deeper than 3/4th of the kernel and do not scrape the cob. Pro tip: place a dish or bundt cake pan inside a lasagna pan, large baking dish, or rimmed baking sheet. Position the corn cob with the tip in the middle of the bundt pan and cut downward with a sharp knife. You can also use a corn stripper if you’re processing many ears at once.

Wash and clean your jars. It is no longer necessary to sterilize jars before canning (hurray!) but you should make sure they are preheated enough to not crack when placed in hot water.

You can put them in a clean dishwasher and run them through a quick wash cycle, or place them in a large pan with some water in a low-heat oven (my lowest temp is 170 degrees F) until you need them. I’ve even just put hot tap water in them before and left them on the counter.

Wash your lids with hot soapy water. Rinse and place them in a clean bowl for now.

If you are hot packing (see below), cook kernels in 1 cup of boiling water (per quart), reducing heat and simmering for 5 minutes. If you are doing a raw pack, allow 8 (ish) cups of water to come to a boil in a pot or kettle.

Add 3 quarts of water to your pressure canner and put it on a burner set to high. Make sure there is a canning rack in the bottom of the canner.

If you are using salt, add 1/2 tsp canning salt to pints and 1 tsp to quarts. Add the corn to the jars without shaking or pressing down the kernels.

Using a canning funnel, carefully and slowly add the boiling water, leaving 1-inch of headspace. Headspace is the distance between the top of the food and the top of the jar. 

Using a long utensil (I prefer a plastic chopstick), remove all the air bubbles from the jar. 

Clean the rim of the jar very well with a hot damp rag. Any food debris left on the rim may impact the seal of the lid in the canner. Place a clean lid on the jar. Add a ring, and tighten to fingertip tight.

Using canning tongs, gently place the jars in the canner. Lock the lid. Soon, steam will start coming through the vent pipe (I call it the steam chimney).

Allow the steam to pass through for about 10 minutes. Then put the pressure regulator (I call it the chimney cap) on top. (see the 4 photo grid below for a visual of this process step by step)

Pretty soon, the air vent will pop up. That is a sign that you’re starting to build pressure inside the canner (get excited. This is happening!).

Under normal conditions, hot or raw packed corn needs to be pressure canned at 11 pounds of pressure for 55 minutes for pints and 85 minutes for quarts. See the chart below for any changes to processing times.

Place hot jars on a towel where they can sit undisturbed for 12 hours.

After a few hours, to check for sealing, gently press down in the middle of the lid. If the lid has no give, it’s sealed. If you can press the lid in and it pops a bit, your jars are not sealed.