Hi Lesli, can you post or link to the recipe? I would expect it doesn't have enough liquid to evenly distribute the heat. For low-acid things like vegetables it's especially important to have liquid swirling around transferring the heat into the food (like you would have in a jar of pickles, or green beans pressure-canned in water).

Generally you can't make up your own canning recipes, you need to use something tested and approved. But if you post the recipe, we might be able to think up a way to can the carrots and make it quick and easy to make the salad when you open the jar.

I've made pickled baby carrots and they're delicious, I eat them plain as a snack. I posted the recipe in another thread - see link below.

Melissa

Here is a link that might be useful: pickled carrots

Lesli, I just looked up this recipe to find out what copper penny salad is. If your recipe involves a can of tomato soup concentrate, you can't re-can the salad. Commercial canned soups have weird thickeners and stuff in them that are unsafe in home-canned products. In general it's best to avoid making canning recipes with previously canned products (though it's not always dangerous...I use a can of commercial plain tomato sauce for the sauce called for in Annie's salsa).

Also, the oil in the salad would prevent safe canning.

I think you would do best canning the carrots either plain (if you have a pressure canner - be sure to use a tested recipe from NCHFP or Ball since low-acid canning is at risk for botulism) or pickled (which would probably make an interesting salad - I love pickled green beans in vinaigrette-style potato salad).

Melissa

No. It is a COOKING recipe, not a CANNING recipe. The two are not the same. The safe way to preserve foods is to only use recipes from a reliable source, suce as the Ball Blue Book and any of the USDA/extension sites and publications.
Canning your own recipes is not considered safe. As was said, the soup would have thickeners and things unsafe to add to home canned foods.

There's this new, weird thing. I think it's called....and correct me if I'm wrong...."citric acid".

Am I saying that right? "Citric acid"?

"Thickeners and things" aren't going to grow bacteriological components in the presence of raised acid levels. Nevermind the proper canning procedures that would still be followed....

I would like to think that Melissa knows what she's talking about with the "oil" point, however my extremely oily pickled hot dogs and pickled hot links say that that's not really a good "fact". Oil can absolutely mess up your vacuum, but you would know that when they didn't seal correctly.

Are you asking if adding citric acid to Copper Penny Salad recipe would make it safe to can? If so then the answer is no.

Citric acid is not a new thing and is used in many recipes to insure safe acidity levels. How much of it must be added to a low acid recipe such as this to make it safe for canning is unknown. Plus it does not compensate for the density and/or heat penetration issues. If one were to pressure can this salad recipe it might be safe (also unknown) but it would also be a jar of mush.

Dave

Isn't heat penetration the issue with those thickeners rather than harboring bacteria? Too many no-nos. Not even worth the gamble

Heat penetration of the entire mix is a big part of the issue but some thickeners also have the effect of encapsulating and insulate bacterial spores.

Dave