Since I need to heat up the water bath (or pressure canner) to have it ready to process as soon as I'm done filling, I just stick the jars in it. They boil along as I finish my prep and get the food nice and hot. When I'm ready to fill them, I'll pull out two or three (pouring the water in them back into the bath), fill them, and pull out a few more. It seems to work pretty well.

When using a two-level canner, I have to hold the filled jars on the counter until I've used enough to pull out the lower ones, but that generally doesn't take long.

--Alison

I generally do the same thing as Alison. Since I'm already heating the water in the canner, I put the jars in there.

We do the same most of the time. Unless we are doing something that will need many more jars than the pot will hold. Then we cycle them through the hot rinse/dry cycle of the dishwasher.

Dave

I do the same as Dave. For smaller batches it's the water bath. For large batches or pressure canning it's the dishwasher.

Carol

Me too. Whichever one works at the moment!

I never use the oven just because it uses a lot of electricity and I don't usually need another heat generator in my kitchen!

Something I did last year for the first time that worked great is using my crock pot to keep lids and rings hot. Plenty of room and it saves a burner on the stove for something else!

Deanna

The crockpot idea is a great one--especially for large batches!

Now why didn't I think of that? What a great idea, Deanna.

Of course, now I have to find counter space.

Carol

Thanks all! I love the crockpot idea!

it is just with getting them hot so I can pack them with hot ingredients.

I don't heat my jars other than a quick rinse in warm water.

I place a towel on my tile counter and then place the canning jar on the towel. Then fill with boiling hot tomato sauce right from the stock pot.

Zeuspaul

I do the same for the jars, but for lids I always have the tea kettle boiling in case I need to add water to the canner. I have a small glass pan I fill with the water from the kettle before I jar up and throw the lids in then seal.

I have a tile counter also and love to use those Sham Wows for the cloth on the counter.

I have a couple of those microfiber dish towels that I don't like at all for dishtowels but they are great for setting empty jars on to fill, or for setting hot jars onto right out of the canner. Like bisylizzy, I have a tile counter.

I heat my jars in the dishwasher if I have a lot of them, but I usually just fill them with hot water in my kitchen sink, hold them until I need them, then dump the water out of a canner's worth of jars, fill them all with the hot food product, then put them into the canner.

If I'm packing something cold, then I'll put the jars in the canner because the heat from the food isn't there to heat the jars for me and that always seems to be when I have problems with thermal shock and breakage.

Annie

Coming from the Land With No Hygiene I need to make the jars as hot as possible before filling with jam or jelly. I use the DW first then put them in a low oven. The jam sizzles when it goes in and if there's a weak jar you soon find out.

When using the BWB I heat my jars in there and retain the hot water for processing. I heat my lids in an electric frypan so that it maintains a constant high temp. The one thing I haven't been clear about is how long can the filled jars remain outside hot water. Yesterday I canned vanilla pears in pint jars. The recipe says to heat pears for 5 minutes in a single layer. Even using a 20 qt. pot it would only hold about 2 1/2 jars worth of pears. And then I had to heat the next batch for 5 minutes. I put those jars in the canner of hot water, but am very concerned that they were cooking for a long time before I filled all the jars. My question is can you fill all the jars before putting them in the hot water? Or would they cool too much and cause a problem? This was the most difficult of my canning so far, but I have the same question when filling jars with spaghetti sauce or anything else. How long can filled jars sit without being in the hot water?
I hope this question makes sense. It's been bugging me for a few years now, and I keep wondering if my wonderful produce is being overcooked.

You should fill one, put in the canner, then fill another, and repeat.

Thanks Linda Lou. That's what I've been doing, but thought it might be wrong since some jars can be in there waiting for 20 minutes. Glad to know I've been doing it the right way.

I was taught to keep them in a sink of hot water. This works well for me when I'm doing lots of batches and don't want to stick cold jars into an already used, hot canner.