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Maybe you grew a bunch of squash this year, and want to make sure it gets through the winter? That’s why you need this tutorial for canning butternut squash the right way.

Depending on the climate where you live, or your facilities, keeping squash over the winter is easier said than done.

You may remember reading in Little House in the Big Woods, that the Ingall’s family kept pumpkins and winter squash in their cabin attic all winter.

When I was a child in Tennessee, we kept our squashes and sweet potatoes in plastic bread crates under our beds upstairs. This worked because, much like the Ingall’s, we didn’t have central heat – just a wood cookstove in our kitchen downstairs. So our upstairs was cold, and unlike the cellar, dry, making it perfect for preserving squash and sweet potatoes all winter long.

Now I live in Texas, where we have neither root cellars (basements are rare here due to our soil type), nor, in our case, an upstairs – and even if we did, it doesn’t get very cold here.

So canning is our major food preservation tactic.

Even in Tennessee, my mom still used canning to preserve some butternut squash, canned pumpkin, and even sweet potatoes – either for convenience, or to make sure we had some in case our upstairs squash went bad.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to can butternut

When you get a can of Libby’s pumpkin from the store, you may notice that it comes in a solid packed puree, but for the purposes of home canning, that’s not how we do it.

We home canners don’t have the means of precision that commercial canners do, so it’s a lot harder for us to be sure the heat has sufficiently penetrated to the center of a jar of solid-packed puree, and killed off any harmful bacteria.

The same is true of butternut squash. In fact, the two are nearly identical.

As a home canner, the right way to can butternut squash is to cut it in cubes, and pack it in salted water.

Butternut Squash Must Be Pressure Canned

I’ve written a lot of boring stuff about how some very conservative Amish don’t believe in using pressure canners, and use water bath canning for everything. And alluded to people dying because of it.

I’m just saying.

Low acid foods and vegetables such as butternut squash need to be pressure canned. Rebel canning is all well and good, but canning safety shouldn’t be neglected. Visit the national center for home food preservation to read up on the USDA guidelines here

If you’re new to pressure canning, see this tutorial to familiarize yourself.

How to Use canned butternut

Sometimes using canned food is an exercise in creativity, and it’s much the same for butternut. Not because it’s hard to find ways I use it, but it’s fun to use creatively. You can use it in place of pumpkin in nearly any pumpkin recipe – pie, cake, bars, cheesecake, etc. I’d definitely use it in this pumpkin dump cake recipe.

Drain well, and mash or blend to make puree, and use it in a 1:1 ratio.

As a side dish, we typically serve it mashed with butter and salt.

It can also be used to make excellent butternut squash soup.

Equipment needed for canning butternut squash

As mentioned, you will need a pressure canner. It doesn’t have to be a fancy or expensive one. In fact, my favorite, for its simplicity, is this Presto pressure canner. Instead of a dial gauge, it has a weighted jiggler. When the weight is jiggling, it has reached its pressure. You can set the weight to five, ten, or fifteen pounds. This is called a weighted-gauge pressure canner, but we call it the jiggler.

You will also need jars. Canning jars are an investment, but they will last year after year, batch after batch, and well worth while. I probably use mostly Golden Harvest jars, because of their accessibility, and they’re typically al little cheaper than Ball, which I also use a lot of. You can shop around your town to find the cheapest place to find them, or order from Amazon, or a canning supply warehouse. Don’t forget to check places like Sam’s or Costco, who occasionally carry canning jars.

Thirdly, lids. If you’re buying new jars, chances are, they came with lids.

If you’ve used your jars previously, you may need to buy new lids. Most canning brands also sell replacement lids, but I typically order Denali canning lids in bulk. I have had a better seal rate with them than any other brand, which makes sense, because they actually guarantee a seal.

Other equipment you may find handy, but not strictly necessary is a canning funnel. This helps fill jars quickly without making a mess. And a jar lifter. This is nice, especially for water bath canning recipes, if you need to remove the jars from the canner before they’re completely cooled. Do bear in mind that pressure canning is a very hot process – much hotter than simply boiling – so you do want to let them cool quite a bit before exposing them to drastically cooler temperatures that could shatter the glass jar.

How to can butternut Squash

There are two ways to can the squash: hot pack, and cold, or raw pack. I prefer to cold pack the squash, as it eliminates the extra steps of cooking before canning, and works just as well.

Peel the hard rind, and de-seed butternut squash. This is simple, but may take some time to get your process down. My husband likes to cut the squash into pieces, then peel it, I like to peel it, then cut and de-seed it. I find that peeling a thin layer of skin along the neck of the squash toward the seed cavity is the most efficient way to do it.
Cube the flesh of the squash. Try to keep the cubes to about 1 inch squash
Pack squash loosely into sterilized jars
Stop pint jars with 1/2 teaspoon salt, or quart jars with 1 teaspoon of salt
Cover squash with water, leaving about 1-inch headspace
Screw lids and rings down firmly
Place in prepared canner (you canner should have come with instructions. Typically isn’t something like adding the inner rack (do not skip this!), and adding 2 quarts of water to the bottom)
Secure lid onto canner, with steam valve open. On a weighted gauge canner, this usually just means removing the weight gauge
Heat canner over medium-high heat until a steady stream of steam escapes the valve, and let connate to steam for 10 minutes
Close valve, and bring canner to 10 pounds of pressure at sea level (for those at elevations, use this conversion chart)
Once pressure level is reached, process pint jars for 75 minutes, and quart jars for 90 minutes
Remove canner from heat, and let return to zero pressure naturally
If needed, at this point you can open the valve to ensure all pressure is released, open the lid, and carefully remove jars, protecting them from drafts with a towel. Set the jars in a place where they can remain undisturbed while they cool, and cover with another towel.
After 24 hours, check for seal, wash hardware stains, or stickiness off if needed, and store in a cool place out of direct light.

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