I have tried to hold back on comments so people could read what my good friend Ted does but here I am as promised.
I will try to explain myself without too much of my famous babble.
First and foremost people need to know the (why) not just blindly follow instructions from anything including recipes from the web and or the so called national safe canning instructions food site.
You really need to know the science behind all of it and not just run on blind faith.
Once you are able to do this it will open many doors for you.
First lets look at the players involved when it comes to getting sick.'
You should know them all.'
Next they are here and we eat them all the time.
The spores that cause botulism can be killed with time and temperature you need to look up on your own not me telling you.
This takes away the (faith) in what I say as being true.
Next the toxin that the spores produce.
It too can be killed with time and temperature but a higher one.
Look it up.
Next the media it can multiply in and what it cant.
That media and or environment is anything over a pH 4.6 or a lot of salt as in fermenting.
Fear, you should have the confidence in what you are doing by research not to have fear.
An example comes from someone here that was stressed because they left food out over night.
They should not be stressed out over this.
All they have to do is to bring it up to simmer or boiling for the required time and the food is safe to eat.
The only exception I know of is some sort of toxin rice can produce I have read about heat cant kill.
I cant remember what and or how it is but I have read about it.
Look it up dont trust what I say on faith.
Ltes explore this farther.
We buy raw chicken at the store and we can pretty much assume, 'even though I hate to use the word assume, it is contaminated with salmonella.
we know this but yet we cook and eat it anyway.
So now we have a soup or somethin left on the stive over night or all day.
It was covered.
The likelihood of it having anything in it that is bad is not much but it could be there.
All we have to do is heat it up, you have nothing to worry about.
If it was there you have killed it.
This is called fact based reasoning.
Worth