The Sims 4: Cottage Living introduced canning as a new hobby for Sims who enjoy cooking, gardening, and making the most of their harvests.
Canning is tied to the Cooking skill, so your Sim will improve their Cooking skill as they prepare different canned goods.
The basic idea is pretty simple: grow or collect ingredients such as fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, eggs, and milk, then turn them into jars of preserves and other homemade goods.
To start canning, click on an oven or stovetop and select Canning. This opens the recipe menu, where you can choose which canned good you want to prepare.
Canning is a nice little addition to The Sims 4, especially if you enjoy gardening or want your Sims to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle.
Grow your own ingredients, turn your harvest into preserves, and keep a few jars around for those moments when your Sim needs something quick to eat.
You’ll need the required ingredients before you can prepare a recipe.
You can purchase ingredients when necessary, but growing your own crops is a much more convenient option if you plan on doing a lot of canning.
If you want to build a proper garden, Old New Henford is a great place to start. Plant your seeds, water and fertilize your plants, then harvest the crops when they’re ready.
Simple Living limits your canning options.
If your Sim lives on a lot with the Simple Living lot challenge, canning works a little differently. Your Sim can only use ingredients they already have available in their inventory.
This means you won’t be able to rely on automatically purchasing missing ingredients while preparing recipes. If you want to become a serious canner while using Simple Living, keeping a well-stocked pantry and garden is especially important.
Canned goods aren’t just decorative clutter. Your Sim can eat them, keep them in their inventory, use them as ingredients in other recipes, give them as gifts, or sell them at the Garden or Grocery stalls.
You can also take your homemade food with you when your Sim goes out for a picnic.
Keeping a few jars in your Sim’s inventory is also useful when they’re hungry, and you don’t want to spend money ordering food.
Canned goods can also be useful for Sims with specific dietary requirements. For example, canned vegetables can provide another food option for Sims who are lactose intolerant.
If you don’t want to grow crops and make your own preserves, you can also purchase canned goods from the Garden and Grocery stalls. The Crumplebottom family also has a permanent market stand, so you can visit Agnes if you’re looking for something specific.
Your Sim won’t have access to every canning recipe immediately. Only four recipes are available when you first start canning.
The remaining recipes are unlocked as your Sim increases their Cooking skill. Since canning itself builds the Cooking skill, you can gradually unlock more recipes simply by continuing to make canned goods.
This makes canning particularly useful for Sims who are already working on their Cooking skill and want another way to practice it.
Here are the canning recipes currently available and the ingredients required to make them:
Aubergine Conserve: Aubergine
Blackberry Jam: Blackberry and Sugar
Blueberry Jam: Blueberry and Sugar
Chocolate Syrup: Chocoberry
Cowberry Jam: Cowplant Berry and Sugar
Custard: Milk and Egg
Lettuce Conserve: Lettuce
Mayonnaise: Eggs
Meat Substitute: Mushroom, Soybean, Aubergine, or Faux Meat Cubes
Mushroom Conserve: Mushrooms
Oversized Mushroom Conserve: Oversized mushrooms of any quality
Pumpkin Conserve: Pumpkin
Raspberry Jam: Raspberry and Sugar
Strawberry Jam: Strawberry and Sugar
Tomato Sauce: Tomato
Watermelon Conserve: Watermelon
Several canning recipes require sugar, including the different fruit jams. If you don’t have any sugar available, you can order sugar rather than waiting for your Sim to find it elsewhere.
Of course, if you’re planning to make dozens of jars, it’s worth keeping a good supply of sugar and the fruits and vegetables your Sim uses most often.