pressure canner

[bj taylor]

i will be learning to can by myself this year. i intend to buy a food saver, and a pressure canner. i won't be able to use the canner in the house. my cooktop is ceramic & just not big enough so i'll be using a fish fryer set up outside. i will be canning pretty small amounts. it's just the two of us & i don't have unlimited storage space. does anyone have a recommendation for size of canner? are they all pretty much the same in quality, or does brand matter? i'm particularly interested in canning chicken and stock. rabbit meat is a possibility. i'll try to can whatever comes out of the garden.
i have a freezer, but i want to have on hand some food that is not dependent on electricity. if i lived further north, i would dig a root cellar - but that's just not feasible here. it's too hot. i think i'd have to dig 15'deep to find cooler. lol
thanks for any input.

 

[hoodat]

My advice would be not to stint on the canner size. Get the biggest one you are able to. Once you get started you will always wish it was bigger. As far as brand goes, get the All American if you can afford it. It is far and away the best canner on the market today and has a metal to metal seal so you don't have to mess with those ruber gaskets. It's made in Wisconsin. The quality is so good it will be passed down the generations.

 

[April Manier]

What are you canning? I only use my pressure canner for meats, soups and such. i'm with Hoodat. If you can, get a big one! I wish I had bought a bigger one.

For the most part I do everything water bath. You will find another thread in the canning section with pressure canner in the subject line that will give you good advice on this subject.

 

[TanksHill]

I agree the All American is top of the line. I personally just bought a 30 q t for myself. I however started many years ago with the Presto canner. It is under 100 dollar's and works great.

Pressure canner pots can always be used for water bath canning. I would start with water bath canning. Jams, pickles, fruits. Very basic. Then move to using the pressure canner. Stock is a good place to start. Takes about 30 minutes. Verses meat which is 90. That's a long time to sit in front of a pot.

It's actually pretty easy if you follow the directions.

G

 

[bj taylor]

i am going to follow your advice & get an 'all american' and get the largest i can manage. i'll save up. in the mean time - i'm going to start my research on it. it's kinda exciting. just imagine

 

[baymule]

I just looked up the All American.......I WANT ONE TOO!!! I have one of those with a rubber gasket and a dial gauge that I am constantly adjusting the heat on. I am in love with the All American! It has the pressure regulator weights!!!! (that I wished I had, but mine doesn't )

And yes, get the biggest one you can. You will be glad you did. it might just be the two of you, but I have never seen purple hull peas that said "Wait a couple of days ya'll, it's just the two of them and she doesn't need all of us pea plants to get ripe and ready all at once!"

I second TanksHill, you can use the pressure canner for water bath, but you can't use a water bath canner for pressure canning.

Just added All American to the list..........1st-have to pay off credit card for the new wall oven I had to buy at Christmas because the old, ugly, olive green, 40 year old, ugly, burned-on-the-bottom-while-still-raw-in-the-middle-old-ugly-wall-oven DIED! (and did I mention UGLY??)
2nd-I want the 9 tray Excalibur dehydrator!!
3rd-All American pressure canner!

P.S. You will LOVE your food saver!

 

[wsmoak]

If you read all the instructions and warnings on both items... apparently you're not supposed to use a pressure canner on an outdoor propane stove. I can't find a documented reason why, though I can guess.

That said, my old fashioned electric stove (with the spiral burners and drip pans) will *not* get my pressure canner above 5 lbs! And even if it did... I'd rather can outdoors anyway.

So with some trepidation, I put the canner on the outdoor camp stove and watched it like a hawk. It worked fine for me, even with the high pressure burners on my stove. (A turkey fryer probably has a similar burner, but there are camp stoves with lower pressure burners. The ones meant to fry and boil are going to be higher than ones meant for regular cooking.)

A friend uses a separate single electric burner with his, but I haven't managed to get the make and model.

-Wendy
(... who owns one of those fancy canners, but has not yet been brave enough to actually use it.)

 

[Mickey328]

Another vote here for "bigger is better"...get the largest size you can afford...you won't regret it Mine won't quite fit under my range hood either unless I pull the stove out about 6 inches. That's okay for a one-batch job but when I'm at it hammer and tong during harvest or when it's really hot, I set up our 2 burner propane camp gizmo out on the deck...it works great if there's not too much breeze...keeps the excess heat and humidity out of the house. On windy days I set up in the garage with the door open.

My current one is a Presto with the dial and I too find I have to fiddle with the heat quite a lot to maintain proper pressure, which sometimes results in leakage and jars with reduced liquid in them.

a fantastic site with tons of info on all sorts of food preservation is pickyourown.org They have recipes and how-to advice...it's an excellent resource.

 

[hoodat]

If you read all the instructions and warnings on both items... apparently you're not supposed to use a pressure canner on an outdoor propane stove. I can't find a documented reason why, though I can guess.

That said, my old fashioned electric stove (with the spiral burners and drip pans) will *not* get my pressure canner above 5 lbs! And even if it did... I'd rather can outdoors anyway.

So with some trepidation, I put the canner on the outdoor camp stove and watched it like a hawk. It worked fine for me, even with the high pressure burners on my stove. (A turkey fryer probably has a similar burner, but there are camp stoves with lower pressure burners. The ones meant to fry and boil are going to be higher than ones meant for regular cooking.)

A friend uses a separate single electric burner with his, but I haven't managed to get the make and model.

-Wendy
(... who owns one of those fancy canners, but has not yet been brave enough to actually use it.)

Heck. I've even canned over a hot coal outdoor fire With good resuts. It wasn't an All American but antique Montgomry Ward And Sears metal to metal canners but it's the same principle.
The only difference was that the seal wasn't as good so you had to start with more water to allow for the steam leaks.

 

[Jared77]

I did all my actual canning outside on a turkey fryer burner that hooked up to a propane tank. Both water bathing and pressure canning. The pressure canning I was watching it more frequently to make sure I maintained pressure but once it was stable it held it fine. I kept track of how far I turned the dial for the burner to get a baseline for the pressure and then would tinker with it if necessary.

I borrowed the burner from my SIL and her husband and it did the trick fine. Id ask around see if anybody has one that you can borrow and when you take it back give them something good that you canned as a thank you. Works wonders around here.

This year we're going to buy our own turkey fryer set up since it will be nice to have another REALLY big pot to cook in (we don't fry turkey here too much risk) and the burner will see a ton of use. Plus all that heat and moisture stays outside vs inside the house.

My wife would have 4 burners going with various things including the lids and once the jars were hot and packed Id slap lids and rings on them and take a batch outside to put in the canner. It took a little coordinating when we first got going but once we found our rhythm we were like a well oiled machine and got a LOT canned in less time since we were not working around the canner.