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I’ve been using a pressure canner for years. Although some foods can be safely canned in a water bath canner, other foods NEED to be canned using a pressure canner. Food safety is so important to me and it should be important to you too.
I never want to open a jar of home canned food and wonder if it is good to eat. Sometimes you can see signs of spoilage, but sometimes you cannot. I don’t want to feed anyone food that has been unsafely canned.
This makes me pretty ANAL about how I go about storing food. I take ZERO shortcuts, I make sure my equipment is clean and my lids and seals are in good shape. If there is rust on a ring, I toss it. Even though the ring is never in direct contact with the food, I still throw it out.
When I look at my stocked pantry, filled with homecanned foods like lamb stew, green beans, carrots, beets, pickles, jams, jellies and a lot of other items, I get such a sense of pleasure. Pleasure because I know exactly what is (and what isn’t) in my homecanned food.
Pleasure because I love the look of all those pretty jars on the shelf. Pleasure because I can feed my family good healthy food that is safe to eat.
Are you as anal as I am when it comes to putting your food by? If not, you should be! Never take a chance – it is not worth it if someone you love gets sick, or even worse, dies from incorrectly canned food.
Read about how I home can salmon to learn the process I use for using the pressure canner. If you want to learn how to can food using a water bath canner, check out my post on canning cherries.
After reading these posts, think seriously about buying a canning book. The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving is a really good resource.
If you are going to can anything with meat in it, it MUST be pressure canned.
I’ve had my pressure canner for over 10 years and it still works great. I’m replacing the gasket this year and ordered it through Amazon.
So, if you’re new to the idea of preserving your own food, don’t be afraid. If I can do it, you can too. Just remember to always think of Safety First and by the end of this year’s harvest, you will be able to put your own home canned jars of great food in your pantry. If you have questions, please ask away in the Comment section.
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katlupe says
As you may know, canning is my favorite homesteading chore. I cannot believe how many people will insist on canning food in a pressure cooker, instead of a pressure canner. I try to stress the difference when I write about it. This is a good post you have done about the safety issues involved.
Annie says
That’s a good point Kat about the pressure cooker vs canner. They are not the same thing. I love my Mirro canner, I’ve had it for years.
R.Mueller says
I had never used a pressure caner before, and we used one two summers ago to can our potatoes….now we had never heard of canning potatoes and everyone we asked had never done it either. So we searched the internet and went for it. Well we did not try them until this year…we took them out of the boxes (cause we moved) and they looked very frightening lol….we weren’t even sure if we should eat them they looked so scary…however, once we opened them and tried them we were soooooooooo surprised at how AWESOME they were…..so awesome in fact, this is the way I will do my potatoes from now on!!! I thought for sure they were gonna be soft and mushing, but they were solid! We canned whole ones and cut up ones, and both ways were fantastic!
I too am a fan of the pressure caner now!
Annie says
Hi, Robyn! That’s a good idea, because like your potatoes, 2 years later you can open them up and enjoy. It would be very hard (I would think impossible) to keep potatoes in a cold storage for two years and not have them sprout.
I have been reading about your latest adventure. I hope things work out there awesomely for you!
Robin says
I haven’t pressure canned in years, and probably should give my canner away to someone who can use it. It’s much more efficient for me to freeze, dehydrate and cold store. The freezers are in the 45* basement and always full (ice fills the empty space) so they run once a day for a few minutes. If the power went out for more than two or three days I could plug them into the generator. I do miss seeing rows of jars in the cupboards and pantry.
Annie says
I’d never give away my pressure canner 🙂 I’m hoping to get a fair bit of canning done this year…going to plant Pole Beans in the greenhouse as we eat a lot of them.
Amanda says
I am absolutely terrified of mine. I will literally reach around the corner with my arm for something while keeping my body hidden behind the wall, JUST in case it decides to blow up at that moment. It is so ghetto. The gasket didn’t even form a seal when I went to can some broth and I wasn’t able to get it up to pressure.
Probably it would be wise to just buy a new one. You have a mirro? I will have to check into one before too long.
Annie says
I was the same way, well, I didn’t go around the corner! But yes, I was afraid too. You have to get over that and by reading up on the subject, you’ll feel better about it. Maybe I should do another post on pressure canning, because maybe there are other readers that feel the same way?