The Pressure Canner: My Favorite Preservation Tool

Reader Contribution by Victoria Redhed Miller
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I was so happy that Mother Earth News published an article on pressure canning recently! I’ve seen lots of articles about canning over the years, in several different magazines, but these articles have been almost exclusively about water-bath canning.

I have been canning since I was 15 years old. At the time, 9th-grade girls at the high school I attended in north Seattle were required to take Home Economics. I hated the sewing part. The cooking subjects were mainly boring to me; I already knew how to boil pasta and make apple pie. It’s still a mystery to me why Mrs. Jones thought it useful to teach us how to make a Baked Alaska, something I’ve never done since then. Still, I did learn the basics of canning in that class, for which I am grateful to this day. It was the beginning of my continuing love for all kinds of food preservation.

For many years, I did only water-bath canning. We made pickles, all kinds of jams and jellies, canned pears and peaches and homegrown tomatoes. I remember once or twice watching my Mom use a pressure canner to can green beans. My memory is that it seemed complicated and stressful. It wasn’t until many years later that I bought my first pressure canner; actually I think I was in my early 40s by then. Once I got used to using it, I quickly realized the advantages of being able to can low-acid foods as well as high-acid foods.

A brief word of explanation: High-acid foods can be safely canned in a boiling-water bath. Examples of high acid foods are pickles, jams, and fruits. Tomatoes are generally considered high-acid foods, as well as tomato-based preserves such as salsa. Low-acid foods must be canned in a pressure canner. At 10 pounds pressure, the temperature inside the pressure canner is 240F, much higher than 212F, the boiling point of water at sea level. This higher temperature kills potentially dangerous bacteria that can survive boiling-water temperatures.

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