Ep. 111 - Preserving Basics, Part Three: Pressure Canning

Okay, here we go. The big beast: pressure canning. I know it can seem scary to have a giant pot on your stove that you think could explode at any moment and that fear probably stems from pictures you’ve seen of pressure canners doing just that: lids embedded into ceilings and exploded contents all over the walls.

I’m here to tell you pressure canning is perfectly safe if you follow the instructions. And modern pressure canners have all kinds of safety features designed to keep you from destroying your kitchen even if you do screw something up. I’ve been pressure canning for about a decade and I’ve never had an incident in my kitchen. Ever. Even when I was first starting out and didn’t have a clue what I was doing and was just reading the instructions from a book.

There are a lot of reasons you may want to pressure can, not the least of which is the much wider variety of things you can preserve over water-bath canning. You don’t need to worry about acidifying foods before preserving them and you can actually can whole meals in a jar for emergencies, if you’re so inclined. My favorite thing to pressure can? Green beans, plain and simple. But this year I’m going deeper into beans and meats and all kinds of stuff to hedge my bets against winter power outages in our rural area. And I’m super excited to try new things.

So, before you decide that pressure canning isn’t a viable option for you or if you’ve just been too scared to try it because it just seems dangerous, hang out with me today while we go over the basics of pressure canning, do’s and don’ts, the must haves and the nice-to-haves, and all the resources you could ever need to do it all safely and effectively. Let’s dig in.

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RESOURCES:

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Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving

The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving

The Ball Jar Store – Jars, Appliances, Accessories

National Center for Home Food Preservation (uga.edu)

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