HELP - Canners I need advice - have stuff in jars & a problem

M

music-city-missy

Well-known member
So I am on this kick right? Well I got a deal on a Fagor pressure cooker/canner back around Christmas and now I want to can. It's like a 12 quart or better size.

Well I have 4 quarts of stuff I need to pressure can and guess what, the quart jars won't fit in the wire rack. The fit with a little room in between but not much and there's still a couple of inches from the tops to the rim of the pan.

Can I use this size jar in there? Can I do this without the wire rack?

 
Yes, I was a bit concerned about that too. I use the bottom plate from my pressure cooker in the

pot that I use for the water bath. It's more stable than other racks as it is quite solid. But I don't use the pressure cooker for canning.

In fact, the reason I first went to Gail's years ago was to ask if anyone had used the plastic microwave canning containers. I just loved them and could can individual leftover bits without all the mess of a huge bunch of canning. They were very reliable but I read that there were problems with them blowing up. I had wondered if the blowups were caused by misuse. I would love to use them again.

Anyone heard of these things??

 
I remembered, or at least I think I do, my grandmother using an old rag so ....

so far so good - doing it on the side burner outside so if something does go wrong plus trying to keep as much heat outside as possible.

The book is pitiful!

 
I currently use a round cake rack that fits perfectly on the bottom of my big pot. . .

but I have also used the folded-clean-dishtowel trick and it works just fine. You could also get some hardware cloth and nail it to a couple pieces of thin wood and use this for your rack. Or just stack a couple of rounds of the hardware cloth to use as s rack. These racks are ones I have used to Boiling-water bath can.

 
I think my grandmother did the same! Good luck!

You maybe could check Ball Canning jar site or Agricultural Extention in your state.

 
Will a round cake cooling rack fit in the bottom? You can use anything metal to separate the jars

from each other, like flatware or rings, crossed knives (make a grid out of them.) I can't imagine if it was sold as a 12 quart canner that qt jars wouldn't fit. Are there illustrations in the booklet?

 
What a simple solution to a problem that I have had when canning not at my house.

I used crumpled up aluminum foil, but a dishcloth sounds so much simpler. Thanks for a great tip. Here is the Ball Canning site for a lot of helpful, up to date recipes and techniques.

HomeCanning.com

http://www.homecanning.com/index.asp

 
Alert! Alert! You cannot safely use a pressure cooker as a pressure canner UNLESS. . . .

the pressure cooker has a way to adjust the pressure in the canner, via different weights or a gauge.

You CAN use your pressure cooker as a boiling-water bath canner.

If you wish to pressure can, as a Master Food Preserver, I strongly suggest to NOT use your Fagor Pressure Cooker as a Pressure canner. If it is like my Fagor, you do not know what pressure weight it is cooking at and thus you do not know what pressure it might be able to pressure can at. A pressure canner allows you to adjust for altitude so that foods will be safe for consumption. To my knowledge the Fagor does not allow you to do this

Go and get yourself a proper pressure canner if you wish to can low-acid fruits and/or vegetables or meats and combo foods and the like

 
I use a folded dish towel in a stock pot

to do water bath canning. My canning kettle is a 32-quart pot with a wore rack, and I only use that when I have a large number of pint or quart jars to process.
Otherwise, I put a folded towel in the bottom of my stock pot, add jars and water and boil.

 
If your fagor has the multiple weight/weights, you can call your Agricultural Extension office . . .

and find out what your elevation is and then go to the USDA site and find the appropriate poundage/time for what you need to can. Please, it is better to be safe than sorry.

As for your Grandmother's green beans, if she pressure canned them, they will taste different than the ones you just cook forever or freeze and cook forever. Pressure canned beans are cooked at a higher temperature than can be achieves with open stove-top cooking. Maybe that is the difference?

 
Thanks - this is a Combination Pressure Cooker/Canner but read more inside...

but thanks for the warning. I had wanted to can for years but didn't because I didn't have a pressure canner. This one has several settings and came with all the canning accessories and instructions - the instructions were just VERY weak and kept saying to refer to the instructions on the jars/lids/recipe. Gee thanks Fagor! But it did include about half a dozen different canning recipes that I could sort of compare to what I was doing. The low setting is supposed to be 10# and the high 15# and living in Nashville I shouldn't really have to worry much about altitude variations.

Also - just so you know, I am doing a very short term test on these green beans. I have never gotten any green beans to turn out when cooked like the ones that my grandmother pressure canned. I can cook the devil out of them, freeze them and cook the devil out of them, etc. and they still just aren't the same. I think it has to do with the canning so I am going to pop them open in just a few days and cook down to see what they come out like. So do you think that I am safe - it appears to have pulled a good seal.

Then if I have success, I might invest in a real canner.

 
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