A 21 quart pressure canner has taken up residence in my kitchen.
I am equal parts excited and intimidated.
Excited for obvious reasons — for one thing, I can stop freezing my chicken stock. I either freeze it in plastic bags or quart jars, but the plastic bags are hard to freeze into flat shapes in my freezer, and I keep breaking the quart jars. Besides that, there’s the added inconvenience of forgetting to defrost it until I’m in the middle of a recipe! (This is one kind of thing I’m trying to address through my 2013 attempt at mindfulness, but in the meantime I can’t change my spots.) And in addition to canning chicken stock, I can process tomatoes (or anything, really) in about a third of the time, and hopefully I can also process things like soups and chili. And if I get really ambitious, I can even can my own smoked salmon, Kilcher-style. This gives me a lot more options for preserving my own food than a hot water bath canner will, though I think I will continue to use both, particularly because the hot water bath canner used to belong to my mother and therefore it has nostalgic properties.
But I am also intimidated:
And rightfully so, I think. The scene in Pirates of the Caribbean where they talk about how pirate code is really more a series of guidelines describes pretty well my basic approach to life in general, so it’s going to take some serious focus and self-discipline to make sure I feel comfortable operating this thing, especially for the first time. I don’t think I know anyone who uses a pressure canner, either, so I’m going to be flying solo here.
I have a lot of frozen strawberries that need a purpose in life, so their destiny this weekend is to become strawberry jam. I actually am not sure the pressure canner is the best method for preserving jam, so I may try it out as a water bath canner in the meantime. (It obviously doubles as both.)
Isn’t it beautiful? It’s the kind of equipment I expect to keep — and use — for the rest of my life. Maybe someday I’ll hand it down to Will!
It also serves as a visual representation of how differently I [strive to] live now vs. a year or so ago. I have been making my own stock for a long time and started canning here and there about two years ago, but I don’t think I even knew what a pressure canner was or why I would want to use one until more recently. Now, though, I think it’ll be an indispensable part of my kitchen arsenal.
This thing looks like it means business, too, which makes me feel like I have taken a very large step in my journey toward a quasi-self-sufficient-productive home. I just hope I don’t incur any bodily injuries or cause any explosions along the way!
January 25, 2013 at 7:16 pm
I’ve spent years watching my mom use her pressure cooker/canner (or rather listening to the pressure releaser
No explosions or disasters in the past 30+ years. A while back I looked into canning soups (with meat) b/c I was getting tired of freezing the soup that I make ALL THE TIME. It seemed likeevery on-line source warned against (and I THINK it was pressure canning that I was looking into). Then I took a microbiology course and that basically freaked me out. So let me know what you find out canning soups and chilis! I’d be so excited to find out it’s possible!
January 25, 2013 at 8:18 pm
Well, you can’t use a water bath canner to process meats or low-acid vegetables — I have the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and it talks about canning soup bases and things like that, but with a pressure canner. So it’s definitely possible! Just not with the water bath method.