How to Use a Steam Pressure Canner

Steam pressure canners were once a mainstay of the American kitchen that has since fallen to the wayside in the march toward cheap canned meats and vegetables you can pick up at your local supermarket at a buy-one-get-one sale. As more and more people begin to realize the benefits of foods that you process in your own home, however, steam pressure canning has begun to see a bit of a renaissance. When you process and preserve your own foods, you skip the bad-for-you aspects of canned supermarket foods such as extremely high levels of sodium, preservatives and chemical additives.

This type of food processing and preserving cannot be done at the same temperatures that you use to preserve jellies and jams in hot water canning. In fact, steam pressure canning is the only method that the USDA says is safe to preserve low-acid foods such as red meat, vegetables, poultry and seafood. This is because no other heating method is able to attain temperatures above 212 degrees safely- a temperature level too low to kill many of the bacteria that can contaminate low-acid foods. These foods are the ones most notorious for growing botulism, a bacteria that you can neither see, smell, nor taste, making it an extremely dangerous bacteria.

Place the steam pressure canner on your stove and fill it to 1/2 full with water. Place a jar retrieval basket in the bottom of the canner. To get started, boil the water in the canner while you prepare the food you intend to process.

Using a steam pressure canner is actually quite easy. Begin by washing the food you intend to preserve thoroughly. This goes for all vegetables and meats, too. Refer to the UGA's National Center for Home Food Preservation for specific instructions regarding preserving recipes for meats and vegetables to prepare the food for preservation. When the food is placed in its jars, seal the lid of the jar with a lid and a band.

Place the jars into the jar retrieval basket in the bottom of the steam pressure canner, and then secure the locking lid in place. There is a small valve just behind the heat/pressure gauge of the canner. This valve opens when there is excessive pressure in the canner. If it opens during processing, the food will not be spoiled. Simply turn off the heat under the canner and allow the excess heat to bleed off by itself. The pressure will bleed off the canner. When it reaches 0 pressure, press the valve back into place and heat up the canner again. Continue processing times for the canner when the pressure indicator reaches the desired heat/pressure levels for the food product you are canning.

After the allotted processing time, remove the canner from the heat and allow the pressure to return to 0. When it does, open the canner up and remove the processed jars to a towel in an area where they will not be disturbed. Allow them to cool completely before handling them. If the seal was successful, you will see that the center of the can lid is slightly indented. If it is upraised, then the jar did not seal properly.

Read through the specific instructions included with your canner before attempting to process food products such as meat and wild game. The processing times for these products can vary greatly.