Pressure Cookers 101....35º

By now all of you know that we have been pressure canning for the past two days...I've written about preparing the jars, boning and chunking the meat...But how many of you know about pressure cookers...Oh yes everyone has heard that they explode!..Horror stories abound...The only "real" stories I've heard have happened because of human error... Pressure cookers have to be monitored...You don't put them on the stove, crank up the heat and retire to the living room to catch the latest segment of your soap opera...Yes under these circumstances given enough time it will probably explode....That said I will proceed.

80 year old canner

My Dad bought my Mom a pressure canner in the early 30's shortly after they were married... She used it regularly over the next 60 years...Canning everything from garden vegetables to meat...Her canner is a "Peerless 18 quart" cast aluminum, weighs 21 pounds...18 quart means it will hold 18 liquid quarts but only 7 quart jars for canning or it will hold 16+ pints (small mouth or wide mouth) by stacking one layer on top of the other...Mom finally, after many painstaking years of teaching me, in my late forties, how to use it properly, sent it home with me...She had lovingly cared for it all those years...It definitely shows signs of wear but it has all it parts and even some spare parts if needed...In all those years of use it never exploded, just sat on the stove quietly hissing away, keeping a constant pressure for the required time...I can't begin to count the number of jars that have been processed, so lets say "hundreds".... In the past two days Herb and I did 60 wide mouth pints of turkey and elk to fill the cellar shelves and later they will be used for soups, stews, casseroles and a myriad of other delectable dishes...I use it once or twice a year only for canning broth, meat including tuna, chicken, turkey, elk and venison and my homemade chile.

30 year old canner

I have a smaller pressure canner given to me by a friend (she was moving and couldn't keep it)...It is a smaller, lighter model has a jiggler on top and will hold 7 quart jars full of broth...It speeds up our canning process to have two canners, as the processing time, bringing up to pressure and cooling down can take over two hours for each batch....Now you know why it has taken us two days just to do the actual canning part...I would love to hear about your canning experience or if you have questions leave a comment below....Hugs....OWAV:)