Comments on: My Birthday Present: A Pressure Canner

By: Kendra at New Life On A Homestead

Kendra at New Life On A Homestead — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:12:15 +0000

Leanna- The Ball Blue Book is THE book you need to start off with! I'm also looking at getting Jackie Clay's book on canning.

By: Leanna

Leanna — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:57:24 +0000

Kendra,

Do you have a canning book that you would recommend? I’m dying to get to canning this summer!!!

Thanks!
LeAnna

By: Kendra at New Life On A Homestead

Kendra at New Life On A Homestead — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:38:57 +0000

Yeah, I’d LOVE to have an outdoor kitchen!!!!

By: Ann

Ann — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:55:12 +0000

when the current electric stove breaks, replace it with a propane stove. Propane lasts a long time. I would use the stove I had until it broke. The turkey fryer idea didn’t sound bad either. You need to see the canning dvd from homestead blessings. they had an outdoor kitchen they canned in!! so cool!

By: Lanna

Lanna — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:27:36 +0000

Oh, and typically the problem you’ll see with glass top stoves is that the size of the largest burner will be a little bit smaller than your canner. So the element/connecter that sends the heat to the actual burner may end up underneath your very hot canner. And the connection part isn’t exactly heat-rated or some such thing.

Oh, up here though, propane isn’t cheap. An empty tank is $35-$40 to buy. If you get it filled at a gas station, it’s whatever the going rate for propane is, like $2-$2.50/gallon last I checked this summer? Or you can do the switcheroo thing at the grocery store or whatever, but we like having our own tank that we fill up ourselves and only gets dented by us.

By: Lanna

Lanna — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 06:57:12 +0000

What kind of stove (brand/model) do you have? I’ve canned (have you seen my pantry at some point) tons of stuff over the years on my flattop. My [engineer] hubby kept telling me we were fine, so if my stove exploded/cracked, I could blame it on him and get a new stove.

And you just don’t move it when it’s full. Put it on the burner, fill it up, let it do it’s thing, let it cool, repeat as need be.

We do have a camp stove to use outside.
My problems with it though?
I can’t use a propane burner inside (well, I don’t want to risk the house blowing up).
I have kids that run around the yard. And don’t always look where they’re going. Yours may be different – mine are…. exuberant.
Pressure canning actually takes longer for me outside because of the breezes and wind going on out there, plus you have farther to travel to adjust the pressure/heat since you need to keep it away from the house. Harder to keep the heat even with stuff like that.