*can it!

A week or so ago, I was sharing with you about my water bath canning experiences and I promised you that I would also share my first time pressure canning experience as well!  My dear husband has spent quite a bit of time researching pressure cookers/canners a while back and so we made the investment and purchased the 30 qt All American Pressure Cooker. I LOVE IT!

Let me back up just a little here and give you a bit of history. If you have been reading long enough you may recall that my parents were spring and fall gardeners. We processed and stored much of what came from the garden each season. We never had a pressure cooker that I can recall. I have always had a fear of a pressure canner due to talk that was heard around the big farm house in Southeast Georgia where my grand parents lived.  My mother had stories of when she was a young girl having seen peas all over the ceiling of their home, due to an exploded pressure cooker. So as you can imagine there was a bit of fear dancing around in me as we started to can our first jars of veggies a few weeks ago. 

We have canned 30 quarts of potatoes.  Early this spring we planted 75+ pounds of potatoe seeds and reaped quite a harvest. We have not purchased potatoes since that time.  We still have quite a stock, but many of them are starting to get "eyes" on them.  In order to continue our potatoe stock, we are slicing off the "eyes" with a portion of the potatoe, and planting them in our fall garden.  The other portion of the potatoes have been peeled, cubed and canned.   These can be used for potatoe salad, breakfast potatoes, mashed potatoes, stewed potatoes, or even in soups. 

 Yeh, so it is easy to see why there must be some care taken in order to properly use a pressure cooker. It isn't like throwing a pot of water on to boil with a boil control in the pot (*wink Franziska), but more like specific things that have to be done, which are NOT hard to do.   I encourage you, if you have a pressure cooker read the manual that came with it, and get busy following each step closely while you start canning with confidence.

As the pot started to heat up to the proper temperature, and pressure, these labels on the pot are staring your right in the eye.  These labels are not to be removed (per the All American company).  Listen when I say, it is really simple to can and even more safe in the newer pressure cookers that are now equipped with the safety pressure valve in case something goes haywire. 

We are looking forward to canning other things from our fall garden this year.  So, what have you canned lately?