My responses are below but I just wanted to take a moment and thank you
George and all you other very kind and knowledgeable people for taking
the time to help me. So few people anymore seem to appreciate the
merits of preserving your own food. I've had people look at me like I
was stark raving mad when I told them I was canning. Yet I have such
fond memories of helping my grandmother can, make jam, etc. To me,
there are few things more satisfying than hearing those little pings as
my jars seal.

In article >,
George Shirley > wrote:

> Isabella Woodhouse wrote:
[...]
> > We're all electric, no gas service at all. I have a glass-top range and
> > I do recall that adjusting the pressure was difficult. I may well have
> > heated on too high a range setting and then overcorrected to bring down
> > the pressure. I recall doing peaches (halves) and that the jars lost
> > half their liquid so I had to just open them all. Never had anything
> > like that happen with BWB. The canner is a Presto with a dial gauge.

> Many glass-top ranges have a prohibition for canning pots, just too
> heavy for them. The process of over correcting that you described can
> cause liquid loss. The idea is to have a smooth, steady climb to desired
> pressure and to start cutting back the heat a little ahead of time.

Yes, I did read all the range instructions and it does explicitly say
that canning is all right as long as the canner is a perfect flat
bottom. So my suspicions were on target regarding overcorrecting the
heat. Do you have any suggestions as to what might be better to
practice on? Are some things easier to pressure can than other things?

> > We have an outdoor grill with a 15,000 BTU side burner so I was thinking
> > maybe I could try using that for pressure canning. But, since it gets
> > pretty hot here and it's very sunny out there, it would likely take a
> > lot longer for the canner to cool down out there unless I got it into
> > the house. But I fear that would be way too much moving around. Right?

> If you can move the grill into a shady spot (that's what I do with mine)
> then I wouldn't worry too much about moving the canner into the house.
> It's best to NOT do too much moving of the pot until it has cooled down.
> I think some of the canners on this newsgroup do use propane stoves
> outdoors to do the work, maybe some will chime in.

There is no shade on my deck until early evening when I'm too tired to
start such a project. I'll have to talk to my husband and see if we can
find a solution for this problem. I'm so glad you told me to not be
moving the pot around too much. On the stove inside, I can just glide
it to the other side to cool down.

> >> Once I turn the heat off the pressure starts to drop and, within twenty
> >> minutes or less, the gauge reads zero. At that stage you can remove the
> >> top. At that point I do something our old home ec agent in Texas taught
> >> us, toss a tea towel over the top and let it sit five more minutes.
> >
> > If I may ask, what is the purpose of the towel?

> The home extension agent says it helps to control last minute liquid
> loss by keeping the canner from venting too much heat at the last
> minute. I just started doing it years ago and it seems to work.

Ah ha! Thanks for the great tip.
[...]
> > I've been very fortunate with BWB canning. But it would be nice to feel
> > even more secure and be able to can a greater variety of things. My
> > chicken broth takes up entirely too much freezer space, for instance.

> Yeah, I've got a couple of gallons of chicken broth in the freezer right
> now and it's not even soup weather. You can always use the pressure
> canner but take your time, do each step properly, watch the pressure
> gauge and keep the heat and pressure about right. When we had an
> electric stove I learned just when to cut the heat control back to
> control the pressure, you can too. Once you learn you can do it right it
> builds your self-confidence and it becomes easier. I had to learn how to
> control the heat all over again when we got the gas stove.

I appreciate the encouragement because I feared maybe it just could not
be done on a glass-top or that I was not up to the task. That peach
failure really put a dent in my self-confidence. This is the first
electric stove I've ever had and it sure has taken me awhile to get used
to it.

> ...NOTE: do have your pressure gauge tested annually for accuracy,
> some state extension services can have this done for you at a nominal
> fee. I'm lucky in that this is a heavy industry area and there's a
> gauge shop just down the road a bit. They do mine for free.

We have a pretty good extension service here though not as good as the
one back in Ohio. They do test dial gauges so that is not a concern.
[...]
> >> Oh yeah, none of the food I can has ever become mushy from the canning.
> >> YMMV
> >
> > Well that is certainly good to know. BTW, since I started freezing my
> > green beans on cookie sheets and then vacuum sealing them, they are just
> > ever so much better than the old way of packing them into boxes. The
> > only shell beans we get from the garden are black-eyed peas. And we
> > gobble all those up fresh so there's never any left to preserve.
>
> I haven't tried the green beans that way since we have a small freezer.
> Last year I pressure canned more than forty pint jars of green beans.
> One pint is just right for a meal for the two of us. Good luck with your
> canning and you can always come back to this crew and ask questions.

Oh I will... you can bet on that. And by the way, I found one of the
book references on pressure canning that made me think it reduced the
quality. The book is Blue-Ribbon Preserves by Linda Amendt (2001). And
on page 36 she says:

"Because of the extremely high temperatures reached under pressure, the
natural color, texture and flavor of high-acid preserved foods is often
destroyed if they are processed in a pressure canner. To preserve their
quality, high-acid preserved foods, such as fruit and tomatoes, should
only be processed in a water bath canner."

There are only a few pressure canner recipes in her book so maybe she
just doesn't have that much experience with pressure canning. Thanks
again,

Isabella
--
"I will show you fear in a handful of dust"
-T.S. Eliot