Is canning bad for an electric stove?

[combo52]

Canning on Electric ranges

Well stated Tom as usual.

 

It is a shame that range manufacturers have pussy-footed around this issue of the best and safest use of electric stove surface elements for decades. The so-called canning element was just one more attempt to satisfy consumers when they complained of damaged elements and cook-tops to pass on the manufacturers responsibility to explain how there range elements should be used.

 

They need to explain in plain language that the element is not to be run red hot, and if a significant portion of the element turns red turn it down and don't use that pot again, give it someone with a gas range, LOL.

 

No ribbed canners should ever be used on any electric range, except induction tops where I can attest they work great.

 

[kenmoreguy89]

Automatic pastorization/sterilization canning machines.....

Widely available in italy......
But cannot help but think that casserole and stove do the same thing....I would not spend money for a machine that do the exact thing I can do with a pot of boiling water over a stove....

http://www.pagineprezzi.it/cucina_e_arte_della_tavola.htm?marks=Weck

 

[mixfinder]

Oven

My grandma canned in the oven in a water bath with the oven temperature set at 250.  She processed nearly the same as on top of the stove.  I still prefer the taste, texture and ease of freezing most produce.

 

[hunter]

canning instructions

The book in the attached link is one of the bibles for canners. It's got great tips techniques and recipes for all kinds of preserving, even including canning nuts.

It's done by the University of Georgia.

PLEASE don't risk things that are 'no no' now - like oven canning.

http://setp.uga.edu/

 

[vintagekitchen]

Oven Canning and Other No Longer Approved Methods

I do oven canning every year, just like my aunt did. I have a Good Housekeeping cookbook just like hers from the 50s with the time table for oven canning everything, even meats and vegetabes. She canned everything in the oven, however, I only use oven canning for high acid items like fruits and tomatoes. No water bath canner will ever hold as much as an oven, and I have eaten the stuff all my life with no illness from it.

I do pressure can vegetable like beans and such, not because I think oven or water bath would be unsafe, but because the times are so much faster in the pressure canner, which equals less heat being in my house than a water bath canner or an oven on for hours and hours in mid-August.

I do feel meat is probably safer pressure canned, but growing up I ate plenty of water bath canned chili, vegetable beef soup, venison, and such, with no ill affect.

I do not process jam jelly or pickles other than pouring the boiling product into a jar, putting on a boiled lid, and turning the jar upside down. Yes, open kettle method. I do the same for fruits and tomatoes if I only have 2 or 3 jars worth to do.

Sourkraut, pickled corn, pickled beans, and a few other pickle recipes are not sealed at all. They continue to ferment in the jar, getting stronger with age. These are the old style recipes that rely on a fermentation process rather than vinegar for the sourness and preservation. Nothing is crisper. (Gramma used big crocks in her younger days for those, I am not feeding as many peple as she did. as years went on she started making them in jars.)

I still can sausage like gramma as well. Fry the sausage till done, put in a boiled jar, pour in the sizzling hot grease, put on a boiled lid, and turn the jar upside down. Never been sick from that either, and modern books say it is sure death.

I'm not advising anyone else to use the methods I do for canning, but I do want to sort of defend others who do so. An impeccably clean kitchen, proper time for the method used, and careful examination of contents are very important if using old methods like my family does. It also probably helps if one is taught these methods from childhood rather than attempting them on their own for the first time.

Modern methods are probably more bulletproof, but i prefer the ease and speed of my methods, and I cannot stand a water bathed pickle, no matter what the modern books say, in my opinion that "breif water bath to insure sterility" ruins the pickle.

 

[danemodsandy]

All I Can Say Is....

My late partner was from a small town in North Carolina, where he'd go to visit occasionally.  He was often gifted with home-canned goods, which I would have nothing to do with.  My expressed concerns (hey, you're trusting someone with your life, and I'd had a bad experience with a relative's canned stuff) were met with lip-curling disdain.

 

Eventually, one present made him quite ill, which was pretty rough on him.  After that, he tried to decline peoples' little offerings, which caused some hurt feelings, so he eventually began accepting them again, then threw them out as soon as he got home. 

 

It only takes once. 

 

[combo52]

Home Canning

I have been around it all my life, as a child I would go to my Grand Mothers house in Pennsylvania for a week during the summers and help in the garden and watch her can some of the 600 quarts of food she was known for doing every year, all on a 1952 WH 40" range and all water bath canned.

 

The year  I was born my father came home with a new CO-OP upright freezer when my Mother really wanted an automatic washer. But my Mom put it to good use and froze all sorts of fruits and vegetables that we used all year long. She also canned many things like tomatoes that could more easily canned in a water bath canner with some degree of safety.

 

I still freeze and can some items every year, I like frozen corn [ we blanch it and cut it off the cob and we get it into the freezer within a few hours from the time it leaves the field ] I also like all kinds of frozen fruits. I do still can tomatoes and green beans and I PRESSURE CAN EVERYTHING it is not only much safer but also faster and uses less energy. I just canned a bushel of tomatoes last weekend, I had two of the Mirro-Matic Pressure Canners going at the same time, the larger one got the 1/2 gallon mason jars and the other got the quart jars was done doing 20 quarts in less than two hours.