Pressure Cookers

[xraytech]

So, what brand pressure cooker would be reccomended.
I'm thinking most likely an 8 qt size. I don't want to spend a lot on one.

I was considering a Fagor model but it only does 7 lb and 15 lb of pressure.
Not sure if it would matter if I canned meat at 15 lb instead of 10?

 

[luxflairguy]

Buy the Fagor!

I too have been following the PC posts here and also did see the Cooks Illustrated TV show on PBS. My library had the CI pressure cooker cookbook and after looking through it, I bought the 8 qt. Fagor PC and have been very happy. I've had great success with risotto and even did the roasted chicken recipe to great success. A long time friend has both the 6 and 8 qt. Fagor's and is using them on his portable induction burner and loves them. He's had PC's for many years. I'm a novice... My 2 cents! Greg

 

[tomturbomatic]

If you are going to can in quart jars, you need the height of the 12 or 16 quart canners. If you are canning in pints, you can get by with a smaller cooker. I have used the 8 qt Mirro for overflow from the 16 quart canners. I think it holds 3 or 4 quart jars, but it is the old style from the 50s. I don't know if Mirro makes an 8 quart pressure cooker/canner now. I guess it depends on how much canning you plan on doing. It's one thing if you have a large, air conditioned area for canning and something else entirely different if you don't. Our grandmothers and their children went through hell putting up produce.

 

[iheartmaytag]

Our grandmothers and their children went through hell

Can you imagine on a woodstove in a one room cabin? Grandma had to can at night, because she had to borrow the canner from her neighbor and have it back in time for the neighbor to do her canning the next morning.

These were depression and then WWII times. Grandma didn't have her own Kettle and later a Pressure cooker, until the 60s or 70s. She didn't have an automatic washer until 1974, never owned a dryer, hated the gas range because it didn't cook like her woodstove.

 

[norgeway]

Re vintage canning!

My Maternal grandparents raised a huge garden, had hogs and chickens, and canned EVERYTHING on the 1934 Majestic woodstove in a Revere copper washboiler, my Aunt and my Mother remembered how hot it was in August and September with that huge boiler on the stove boiling away, Mother said it was there job to bring in wood, She said it would hold 16 quart jars, and to can green beans or corn you had to boil them 3 hours, just like Dons Mother does now,My Mother said the house was so hot at night you couldn't sleep at all, many nights they slept on the poarch...you have to remember ,they didn't get electricity until 1938, when Mother was 9 years old, and didn't have a electric range until 1954.Hog killing time wasn't so bad, because you had to do that in cold weather, but vegetables had to be done in HOT North Carolina summer...HUMID HOT Summer!!!!

 

[tomturbomatic]

I had an elderly teacher for algebra who graded in red ink. He described poor tests as looking "like a south Georgia hog killing."

That wood stove had to be stoked pretty hot to keep that wash boiler full of water at a rolling boil. I've always thought the expression, "hotter than the hinges of hell" was a graphic and accurate description of a very hot kitchen. I guess the alliteration helps. I heard of people who used a wood stove in a tin-roofed shed, maybe like a wash house, for canning to keep the horrible extra heat out of the house when there was already too much heat in there.

 

[iheartmaytag]

Some of the old houses in Illinois where I lived had summer kitchens that were away from the main house where the canning, baking, cooking was done to keep the heat out of the main house.

The house my Mom was raised in was just a two room, dirt floor, log cabin. The amazing part is my Grandmother raised 17 children in that cabin. Mom said they would take their bedding and sleep outside during the summer where it was cooler.

I didn't mention, Grandma canned in gallon jars for that size family. Now that's a lot of Peeling, Snapping, stuffing and boiling. Not to mention they had to haul their water a mile from the spring.

 

[tomturbomatic]

It is amazing and humbling to think of how hard our parents and grandparents worked to make a better life for the successive generations of their families and how hard their lives were.

 

[dustin92]

My Mom has always canned tomatoes the same way her mother did- boil the tomatoes (along with onions, celery, and green pepper) for 45 minutes to an hour, then boil the lids and rings, and put the jars in a sink full of scalding water. Put in jars, lid, ring, and set on a towel to cool. No one has ever been sickened to my knowledge, and they are delicious. We may lose a jar or two some years, if they unseal, look funny, or smell bad, they are thrown out. Most recently we just run the jars in the dishwasher on sanitize and heated dry, and use from there. My "Grandma" also does them the same way, and cans green beans and applesauce via hot water bath. We also do jams and jellies occasionally and those are not water bathed, just sealed and left to cool. Have not lost a jar of properly made jelly yet. Did lose a whole batch of sugar free grape jelly a few years ago though.

 

[iheartmaytag]

They (The U.S.D.A) cautions using the water bath method on low acid canning, even tomatoes are cautioned since their acidity has decreased with new varieties.

Just because no one has gotten sick is from luck, not policy. Because we cannot see or taste Botulism, we do not know when it is present; so we must assume it is there in all items and process them accordingly.

Having always done it and not gotten sick, is like the man that never wears a seatbelt and has never been killed in a wreck. He may be lucky all the rest of his days, or could meet the guy running a red light at the next corner.

 

[iheartmaytag]

In reply 22 I mentioned a one room cabin, and in 25 I said a two room.  I am not making up stories, my mother corrected me.  They had two rooms as they counted the loft where the kids slept as a second room.  I actually have a picture of that cabin over my mantel now.   

 

This picture was made from a small about 3x3 black & white photo,.  A few years ago my Aunt had a woman in their home town, Eldon, MO paint a full size picture and colorize it.  My Mom liked the picture so much that my uncle had it copied and then I had it framed for my mother.  

 

 

[this post was last edited: 9/10/2015-21:36]

 

[retro-man]

Both sides of my grandparents had farms for cattle chickens and of course large gardens. Both did a lot of canning. Each of them had an extra wood stove out in the backyard along with another table. All canning cooking and baking was done outside in the summer to keep the heat out of the house. As a small child it was fun to keep adding wood to the fire to keep the kettles boiling.

Jon