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If your freezer is so full you are using duct tape to keep it from springing open, and you still have a jam packed vegetable garden, a dozen salmon and you are about to go moose hunting, you may want to consider canning as another way to preserve all that food.

Unfortunately, the boiling water method of canning featured in last month’s food column won’t do for these low acid foods. If you want to preserve anything other than high acid items such as fruits, jellies, mustard, pickles or certain tomato products, then you need to bite the bullet and learn to use a pressure canner — or else risk poisoning from deadly bacterial botulism spores that boiling water canning doesn’t destroy. The only way to reach the 240 degrees that will knock them out is to use pressure canning. Don’t know if it is high or low acid? The canning recipe will tell you whether to use a boiling water bath or pressure canning.z

Everyone has a horror story about pressure cookers or canners, always involving flying lids, spewing food and glass shards and people forever disfigured by clouds of steam that chased them through three rooms and melted their skin. If you pin these rumor-mongers down, however, the catastrophe has almost always happened to someone else’s best friend’s mother. Personally witnessed events involve lots of noise, some cracked jars and a bit of flying food, but not much else. A mess to clean up, for sure, but hardly the stuff of nightmares.

Pressure canning is not exactly easy, but you don’t have to be Albert or Alberta Einstein either, and these days the equipment has redundant safety features. Pretty much the most that can happen is that the rubber pressure plug will pop off and you’ll watch in amazement as peas or asparagus or moose meat propels itself through the tiny hole. The lid will not shoot off and you won’t be blinded — unless you are dumb enough to put an eyeball to the now open pressure hole just to see how things look. When the water cools and the steaming stops, you’ll open the cooker to find jars cracked open and floating food, but that will be about the worst of it.

First, a few basics. Pressure cookers are not the same as pressure canners, the difference being primarily one of size. Pressure cookers always cook at 15 pounds of pressure; a canner allows 5, 10 or 15 pounds of pressure by adjusting the weight. The small volume of While a pressure cooker heats and cools too fast, which affects the recommended time for canning. Using a pressure cooker means that you may be under-processing your product. Use the equipment that is designed for canning, namely a pressure canner.

According to Roxie Dinstel, the Alaska Cooperative Extension guru of all things food related, “Sixteen quarts is about the break off point. Anything smaller than that, and usually they are smaller, and it is unsafe. The University of Wisconsin did some research recently and found that the smaller pressure cookers are generally okay for vegetables, but if you are preserving meat you definitely want a pressure canner.”

“But, really, to be safe I would stick to a pressure canner, and the nice thing about them is that they can also function as a pressure cooker. Mine is large enough to throw a rack of moose ribs in, which I could not do with a cooker.”

Pressure canners are no small investment. At Samson Hardware, which is my favorite place to go for canning supplies because the atmosphere there is so stereotypically Alaskan instead of homogenized, you can get a 23-quart aluminum canner for $111.99. There are other places in town that sell them also, and the prices are pretty similar. If you are looking for a larger size, say a 41-quart canner, you are going to spend in the $350 range and you will be lucky to find one.

When you go to buy a pressure canner, you have some choices to make. First, do you want hammered steel or aluminum? Roxie Dinstel cautions that a rolled aluminum canner, especially the larger sizes, can become extremely heavy. The empty pot is bad enough, but load in a bunch of quart jars filled with dense food into a lot of water, and your desire for doing mega-batches of canning may exceed your abilities to lift the canner off the stove burner. Heft a few sizes of both steel and aluminum before you make your decision.

You also have to decide if you want to use a dial gauge or a weighted gauge. The dial tells you the pressure level inside the canner and you adjust the heat under the canner to maintain the pressure at the level indicated in your recipe. Frankly, I don’t like the dial style because I have to stand around watching them; some people can walk away and remember to come back but I’ve learned that I am apt to forget what is going on so I need to stay close by. In addition, the dials have to be tested for accuracy before the start of each canning season. Cooperative Extension checks the gauges for the public for free, just call them to set up a time. However, it is still a pain.

I much prefer the old fashioned weighted gauge, where you have 5, 10 and 15 pound weights to select from, depending on what the recipe tells you to use. The steam causes the weight to rock when the correct pressure is reached, so once you hear that sound your job is to adjust the heat so that the rocking keeps going the required length of time. And weights don’t have to be adjusted each year, only replaced if damaged — and they are not easy to ruin.

Finally, you have to figure out if you want a rubber gasket or metal-to-metal seal. The disadvantage to a rubber seal, which is still my preference, is that it can corrode after many years of use or if stored incorrectly. However, a thin coating of petroleum jelly after the fall canning season will add years to the life of the ring, a trick Roxie Dinstel told me this week. Metal-to-metal means that if you get a nick or a dent in the lid or the pot’s seal, you will have to replace the damaged lid or bottom, or both. This is far more expensive than replacing rubber seals.

Pressure canners also always include a rack that needs to be put in the bottom before you add any cans or jars. This perforated disk makes sure the jars don’t sit on the bottom of the canner, which they could easily crack from being in direct contact with the red hot bottom of the pot.

Once you have the canner, the preparation is the same as hot water canning, in that you need canning jars and lids, a jar lifter to handle the hot jars, a canning funnel to fill the jars without creating a mess, and a non-metallic spatula.

You can use recycled canning jars, but not glass containers salvaged from the likes of Ragu spaghetti sauce. Whether you are using new or old jars, run your finger around the entire lip of each jar, checking for pits or nicks. If you feel anything, use that jar for something other than any type of canning.

Start by washing the jars and screw bands in soapy water or running them through a dishwasher. After that, the jars must be kept hot; if allowed to cool, they can crack when filled with something hot. This is best done by putting them in a pot of simmering (not boiling) water; most people I know just use the bottom of the pressure canner as a saucepan. There should be enough water that the jars are filled 2/3rds of the way, inside and out.

Occasionally, you will run across some low acid foods, such as fish, that need cold and not hot jars. However, most will need hot jars, even with cold raw vegetables, because they will be covered with hot liquid. Again, scrupulously follow the instructions in the recipe.

I urge you not to keep jars hot by putting them in the oven because this can damage the integrity of the glass. After last month’s article on boiling water canning, I received about a dozen indignant e=mails from folks who apparently use their ovens as jar incubators and have never had a problem. Well, more power to you, but when the Ball canning jar manufacturing company tells me I need to change my ways, I do.

The screw rings don’t need to be hot or even warm, but the flat lids do. Put them in a small pan of warm water and bring it to a simmer — not a boil!

Fill the jars one by one, using the jar lifter to remove each from the pot of simmering water just before you fill it. Pour the water from the inside of the jar back into the canner. Then set the jar on a towel or thick cutting board, so you don’t shock the bottom of the jar by putting it directly on a cold counter, and fill with the hot, prepared food. Pressure canned foods always need an inch of headspace, so don’t overfill the jars. You may need to use a ruler until you have done this long enough to eyeball the correct distance between the top of the food and the lids.

Remove any air bubbles by running a spatula around the inside of the jar a few times. Then clean of the top and the threads of the jar. If you are pressure canning meat or any other product (such as soup) that contains fat, use diluted vinegar when you wipe the jar rim. A damp cloth, while adequate for plain vegetables and so on, isn’t enough for meats. If you skip cleaning the rims, or you don’t use vinegar when you should, you risk having an insufficient seal. If the threads are dirty, you may have trouble removing the screw lid later.

Pull a flat lid out of the saucepan full of simmering water, shake off the excess water and carefully place the lid on the jar. Then apply the screw band to hold it down, turning until it is snug but not too tight. Over enthusiastic tightening can stop the jar from sealing correctly because it won’t be able to vent.

Use the jar lifter to put the filled jar back in the canner. Lift out the next empty jar and follow the same process, until all the jars are done and the canner is full. The canner should have 2 to 3 inches of water in the bottom of the canner when you start loading it. The water level will come up as you put filled jars in, and it may get up over the rings of the jar. No worry, they will still seal the same way. When we use the water bath canner, we rely on the water to convey the heat to the product inside the jars. In the pressure canner, we count on the steam to convey the heat.

Put on the pressure canner lid and lock it, and bring the water to a boil; if you are using a weighted gauge or a dead weight with the dial gauge, don’t put that on until 10 minutes after steam starts pouring out of the vent. After the dial gauge tells you or the rocking lets you know that the correct pressure has been reached, you can start counting the processing time. When you have met the time required by the recipe, remove the canner from the heat source and let is sit and cool.

When the pressure is back to zero, unlock the lid. Slowly open it, being careful to insure that the heat is going to come out the side of the pot that facing away from you. After the jars sit in the canner for about 10 more minutes, remove them.

Set the hot jars on kitchen towels or a wood cutting board located in an area without drafts. Don’t tilt them or you can disrupt the seal, and don’t try to wipe off the water on the top of the lid, as it will evaporate.

Leave them alone for 24 hours, then check carefully to see if there is an indentation in the center of the lid. This concave area indicates that the seal has taken; if there is no indentation, the seal is incomplete and you need to refrigerate and use the product or reprocess by starting at the beginning again and using a new flat lid.

As with boiling water canned products, for jars that have sealed, wipe down the jar and threads, label and store. Kept in a cool, dark location that is not very humid, the food will keep its good looks and taste for a year or more.

The sidebar contains a few easy recipes to try. Once you become familiar and confident with the process, you will find the prospect of spending a hot and busy Saturday canning your produce and game is a small price to pay for a storeroom full of food you harvested and processed yourself.

Linden Staciokas has gardened in the Interior for more than two decades. Send gardening questions to her at dorking@acsalaska.net.

Pressure Canning Recipes

Green Beans

Select tender, crisp pods. Remove and discard diseased and rusty pods. Wash beans and trim ends. Break or cut in one-inch pieces or leave whole.

Hot pack method: cover the beans with boiling water; boil 5 minutes. Pack hot beans into hot jars, leaving 1 inch headspace. Add 1 teaspoon salt to pints; 1 teaspoon to quarts, if desired. Fill jars to 1 inch from top with the boiling hot cooking liquid. Remove air bubbles. Wipe jar rims. Adjust lids and process as directed below.

Raw pack method: pack raw beans tightly into hot jars, leaving 1 inch headspace. Add 1 teaspoon salt to pints; 1 teaspoon to quarts, if desired. Fill jars to 1 inch from top with boiling water. Remove air bubbles. Wipe jar rims. Adjust lids and process.

Process in a Dial gauge pressure canner at 11 pounds pressure or in a weight gauge pressure canner at 10 pounds pressure; pints for 20 minutes, quarts for 25 minutes.

Fish

Cut the fish into jar length filets, or chunks. If the skin has been left on the fish, pack the fish with the skin side out.

Pack solidly into clean 1 pint jars, leaving 1 inch headspace. For most fish, no liquid, salt or spices need to be added, although seasonings or salt may be added for flavor (1/2 teaspoon salt per pint.)

For halibut, add up to 4 tablespoons of vegetable or olive oil per pint jar if you wish.

Clean the jar sealing edge with a damp paper towel; wipe with a dry paper towel to remove any fish oil. Attach jar lids and rings.

Process in a dial gauge pressure canner at 11 pounds pressure or in a weighted gauge pressure canner at 10 pounds pressure for 100 minutes.

(This recipe also works for canning chicken. Pack the chicken parts raw on the bone into a quart jar and can just like fish — no addition of liquid. Canning time is 90 minutes for quarts and you have a great fully cooked product that just falls off the bones when it is finished. And what a deal--one chicken will fill up a little more than 1 quart jar — depending on size of chicken— and it is much cheaper than those little $4 cans of poultry that are the size of tuna cans. It's also a great way to do game birds.)

Thanks for Roxie Dinstel of the Alaska Cooperative Extension for these recipes and directions, as well as for proofing the article itself.