Using a pressure canner for cooking

I saw Dave at the Mesquite convention center this morning. He suggested I email you my question. Your canning book is my bible for all my home canning ideas. My question is: Do you ever use your pressure canner for cooking instead of canning? Have you thought about writing an article on cooking in a pressure cooker? If you do, do you have any recipes to share?

Latricia Self
Dallas, Texas

Sorry Latricia, but I don’t use my pressure canner for cooking. I’m just never in that much of a hurry or if I am, I just open a couple of my canned foods. I guess I’m an old slow-food cook and just love my slow-simmered stews or oven roasted poultry and roasts. Any readers out there with tips and recipes for Latricia? — Jackie

Canning apple cider and collard greens

A late congratulations on your marriage. I am sure that you and Will will have a happy and prosperous marriage. I would like to ask you a couple canning questions: 1) Is it possible to can apple cider? I know you can home can apple juice but I am unsure of apple cider. 2) Is it possible to can collard greens? I have been unable to find anything on doing that.

I enjoy your canning and growing book, plus your book Starting Over. You have blessed canners and gardeners very much, and I thank you.

Robin W.
Sumter, South Carolina

Yes you can home can apple cider. Just use the directions for apple juice. But once heated and canned it isn’t really “cider” anymore, but apple juice. Cider is a raw product where apple juice is heated and canned.

Yes you can also can collard greens. Look on page 144 of my canning book and you’ll find directions for canning all types of greens. They are very good canned.

Thanks for the congratulations. We enjoy each and every day together and are getting so much done every month that it’s unbelievable. And I thank you for your kind words. I truly love helping folks with all aspects of their homestead life. — Jackie

5 COMMENTS

  1. I advise having at least two to four pressure cookers. 2 are for canning. One tall one and one short. Then stainless steel pressure cookers for cooking. I have a kuhn and am going to try an electric, but don’t have it yet. Cooking under pressure is great! :)

  2. I cook short ribs and corned beef and cabbage in my pressure cooker. I find the pressure cooker makes the meat more tender and juicy than slow cooking it all day long. I just follow instructions that came with my pressure cooker (I have an all-american).

  3. Lorna Sass has at least 2 pressure cooker books called Cooking Under Pressure & Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure. I use them a lot in the winter.

  4. Jackie I have to disagree with your definitions on apple cider and apple juice. We owned an apple orchard for 30 years. Here is the definitions we always used. Apple Juice is the juice of one variety of apples, but may contain no more than 2 varieties. Apple Cider is a combination of many different varieties of apples. Heating the cider dies not change the fact it has many different varieties. The best cider was equal part of sweet and tart than an extra dose of sweet. Hope this clears this up.

  5. I have a funny story to tell about “cooking”in a pressure canner. When I was first married, many years ago, my husband harvested bushels of dandilion green for ME to put up. Due to the large amount of greens I deciced to cook them down in my large pressure canner. I knew enough not to seal the lid but I was in a hurry so I just put the lid on whopperjawed so the canner wouldn’t seal and build up pressure. The strawberries were ready so I thought I would pick a few while the greens were boiling down. Well I was picking away when my young daughter came screaming out of the house ” the canner exploded!” Needless to say I hurried back to the kitchen to find Neptunes Den. Greens were spewing from the vent in the lid. The lid had slipped and sealed! Greens were everywhere, even hanging from the cieling. What a job to clean. And what a good laugh I had after the clean up.

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