pressure canning

Once you get your head around it, Pressure Canning is not as daunting as it sounds. It's a method worth learning and one that opens up a whole new world of preserving — meats, broths, soups, vegetables, legumes. Things you simply can't do with Water Bathing alone.

One thing to get straight from the start — a Pressure Canner is not a Pressure Cooker. Entirely different machines, entirely different purpose. A Pressure Canner is built specifically for safe food preservation and the two are not interchangeable.

We use a Presto 23 Quart Pressure Canner in the GoodLife kitchen and it works a treat. GoodLife Jars, Dome Seal Lids + Bands are made to handle the extreme temperatures of Pressure Canning — you can feel confident our products will do exactly what they're meant to.

What foods need Pressure Canning ~

The general rule is that low acid foods need to be either Water Bathed or Pressure Canned to destroy any potential botulism spores. Low acid foods have a pH higher than 4.6 and include vegetables, meats, broths, soups + stocks, seafood, some tomato products and legumes like chickpeas & beans.

Pressure Canning creates an environment that destroys harmful bacteria by heating the food and holding it at temperature for a specified time — anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours depending on what you're canning. All recipes we share are Tried & Tested in the GoodLife kitchen. If you're ever unsure about a specific food, canning groups + a good Google search are a great source of guidance.

How To Pressure Can ~

Place your metal trivet in the bottom of the canner. Fill with water to approximately 30mm up the side — most canners have a fill mark to guide you. (We grabbed a vivid marker and marked the inside of ours for easy reference every time — a small thing that makes a real difference.)

Place your jars of prepared food in the canner and click the lid into place.

Turn the heat to high. The water will boil and steam will begin to build inside the canner. When you see a steady stream of steam coming from the vent on the lid, that's your canner venting — time 10 minutes from that point.

After 10 minutes, place the weight gauge on the vent and wait until it begins to jiggle. Start your timer from that moment — don't guess it. A constant jiggle throughout the process tells you the pressure is holding. You may need to adjust your heat slightly to keep it steady.

When your timer is up, turn off the heat and leave the canner completely alone to cool down. Do not remove the lid at this stage — the contents + steam inside are extremely hot.

Leave it until all pressure has fully released. If you're only doing one batch, 6 hours is ideal. You may notice some liquid overflow from the jars in the water — this is called siphoning and its nothing to worry about, it just means the jars were filled a little too full without enough headspace. The dome lids will likely have already started to suck in by this point.

Using your jar lifter tongs, carefully lift the jars out and place them on a wooden board. Leave them alone — you'll see them bubbling, which is completely normal. Once fully cooled, check that all dome lids are sealed and remove the bands.

Any jar that hasn't sealed goes straight into the fridge to be eaten first. The rest can be cleaned in hot soapy water to remove any residue, labelled with the date + contents and stored on the shelf.

That's Pressure Canning. A little patience, the right gear + a process you'll get more comfortable with every time you do it.