1. Are pressure cooker/canners safe?
Pressure cookers are designed with safety valves that make them fairly idiot proof. The BIG precaution you should take is to check to make sure the pressure valve where your gage fits is open before you start to use it.
2. What kind of pressure cooker do you recommend?
I love the Mirromatic. Mirro uses a gauge that never needs to be recalibrated. And the gauge also keeps the pressure constant and signals naturally when the cooker is up to pressure.
I am too distractible for something that needs constant monitoring. I have two Mirro 12 quart sized cookers and one small four quart cooker of a different brand that I bought for cooking stuff fast (like potatoes for mashing) and not having to clean the big pot.
3. Do you need to sterilize jars or boil lids before hand?
No. I use the lids right out of the box and wash the jars in my dishwasher first. If they were stacked on a shelf, I rinse them to get rid of dust. But there is no germ that will survive processing at a higher than boiling temperature.
4. Do I cook meats first?
The only meat that I cook before I can it is hamburger. It has nothing to do with sanitation, but I HATE the sight of the grease that will rise to the top of the jar. It looks ugly!
Beef stew with the fat layer floating on top. Looks ugly, tastes YUMMY!(It looks fine once it’s out of the jar.)
That said, I love to can pork or beef or chicken breasts by almost filling the jar with raw meat, adding a handful of chopped (raw) onions and then filling the gaps with sauce. It can be barbeque sauce from a bottle, tomato sauce with taco seasoning added for enchalada filling, or teriaki sauce. (a combination of soy sauce, sugar, garlic and ginger). Pressure cooking gives the same flavor and consistancy of slow cooked meat.
5. Can I really start with raw ingredients? Probably the best thing about a pressure cooker is the ability to start with raw ingredients. I use quart jars for this process, since it produces the right number of servings.
Soup containing dry beans, (bean and bacon/ham or chili) does better with beans soaked an hour or two first. It’s hard to get the right amount of water for unsoaked beans and still have room for other ingredients.
6. Do noodles hold up in the pressure cooker?
Not too well. They’ve always been kinda mushy, but I’ve always used spaghetti noodles. I bet penne pasta in a marinara sauce would be better. I prepare my spaghetti sauce in a huge batch loose in the pressure cooker, take enough out for a couple of days and load the rest into quart jars. I rinse out the pressure cooker, put in the rack and then process the bottles. (Don’t forget to add an inch of water at the bottom of the canner)
7. What’s the shelf life? The shelf life, if kept in a cool, dry place like a pantry is limited only by the life of the seal. I have meats and stews that I’ve had for 5 years and they don’t seem to have lost any flavor and the seals are still VERY tight. If you have a seal break, the contents will spoil and you’ll know very clearly that it’s no good.
8. How do I know for sure that my gauge is still accurate?
If you don’t have a Mirromatic (Mirro) your pressure gauge can get out of whack. Your county extension service should be able to test it for you. For you lazy folks, they’re readily replaceable. If you haven’t used the cooker in serveral years, and don’t have ready access to an extension service, you can just buy another one. If your rubber gasket/seal is cracked or dried up, you can order those off ebay too.
One benefit of pressure canning meats is that the high temperatures release the fat and it rises to the top. It looks ugly in the jar, (most meat-containing foods look ugly in the glass jars. Serve them in something else!) but is easily skimmed and discarded for super low-fat foods.
This jars are left to right, beef stew, beef in gravy, chicken gumbo soup, Beef and sausage spaghetti sauce, chicken breasts(pint) pumpkin puree(pint) and my chili cookoff entry chili.
Here are a couple more ready to eat recipes to prepare from raw ingredients and cook as they process. The chicken gumbo recipe posted earlier works great raw too.
Ham and bean soup:
Place in clean quart jar
1 generous handful of presoaked white beans.
1 handful of chopped onions
1 handful of chopped carrots
1 handful of chopped ham
1/2 teaspoon garlic
1/4 teaspoon of black pepper.
4 oz of tomato sauce or 2 T tomato paste.
Add water to within 1/2 inch of top. Wipe rim, place flat canning lid, screw down with ring, Place canner on stove, Place jars on rack in pressure canner, add enough water so that it comes up about an inch on the bottom of the jars. Check canner’s hole to be sure it’s clear, place on top, set gauge to 15 pounds, turn heat to high. When it reaches pressure, turn down to maintain for an hour. YUMMY and FLAVORFUL
Tomato beef soup:
Place in clean quart jar
1 handful of beef chunks
1 handful of chopped onion
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
double dash of black pepper and of salt
1/2 teaspoon of Italian seasonings OR a few leaves of fresh oregano and rosemary and basil
Fill to bottom of rim (1/2 inch of top) with fresh tomato puree.
Process 45 minutes on 15 pounds. So delicious!
Rice soup combinations do well when added raw. Use your imagination!
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