Canning with a European style pressure cooker

[pep.]

MC says to not use a spring-valve pressure cooker for canning purposes because you can't make sure that all the air has vented when the valve shuts due to pressure. However, the instruction manual of my pressure cooker (Fissler Vitavit) includes a chapter with canning times (20-25 minutes on level II/0,8 bar for food containing meat). In addition, I can always manually vent (there is a switch that opens the valve when you press and hold it).

So is it safe or not? BTW, I haven't seen anything but spring-valve pressure cookers in Europe. Do the American style cooker/canners even exist over here?

[Chris Young]

Peter Putzer said:

MC says to not use a spring-valve pressure cooker for canning purposes because you can't make sure that all the air has vented when the valve shuts due to pressure. However, the instruction manual of my pressure cooker (Fissler Vitavit) includes a chapter with canning times (20-25 minutes on level II/0,8 bar for food containing meat). In addition, I can always manually vent (there is a switch that opens the valve when you press and hold it).

So is it safe or not? BTW, I haven't seen anything but spring-valve pressure cookers in Europe. Do the American style cooker/canners even exist over here?

Hi Peter,

The basic situation is this: spring valves are a problem not so much because you can't vent them (you can manually force them to vent), but rather because the spring fatigues over time and cannot accurately ensure that you are achieving the desired canning pressure. True canners have two key components (a) a gauge indicating the pressure ABOVE ambient pressure, so-called PSIG (see the lies your gauge will tell) and (b) they have a weight that you place over a vent valve to ensure that you achieve the correct pressure.

I admit that these are more difficult to find in Europe, but it is not impossible. When I was in the UK I was able to easily purchase canners from this company using just a little google-foo:

http://www.allamericancanner.com/allamericanpressurecanner.htm

Although many people do can in a pressure cooker, we don't want to recommend it because it can go wrong.