 Welcome to Pressure Caning Basics presented by Angela Treadaway from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. Caning Low Acid Foods at Home. This presentation is a description of basic principles and steps for safely pressure caning at home. These guidelines are not intended to be used with canning recipes and procedures that have not been tested and determined to be safe for home canning. Recipes you use in canning should be from USDA tested recipes that can either be found at your local extension office or website or USDA website. Home canning is not a time to follow old recipes that your grandmother may have used or especially from social media because of the danger of botulism. If you're watching this and thinking about getting started with home canning, here's some questions you may be asking. Why don't we preserve foods at home? For use in winter months when fresh produce is not available in abundance, it is awesome to be able to pull out a can of green beans that you have canned at home. Nothing is fresher. Another thing is quality controlling ingredients. You can control what goes into it. Personally fulfilling, convenient, fun with family and can use to teach children a lot of times. Fresh produce can spoil quickly if you have a garden or if you purchase larger quantities from the farmer's market. So to preserve the freshness you need to either can or freeze it soon. Our canning practices include cleaning all work surfaces and utensils that you plan to use as well as wash your hands. This is the time you really want to be cleaned throughout the whole process. Carefully select and wash your fresh produce. Use standard canning jars no larger than a quart sized jar and make sure they are cleaned and ready to use. Excessing jars and a pressure canner for the correct amount of time and the proper temperature. Collectively, these practices remove oxygen, destroy enzymes, prevent the growth of yeast, moles, bacteria and help form a high vacuum in jars. Good vacuums form tight seals which keep liquid in and microorganisms out and allow for a safe product that you can store on your shelves and pantry. For best quality use home canned foods especially pressure canned foods within a year. Let's discuss now why we have two methods of canning. There's the water bath canner and the pressure canner. Let's look at the differences in the two and what you can and can't do in each one of them. The water bath canner is used for acidic foods, fruits except for figs and melons, fermented pickles and sauerkraut, acidified foods like pickles and tomato salsa. Who doesn't love tomato salsa? These in the water bath canner, it kills moles, yeast and some bacteria which causes college temperatures and it reaches 212 degrees is all that it will reach in a water bath canner. In a pressure canner, it's used for low acid foods such as vegetables, meats, poultry, seafood, soups, mixed foods like vegetable soup mix. It kills four forming clostridium botulinum at 240 degrees so with the pressure canner it will reach a higher temperature because it's put under pressure. That's why it's so important to use the pressure canner for vegetables, meats and stuff. So why is pressure canning needed for low acid foods? We talked about it in the slide before, clostridium botulinum. C. botulinum forms spores that require a higher temperature for a reasonable amount of time for destruction, which is usually 10 to 11 pounds, which is PSI, pounds per square inch will reach 240 degrees in a set amount of time. Botulism which is the toxin that C. botulinum forms can grow when the right conditions exist, which are a moist low acid food, which is your vegetables and meats and stuff, a temperature between 41 to 135 degrees, which is room temperatures a lot of times in between those, less than 2% oxygen, which is a sealed jar. Botulism is one of the deadliest known toxins. Just a small taste can be very deadly. Okay, so let's look at preventing botulism in home can low acid foods. Spores are killed when heated long enough at a specific temperature. That's what you're going to do in the pressure canner. Pressure canner must be used for all low acid foods. There's no exception when you've got soups and mixed vegetables and stuff or tomatoes and mixed vegetables. They still need to be done in the pressure canner, even though there is some acid there. Food must be prepared, placed in your jar, and processed for a certain amount of time. Your pressure canner gauge needs to be accurate. And canner gauges can be checked for accuracy at your local county extension office yearly. And there's no charge for that if you'll just call one of the food safety agents or your local county extension office and set up a time to have that done. And then follow USDA recipe exactly to get the best results. Good types of pressure canners are dial gauge or weighted gauge. All of them should have a flat rack in the bottom. Plant pipe for pressurizing. Safety valves are over pressure plugs, flexible gaskets in the lid, or a gasket sometimes is called a ceiling ring, but it needs to be flexible and in good shape. You need to use 10 psi, that's pounds per square inch for weighted gauge, and then 11 psi for dial gauge. Sometimes people ask why your pressure cooker cannot be used as a canner. To be considered a pressure canner for USDA processes, the canner must be big enough to hold at least four quart sized jars. Pressure cookers or sauce pans with smaller volume capacities are not recommended to use in canning. And the reason for it is that the smaller cookers may not deliver enough heat during the heating up or pressurizing time or in the cooling down time. These are important parts of the process in USDA recipes for low acid foods. The pressurizing and cooling down are all a part of the time used in canning, for instance green beans or a meat of some type. Clean your canner for the first time. Here are some of the things that you want to keep in mind. Number one is read your instruction manual that came with your pressure canner. Clean your canner with soap and water. Check your gasket to make sure it's secure in the lid in good shape. Place your rack in the bottom of the canner. Pour about two to three quarts of water in and set on cooktop and turn on medium heat until the jars of food are ready to place in the canner just to kind of let it simmer. Then you want to place filled jars in the canner where they don't touch. Next turn on the heat, turn the heat on high and place lid on securely. Next you will vent the canner once steam begins to come out of the vent port. A warning, if you have a glass cooktop, you want to follow your manufacturer's manual with your cooktop. Most of the time they'll say not to use a pressure canner on glass cooktops. So check that first. Inning your canner is a very, very important step. A lot of times people will leave this out. It's also called exhausting the canner. As the water boils in the canner, the empty space becomes a mix of steam and air. It's very important to do it for ten minutes once you see it start to escape. Exhausting eliminates the air so processing takes place in pure steam environment. Processed times are intended for pure steam. USDA instructs that all pressure canners are to be exhausted for the proper processing to happen. After exhausting your canner, place your weight on the vent port. It will take several minutes for the pressure to start building up inside. You want to start out on high heat to begin with, then as the pressure rises, start slowly turning down to medium heat. Once pressure reaches 10 or 11 psi, start your timing process. Do not leave your canner. You will need to make sure it stays on 10 to 11 psi by regulating your temperature. Once you kind of get it set, you'll see where to stay around 10 psi, but make sure you just don't leave it. Be careful not to turn heat down too quickly. It will draw liquid from your jars. Once time is up, turn the heat off and leave on cooktop until it depressurizes. Don't rush it. It'll take about 30 minutes, but that's part of the process. Removing jars from the canner. Once your canner has completely depressurized, you can carefully take the lid off, making sure to turn it away from your face to prevent steam burns. Let the jars sit for a minute and have a place prepared on the canner to place the jars like a towel or a rack or something so they don't sit directly on a cold surface. Take all the jars out and let sit for at least 12 hours and check seals to make sure they are concave and not sticking up. If it pops when you mash it, that means it's not sealed. If jars are not sealed, reprocess within 24 hours or place in the refrigerator and consume within 7 days. Clean and label your jars and use within one year for best quality. Here are just a few of the methods and equipment not recommended for pressure canning. Is your pressure cookers, as we already talked about? Open kettle method, oven canning, microwave oven, dishwasher canning, steam canners and one of the new things today is the Instapot or Quick Cooker, but there's not been enough research done to prove that it's safe for canning. You know pressure canning is not something everyone wants to do, but it can be very rewarding, especially in the winter months when you want the fresh taste of green beans for some really good home canned vegetable soup. There's just nothing to compare to fresh made at home. It can also be a lot of fun to do with family and friends. For more information, look for more videos and PowerPoints from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System on Home Food Preservation. Thank you and happy canning! Here is a listing of the food safety and quality team members in the state of Alabama. Find your area, the set that you're in, and contact the agents there if you have more Home Food Preservation questions.