Pressure Canning Part 1 -- Making the Most of Your Pantry to Free up your Freezer!

Pressure Canning/Cooking used to be a term that most people had no relatable experience with. The sound of it brought back memories of grandmas or great-grandmas who would make jam, or jelly, or tomatoes that they had made from their garden fruits and vegetables.
Then the Instapot came on the scene a few years ago and suddenly EVERYONE started pressure cooking, making meals in half the time and cooking meats that were both tender and quick! Now when you Google "pressure cook," almost all the entries involve an Instapot or a knockoff.

Pressure Canning or Cooking in the way I'm talking about is both and neither of those. It involves putting fruits and vegetables (from your garden or the store/freezer) into a Ball jar and making sure the lid gets sealed, but it can also involve the most tender and juicy meat that you can make in bulk in half the time of normal -- and it all can sit on your pantry shelves for almost a year!

In a time when most people's freezer are full to the brim, this art of pressure cooking is the perfect opportunity to learn to keep up your food supply in a safe and delicious way!

So what do you need to pressure cook?
1. A pressure cooker like my All American Pressure Cooker (or borrow from a friend -- we pressure canner types like to show and share!)

2. Jars

3. Lids and Bands

4. A food item from the list of acceptable foods (pretty much the rule is nothing with rice, noodles, flour or cornstarch to thicken)
              Some of my favorite items to pressure cook:
              -hamburger
              -chili
              -chicken noodle soup (without noodles -- you can pour it over noodles when you eat it!)
              -spaghetti sauce with eggplant
              -kung pao chicken
              -chicken pot pie (thicken and pour in a pie pan when you eat it!)
              -applesauce
              -pie filling (apple, cherry, peach, berry)

How do you do it?
Easy! Get some instructions on how to prepare the food before you put it in the jar. You might be surprised to see that you can put raw chicken and beef into a jar right away but you might want to cook applesauce before you can it.

For Beef Stew, I prepare it like I would if I was making it for dinner that night minus the corn starch or thickener. Then I make sure I wipe the top of the jar mouth clean with a paper towel and put a clean lid (just rinsing it in soapy water is good!) and ring on top of the jar. That one is ready to go. Often, you want to put 5 quart jars in a pressure canner at once so doubling the recipe helps with that. Once all the jars are filled, wiped, and lidded/banded, you are ready to pressure cook!