paranoia
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Post by paranoia on Aug 5, 2016 23:26:07 GMT 10
We've used a fowlers water bath for a few years now with the ball jars and standard ball lids. Looking forward to trying spaghetti sauce.
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Post by clearview on Aug 6, 2016 23:54:36 GMT 10
I'm excited. I ordered a pressure canner from the U.S. The one I wanted was out of stock in Aus, so I'm getting one from the U.S. slightly cheaper. I've started looking for new recipes already
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shinester
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China's white trash
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Post by shinester on Aug 8, 2016 3:50:29 GMT 10
Ha, good one. Feel free to share. The way I see a pressure canner is that you can pretty much do whatever you normally cook in it, though I stick to lower fat foods since fat can oxidise [rancidity]. It lends itself to more stewed type foods as you in effect cook for an extended period [90mins] which brings out the flavors quite well for soups and things that taste best when simmered for some time.
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Post by clearview on Aug 8, 2016 23:58:19 GMT 10
Just wondering if the screw cap lids on such as pasta sauce jars will be ok in the pressure canner? I've done tomatoes in those very successfully by just sterilising the jars and putting hot tomatoe mix in hot jars and hot lids out of a pot of boiling water.
Shinester do you bottle other than fruit in the water bath system? All my googling indicates it's not so safe to do soups, stews, meats in that system. FV used to supply instructions for bottling meat in their older books. Most likely quite OK, but with the modern fear of liability they probably have to take it out.
I can't wait to get my pressure canner. I defrosted some vegie soup today, took about 15 minutes in the microwave. It will be more economical to store in jars. I've been picking up extra Fowlers Vacola jars off Gumtree in Perth area. Have paid $3.00 each for some and got 39 for $70.00 yesterday. That lot had 16 stainless steel lids and they are worth about $2.00 each at the local shop. That's old stock and a tiny bit cheaper than the FV website.
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shinester
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Post by shinester on Aug 9, 2016 2:03:14 GMT 10
Just wondering if the screw cap lids on such as pasta sauce jars will be ok in the pressure canner? I've done tomatoes in those very successfully by just sterilising the jars and putting hot tomatoe mix in hot jars and hot lids out of a pot of boiling water. Hot water yes, I'm with you, they work great, pressure canning no. They don't have in effect the one way value that pressure canning/ball jars have. The reason the lid and the ring are separate is to allow venting of gases and as it cools it creates a vacuum. I wouldn't, there's a safety issue. Botulism spores can survive 100C and can grow inside your jar and whilst rare, it could be very bad and potentially life threatening. So I'm not going to do that. It doesn't grow or like really high sugar [jams] or high acid environments, so jams and vinegar [or tomato for instance] are fine. You'll find most condiments have a vinegar base, such as caramelized onion and that's because they were originally made as a way of preserving foods. Everything else use the pressure canner and processed according to size of jar, time and pressure to be absolutely certain. There's already a big margin of error in those times. I've had only 1 jar that had a loose lid [broken seal] and the contents were thrown away for obvious reasons. It's so easy to tell the seal is good or not, simply it's either vacuum sealed on or it's no good. Sometimes the contents look weird when they settle but that's normal and happens in canned food, you just can't see it. If I had a source of meat [fishing/hunting] then it would be worth canning. I did a post on if it's better to buy canned beans or dried beans and the added cost of canning wouldn't make them worth it. That is there's lots of canned food that can be bought for cheaper than you making them yourself, which is no doubt why it fell from favor. Having said that, my cupboard mainly condiments, different soups and a variety of flavored bean mixes as wifey is veg. Mostly just things that I can't get a good flavor for or I can make for lots cheaper, the condiments especially. I'm unfamiliar with the fowlers jars though they look like they do the same thing. I'm sure you've read this whole thing, though for clarity I just use bell type jars. Kmart do 'drinking glasses' with a handle for $1.50ea [500ml] which are perfect for one meal. The also have 250ml jars for $1 ea. I have a ton of 1L jars that I haven't used consequently. The lids and the rings [you only need about 20] can be got from BigW. I reuse my lids and haven't had issues [and I have heaps spare being a prepper]. I noticed that spotlight also had the right jars, though for decoration purposes and costing a little more. There's only a few supermarket items with the correct sized jar lids for reusing, none of which I normally use. Some peanut butter jars [seems like the jars are only plastic now unfortunately] have the right sized plastic lid, to which keep them as they're great if you want to refrigerate some of it and I suppose you could use them for storage of dry goods like rice or something that you don't need to can for. In terms of ease of use, yep, pop the lid and a 500ml jar with soup is ready in 2mins in the microwave. Obviously no ongoing electricity. I do have things in the freezer but I don't freeze any meals anymore. I got a new cupboard to store my food.
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VegHead
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Post by VegHead on Aug 9, 2016 14:16:31 GMT 10
FV jars are just fine in a canner. Wellrounded did a post about using them as she uses nothing else but the FV jars.
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Post by clearview on Aug 9, 2016 23:12:06 GMT 10
Yes, I'm happy with the FV. I did read the pressure canners make the rings a one only use. So Ill need to stock up on plenty of those. Id like to have a close up of the tattler lids, does anyone know if they interchange with FV? I did PM you a question re pumpkin soup Shinester. All my reading indicates pureed pumpkin soup is a no go. I just wonder why?
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VegHead
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Post by VegHead on Aug 10, 2016 17:30:25 GMT 10
Tattler lids won't fit FV jars, sorry. The rings are reusable in a pressure canner. I reuse them until they are too far gone and you'll know when that is just by looking at them. Please go through wellrounded's old posts as she clearly has answered most questions already.
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Post by Peter on Aug 10, 2016 18:03:30 GMT 10
I was recently given a heap of FV jars, but they seem to be different sizes to what are currently available. Can anyone direct me to what the numbers on the jars mean? I'm assuming it refers to volume and lid diameter...
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shinester
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China's white trash
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Post by shinester on Aug 10, 2016 19:39:49 GMT 10
I did PM you a question re pumpkin soup Shinester. All my reading indicates pureed pumpkin soup is a no go. I just wonder why? Hmm... you have a point of worthy investigation from your PM. Thank you! I didn't want to quote your PM [in case you minded], though basically from a quick investigation there's a concern that pumpkin soup may not allow the proper transfer of heat throughout leaving areas that don't reach the magical 125C and the end of botulism spores. I will also think it's prudent to investigate further as the quality of the information needs to be checked. For instance since it's been done for a long time, people might have believed a rumor that had no substance for 80 years and just wrote it down in books. We need empirical data. I am dubious of those claims because ; - Pumpkin, thickened cream and creamy soups are readily commercially available using the same process of pressure and heat. They would of course have calculations and sensors to make sure everything is up to speed though I can't see how cooking longer and/or with more heat wouldn't insure those things if it were even a problem. - if you heat up something, it transfers heat to the rest of it. Water boils and transfers heat faster because it's boiling, aka moving around. Even if it were a solid block transfers heat at different rates. We would see differences when we heat the soup in the microwave for instance and we do, but we see that in water also. The claim of it not moving around could be valid as it would work as a solid but we see the soup churning on the stove and when you pull it out of the canner. More over, even if it were a solid piece of pumpkin, those solid pieces would take 'longer' to transfer heat than any fluid that moves even slightly. So again, I'm skeptical, even if small parts within the jar are not in motion [dubious] they would quickly be heated up anyhow, again the solid versus puree argument seems unlikely, the solid should be worse at heat transfer, not better [safer]. - we see differences in pressure and times according to the items we're cooking and the size of the jars. This is so that heat is transferred throughout for a long enough period [and with a large margin of error]. Not sure on the available data and I'll have a poke at it in the coming week or so to see what I can come up with. [I'll edit as I find things] If that's true then why are they claiming that they're unsafe to do? Rather they should be saying 'we dont know if it's safe' and avoid them till we know. Again I'm dubious as I can't see how a liquid could be less transferable of heat than a solid. Makes no sense. So it's clear that it's a recommendation based on not knowing. Saying it's unsafe is incorrect. I get why the inclination to do so is there, just in case but then we see the data being perpetuated as dangerous when we have no data either way. [there probably is very much data in the food canning industry btw because they sell them!] I also saw that it mentioned that because of varied thicknesses it takes varying times to heat and that's why they couldn't form an exact figure. Dur.. I've been trying to get the original document but I've been hitting 'pay walls' as usual [Zottola et. al, 1978] which might clear up things as we could then see their testing data and draw conclusions accordingly, rather than rely on generations of conclusions of various administrations within a government department that don't have supportive evidence. We can work out "Heat Transfer in Canned Liquid-Particle Mixture" with a mathematical formula. - sourceWhich is heady ha. I might come back to it and pick the worse case scenario and calculate it out. So lets look at the graph, the far right shows particle radius and temperature. What it shows is that the larger the particle the lower the temp inside as I had suspected and previously mentioned. The particles are very small but may act as semi-solid if it doesn't move around much though since it bubbles that's unlikely. Without stirring in a pot or in the microwave the heat still transfers readily and remember we're talking about being 'at temp' for 90mins!! I'm fairly convinced at this point it's fine, perhaps I'll make it 15psi instead of 10psi [raising temps] though of course everyone else do whatever you like.
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Post by graynomad on Aug 11, 2016 9:11:47 GMT 10
And here's me thinking all these years that cooking was complicated, when all the time it was this simple. Thanks Shiney
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gasman
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Post by gasman on Aug 11, 2016 10:27:47 GMT 10
I can barely work the wife's thermomix! What hope have I ?
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Post by Peter on Aug 11, 2016 17:42:17 GMT 10
I can barely work the wife's thermomix! What hope have I ? Don't worry, I struggle with the thermomix also. Wish I'd never bought the thing.
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shinester
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China's white trash
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Post by shinester on Aug 12, 2016 23:02:31 GMT 10
Ha. My own simple perspective is, if in doubt, cook it longer and at higher pressures. It will degrade the food and/or add to the flavor lol, though it will decrease risks further . The times of 90mins they give have a giant margin of error anyhow, mostly because people were being stupid and didn't do things right when preserving. A few people died from botulism for instance. I suspect that obvious mistakes were made like not pressure canning when you should and the like, though we don't have that data either. Either way the risks are tiny, it was only a handful of people.
I think the message that I'm getting is that they don't have data for certain things and they just say don't do it. Fair enough from their point of view. Pumpkin soup consistency can be different for every batch, sure... so a reasonable person would have said, take the thickest and worst result [which is why I tried to get the original paper] and do that for ALL pumpkin soup to be safe, but they didn't, kinda dumb. Funding and the department disappeared and they didn't follow up on those gaps.
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shinester
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China's white trash
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Post by shinester on Dec 20, 2016 16:11:34 GMT 10
Pressure canner is on special again.... $110HEREIf you were looking to purchase, I would suggest - jar tongs - funnel for jars .. as I use them every time I do a batch. Get the Kmart Drinking Jars which are perfect for a single meal and lids and about 18 outer rings [all I've ever used] from BigW. The number of jars you need is up to you, I've hit my limit in space though and I have about 90 jars worth to give you an idea. Start with less and work up to it as you need them
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shinester
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China's white trash
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Post by shinester on Mar 21, 2017 19:40:04 GMT 10
Well the rumor is true, you CAN pressure can normal jars. SOOO much easier than those stupid 2-part lids on bell jars that you're not supposed to reuse . Better still, the lids have a ring of silicone so they're more than likely going to last much longer and there's stacks of them around. Same deal of course in terms of safety, if the lids not sucked down by vacuum, then don't eat.
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