pressure canner woes -solved
 

ok I have my mom's pressure canner, she got it the second Christmas after I was borne(1980). Today I was attempting to use it for the first time.

I was using my pizza sauce recipe that really didn't need to be presser caned (whole caned tomatoes, tomato past, olive oil, garlic, basal, oregano, water and salt).

So I get every thing ready and it is in the presser canner and during the 10 minutes that you have to let there be a steady stream of stream I notice that there is a slow drip of water from the edge of the pan, the underside of the lid. I don't think that it is supposed to do this but I continue any ways. So after 10 minutes I put the weight on the top and it isn't jiggling at all. At this point there is moor water dripping from the edge of the pan in moor places.

I call my mom to make sure I know what the gauge it supposed to be doing and decide to conduct and experiment and move it to 5lb of presser where the weight starts jiggling just as my mom says it should. So I know that there is moor than 5lb but not up to the 10 lb that I need. :sigh

So I tun that off pull the weight off and let that cool down mean while I start the water boiling that I had been keeping the jars hot in, so that when I can remove the lid to the presser canner I dump the boiling water in and proceed to hot water bath can it for the 35 minutes that it was called for.


So questions :question
1 does this sound like the gasket or some thing else? the gasket is still soft and bendable and doesn't look damaged- but I don't remember seeing it new
2 is it possible that I should have let the presser canner boil moor and that it would have gotten up to 10 lb
3 do you think that the jars of pizza sauce are ok

Re: presser canner woes
 

I think you mean pressure canner. Here's a fabulous tip sheet:

http://www.pickyourown.org/pressurecanners.htm

Probably, the canner needed the burner turned up. And the pizza sauce is probably fine, since it's tomato.

Re: pressure canner woes
 

thank you I fixed the spelling - dyslexic meets spell check moment

I will test it latter this evening and see if I can get it up to 10 lb of pressure

Re: pressure canner woes
 

I got it to work! I didn't realize how long it would take to get to 10 lb. :O

So now the only question is do I open and repossess the pizza sauce or say it is almost all tomatoes and therefore should be fine? I am inclined to think it will be fine.