Pressure's on — Forget Grandma's horror tales, new canners are safe and easy to use

Your garden is running over with corn, green beans and so on. As food prices are rising, it would be nice to be able to store some of these for future use. But your freezer is full, and your regular water-bath canner can't safely can low-acid vegetables.

So it may make sense to invest in a pressure canner.

You've probably heard the scary stories of how Grandma's pressure cooker exploded, spraying bottles of beets across her kitchen ceiling.

But today's pressure canners are safer and easier to use.

"You still have to have a healthy respect for it," said Teresa Hunsaker, Utah State University Extension agent in Weber County. "But now there are a lot of safety features, so if you follow the directions, you don't need to worry about exploding."

During a recent canning class, Hunsaker displayed jars of the various foods that she has pressure canned, including chicken, ground beef, beans and sausage patties. Hunsaker likes to take the jarred meats on camping trips or heat them up with barbecue or spaghetti sauce for quick weekday meals. Clearly, pressure canners aren't just for vegetables.

But they cost more than water-bath canners; you can expect to pay from $65 to $200 or more, depending on the size and brand. You would have to process a few jars of food in order to recoup your investment. But if you're limited on freezer space, or if you'd like shelf-stable foods in the event of a power outage, pressure canning might be for you.

"If I can do it, anyone can do it," declares Shawna Baker of Kaysville, who bought a pressure canner this year to take advantage of her garden's produce. "It's way easier than I thought it would be, and I felt very accomplished with all those jars of green beans and spaghetti sauce on my counter."

When is pressure canning necessary? The premise of home canning is to interrupt the natural decay that happens to food from existing enzymes, mold, yeast and bacteria. To "process" them, the jars of food are heated in a boiling-water bath canner or a pressure canner at a high temperature long enough to destroy the microorganisms.

When the jars cool, they vent excess air and form a vacuum seal on the lid to keep any new microorganisms from entering the food in the future.