A learning experience

I tried to learn something new this past weekend. After three years, I finally attempted to can something in my pressure cooker. The main reason I have it is for beans, and I have enough this year to give it a shot. I thought I was being smart, though, and decided my first attempt should be with something I wouldn't mind screwing up.

The first time I picked beets, I left quite a few in the ground because they were so small. By now they'd gotten big enough and been in the ground long enough, that they needed to come out.

Cooked and chopped

I certainly know why people used to build canning kitchens. I had four pots of water on my stove, and it was over 90 degrees outside.

Though the cooker came with three different recipe and instruction booklets, not one of them was very detailed about what was supposed to happen or how I would know if I was doing it correctly.

Pressure's on

I watched this thing for many tense minutes, during which I smelled the distinct odor of cooking beets. When the time was finally up and the pressure gone, I took out four jars of still boiling beets. The jars all popped on the way to the table, but they had clearly lost a fair amount of liquid in the canner.

So I had four jars of canned beets with not enough liquid in them, and over a pound of green beans in the refrigerator. I looked over the instruction booklets one more time and learned that I probably had the heat too high during processing. Armed with that knowledge, I tried my hand at the beans the next day. This time I paid very close attention to the steam and the burner and tried to keep the heat a little lower. When it was time to take the jars out, I was so excited. They looked great. They hadn't lost any liquid. About an hour later, it dawned on me that none of them was sealed. I gave the jars about 12 hours and then put them in the fridge. I'm sure that I erred on the side of not hot enough with the beans.

Even though neither attempt was truly successful, I have taken the first steps in tackling something that I'd previously been afraid to do. My canner is so small it can only hold four jars, which means I will never ruin too much of anything and I can keep practicing until I get it right. I just hope my pole beans come on strong, because the bush beans are about done, and I don't have any canned beans.