I have been having some serious fun in the kitchen!  Not that I don’t always have fun in the kitchen, but our new pressure canner is serious fun!

I’ve done a bit of canning over the years but it’s always been hot water bath. Jams and peppers, for the most part – easy to do. Lately, I’ve thought about venturing out and seeing what else I could get into a Mason jar and last week while sitting on the couch and talking about it, Victor ordered me a new pressure canner! Merry Christmas!

The first thing I made was a triple batch of Katja’s Bacon Jam. And then I asked Victor to make a big batch of sauce. Tomato sauce has to be pressure-canned – there’s just no way a hot water bath will get it hot enough. We usually have sauce in the freezer, but I really wanted jars on the shelf. We have a lot more shelf-space than freezer-space.

Yesterday, when I got home from work, there was almost 4 gallons of sauce simmering away on the stove! Gastronomic heaven!

I boiled my jars, sanitized the lids, and went to work. It takes about 2 hours to can quarts of sauce – that’s everything from bringing the canner up to pressure, the actual canning time, and the cool-down. I had to do two batches – the canner will only hold 7 quarts – but most of it is unattended. I just came in and checked that the pressure was consistent a couple of times.

Victor made this with #10 cans of San Marzano tomatoes from Italy, but I’m already planning sauce made from tomatoes out of the garden!

Oh boy!

I see fun in our future!