The Domestic Wildflower

Handmade Food & Craft Tutorials for Beginners

Jenny Gomes

What Is A Steam Canner

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This post will explain what a steam canner is, the pieces that come with it, how it saves time, the types of recipes that maximize a steam canner’s efficiency, how much water they use (hardly any!) who a steam canner is best for, and why you’ll want to try one yourself! What is a Steam Canner and How to Make Canning Faster! Read this post that explains the new way to can that saves tons of time and money! Read this post if you want to cook healthy, homemade food but don't have tons of time. Learn how to preserve using a steam canner today! This post may contain affiliate links. That just means that if you decide to make a purchase through Amazon, I get a teeny, tiny commission that doesn’t affect your total at all. It just helps keep your favorite blogger in business!  Steam canners have been around a while, that’s completely true. They only recently have been approved by the USDA, National Center For Home Food Preservation, and studies done by both Utah and Wisconsin Universities tested and proved that they are safe for water bath canning. They are safe for exactly the same recipes as used in “regular” or water bath canning and you can learn to use them if you’re a beginner- as in never boiled a pot of water in your life- Or if you are an experience canner.

Watch the video for a great introduction to steam canners, and be sure to like the video and subscribe to my YouTube channel while you’re there!

Get the Steam Canning Fact Sheet & Equipment List right here!

What is a Steam Canner and How to Make Canning Faster! Read this post that explains the new way to can that saves tons of time and money! Read this post if you want to cook healthy, homemade food but don't have tons of time. Learn how to preserve using a steam canner today!   The advantages of these gems are so, so great… if it strikes your fancy, click the photo below and get yours now! Truly, they are a great way to start canning, even if you’ve never canned before at all AND they make a rad addition to an experienced canner’s tool belt. Tell me Wildflowers, will you be trying these out? Share in the comments below and share this post with someone you know who might dig it!

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29 Reasons You Should Be Using A Steam Canner

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This post will explain the reasons why a steam canner is the best thing to happen to the preserving world since Napoleon offered a reward to anyone who could preserve food to feed his soldiers afield. Read on for the list, Wildflowers!

29 Reasons You Should Be Using a Steam Canner | Read this super helpful post that explains all about the hot new technology in the canning world that's perfect for beginners! There's even a free fact sheet & equipment list!

29 Reasons Why You Should Be Using a Steam Canner

  1. Canned food is healthier than store bought.
  2. Steam canners cut canning time in half, if not more.
  3. Thus, steam canners make eating healthier FASTER.
  4. Steam canners use 2.5 quarts of water while a pasta pot with a silicone trivet needs about 4, and a traditional canning pot needs 8 or more.
  5. A steam canner weighs, WITH the water and lid, 8.75 pounds. A pasta pot (and NOT a heavy, high quality one at that) with water weighs 16 pounds, and a traditional canning pot weighs over 35.
  6. Steam canners use less energy.
  7. Steam canners, when empty, are really lightweight– they are aluminum!
  8. Steam canners are ideal for someone in a wheelchair, recovering from illness or surgery, or who cannot lift a heavy pot.
  9. Steam canners have only been approved for about a year by the USDA and National Center For Home Food Preservation- you trendsetter, you!
  10. They are ideal for those living in an RV.
  11. Steam canning is versatile– you can preserve half pints all the way up to quarts! Pro Tip: No steam canning a half gallon or pint-and-a half: those jars are too tall!
  12. Steam canning is ideal for those using solar power.
  13. It is great for those on a budget– one pot replaces the need for a canner with a rack, a jar lifter, a saucepan for simmering the lids, and a lid lifter. You don’t need any of those with a steam canner! Get the Steam Canner Equipment List HERE! 
  14. Home canned food saves money and steam canners make it faster to can…so you save time AND money.
  15. Those who are short on time will love a steam canner. They cut total canning time in half if not more, so if you are busy you you’ll love the simpler process and shorter total time..
  16. They are ideal for short cook time, short process time recipes. That means that if you choose a recipe that takes very little prep and cook time (like carrot pickles, pickled pearl onions, strawberry preserves, etc) then you REALLY save a lot of time by using a steam canner. If you are canning a slow cook, multi ingredient tomato sauce and you don’t care about saving energy or water, well then a steam canner might not seem that amazing. If you ARE cooking a quick cook recipe- you’ll be done in about 20 minutes- or even less!
  17. They are ideal for people living below 7000 feet elevation. In water bath canning, you have to add 5 minutes of process time for every 1000 feet you live above sea level. That means that if you are canning at 7000 feet above sea level, then you would have to add 35 minutes to your processing time. You’d also probably know, since you live there, that you’d have to add time to the brownies baking in the oven and all kinds of other cooking tasks. For steam canning, that means that you’d only be able to can recipes of a 10 minute or less processing time. That’s because steam canners can’t be boiling for more than 45 minutes. For a point of reference, Boulder, CO is at about 5000 feet elevation, Telluride, CO is at about 8000 feet, and there’s about 100 small towns above 7000 feet in America, mostly in Colorado and some in New Mexico that fall in the over 7000 feet category. Canners who live there wouldn’t find a steam canner that useful.  
  18. They are ideal for tiny home living– no jar lifter, no big speckled canning pot…just one pot requiring just 2.5 quarts of water.
  19. They are great if you are conserving water.
  20. They are awesome if you have dietary restrictions. Canning allows you to preserve your own foods with exactly what your diet calls for and nothing else. You can make ketchup with no artificial ingredients, no high fructose corn syrup, no processed junk, and can it in a steam canner. Same goes for applesauce, pickles, jam, jelly, pickled veggies, salsa….
  21. They are awesome if you are busy. Water bath canning doesn’t take all day the way most people think but it does usually take an hour or more to make a batch. Steam canners make the prep time significantly faster because you don’t have to wait for a HUGE pot of water to boil.
  22. Steam canners are amazing for summer time canning. Summer and Fall are the times most of us can things like fresh tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, dilly beans, salsa, apples, stone fruit, and canning in the summer can be REALLY hot. It’s hot out and water bath canning requires a giant pot of water to be boiling….and boiling….and boiling. Not everyone has AC, and that means you want to can and get it done ASAP so you don’t sweat to death. Steam canners use WAY LESS boiling water, and the whole process is over WAY FASTER so you can count on your kitchen staying much cooler.
  23. Steam canners are better for your hair and makeup. When I’m water bath canning, the steam factor in my tiny, walled-in, weird little kitchen is nuts. Yeah, it would be cool to have an open floor plan kitchen with some great ventilation but until then, I have a stuffy little kitchen. Water bath canning creates a ton of steam- way more than a bathroom during a long, hot shower- and I know I end up looking like I’ve been on a rainforest trek afterwards. And I live where it is NOT HUMID. Thanks for that, Pacific Ocean…I don’t know what my canning comrades in the humid parts of the country do…melt? Never dry out? The steam canner uses the steam INSIDE the pot to can foods in jars and then the overall experience leaves me with hair that’s not plastered to my head and makeup that hasn’t slid down my cheeks. It’s amazing.
  24. Steam canners have a cool little thermometer on top to tell you when it is safe to start the processing time. The dial indicates when enough steam has built up inside it to be hot enough to start your processing time- you don’t have to get a thermometer and try to measure it yourself.
  25. Steam canners are not scary. Really, NO kind of preserving is scary, but I can totally understand why a person might think a pressure canner is kind of scary. Pressure canners (which kind of look like a steam canner) use a lock, they are rather heavy, and use PRESSURE to build up much higher temperature and preserve foods that are LOW ACID. If you want to learn how to can ocean fresh tuna, or cream of broccoli soup, you need to learn how to use a pressure canner and let me tell you- they are awesome. But a STEAM CANNER is just a lightweight lid that sits on the pan- there’s no lock, or mysterious gauge, or threat of a lid blowing off the top volcano-style. I swear, every person that’s come to my blog has a grandma who has told them a horror story of some pressure canner explosion. A STEAM CANNER won’t have an explosion. It just has 2.5 quarts of water simmering in a pan. That’s it. No pressure. Get it? Pretty punny, right?
  26. Steam canners are low maintenance. A pressure canner can’t be stored outside in a garage where temperatures fluctuate, and have to be checked by a your cooperative extension office routinely. A steam canner could live in your RV storage compartment, in a garage, and doesn’t require calibration.
  27. You should use a steam canner if you have never canned before. They are easy for a beginner, require you to have fewer specific utensils, and use water bath canning recipes which are high acid=foolproof. You can use a water bath canning cookbook exactly the same way with a steam canner- you’d cook your preserve (your jam or salsa or whatever) fill your canning jars, and set them on the steam canner rack. You would put the lid on, turn the burner on, and when the dial indicates that you are at the right temperature, you’d start the timer and use the same process time as the recipe indicates, adjusting for altitude of course.
  28. You should use a steam canner if you HAVE water bath canned before. If you have used the regular boiling water bath method, you’ll be able to appreciate the time advantage, the weight advantage, and the ease it affords you. Those newbies won’t know how good they have it using a steam canner first! You’ll find it a rad addition to your repertoire, and you’ll quickly see which recipes really expound on the next-to-nothing prep time the steam canner offers.

  29. You should use a steam canner because I made a super helpful 2 page PDF that you can read from your phone or tablet or computer OR print off and have right next to you in the kitchen. I tlists the equipment you need as a beginner to start steam canning AND a fact sheet to refer to about what steam canning IS and IS NOT. Grab it completely free, right here!

Differences between water bath canning and steam canning

Want to see more about why a steam canner is NOT the same as a pressure canner? Watch the YouTube video right here, and if you think it’s valuable, be sure to like the video (give it a thumbs up!), & subscribe!

I’ll be sharing videos there more regularly too- can’t wait to see you there!

Canning Tomatoes Video Workshop

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If I had to preserve one recipe for the rest of my life it would be tomato sauce, and this post will explain why and how you can too.

Canning Tomatoes Video Workshop | Sign up for this super affordable video workshop that will teach a brand new beginner how to preserve fresh, nutritious tomatoes into healthy pasta sauce, versatile dinner time options, and more.

Tomatoes weren’t my first canning project but they will likely be my favorite, most frequent, and are absolutely the most versatile.

 

My first canning project that I completed and repeated over and over on my own was applesauce. I was pregnant and realizing that I had a genuine desire to make homemade food for my baby and applesauce turned out to be a beginner friendly first.

 

From applesauce I ventured forth into the canning world and by the time I had a six month old, I was finally into the swing of motherhood, Baby S was napping reliably, and it was summertime.

 

Tomatoes are not hard to can. They do however have two points that make them a tiny bit more difficult than, say, apples.

 

Tomatoes have skins that either have to come off or get processed up so the subsequent sauce is smooth and delicious. If you’ve not cooked much, and there’s no shame if you haven’t, you wouldn’t know that there’s a couple ways to peel and process tomatoes, and if you are an experienced canner, I have a great post about exactly that right here.

 

The second point that makes canning tomatoes a bit different is their acid level. Canning safety relies on several elements, one of which is the acid level of the foods in question.

 

Foods are safe to water bath can when they are naturally acidic (more acid than a 4.6 on the pH scale) or by the addition of an acidifier like lemon juice or vinegar. Foods like lemons and strawberries are around a 2 on the acid scale (very acidic) and foods like green beans are around a 6 (not acidic).

 

Tomatoes are interesting because they have a widely known reputation for being acidic, except they actually aren’t. Tomatoes have been hybridized for many years to develop qualities shoppers were looking for like hardiness, the ability to be transported long distances, size, and so on. The consequence of bigger, sweeter tomatoes is that they aren’t as acidic as they used to be years ago.

 

Most tomatoes today are much closer to the cusp of being safe to water bath can with an acid level of a 4- 4.6. The magic number is 4.6. You want all foods inside the canning jar to be an acid level of 4.6 or lower (lower means greater acid…I know, kinda confusing).

 

Because of the fact that modern tomatoes (even if you grow your own heirloom, organic, super fancy, this still applies) canning tomatoes requires the addition of an acidifying ingredient like citric acid (a white, flavorless powder you get at the grocery store) or lemon juice (bottled so it is a standardized acid level) or vinegar (also standardized).

 

By following a modern, tested, and trusted recipe that follows USDA protocol for safe canning, you simply avoid any worry that your tomatoes won’t be shelf stable after canning them.  

 

These two elements, the skin and the acid, are what make tomatoes a bit different than canning other beginner friendly recipes.

 

If you are new to canning, (maybe never tried it at all, or maybe tried it a time or two) I have an awesome resource for you.

I’ve created a video workshop that is super affordable and perfect for a beginner who has never canned at all.

Enroll Now!

Healthy Meals Quicker Challenge | Canning for Beginners from The Domestic Wildflower sign up to learn how to cook healthier meals in less time, cut the processed junk, prepare wholesome produce into jars of food to be enjoyed months later and be able to spend more time with your family.

In the video workshop you can watch crystal clear, professionally edited (no wobbly iphone videography!) videos exactly HOW to start canning at home.

 

I designed the workshop to feel like you are at home with me canning right by my side.

 

A great canning cookbook is nice but being able to SEE what’s happening is invaluable.

 

The canning tomatoes video workshop shows you how to preserve tomatoes safely and easily AND it teaches you the smart ways to peel or process them in a food mill.

 

There’s a whole beginner module that explains the canning process, gives great info about jars (holy cow there are a ton to choose from!), safety information so you know you’re doing it right, and more. That whole module is explains everything so even if you don’t cook, you can learn how to can. Honestly, that beginner module is worth it’s weight in gold and in some ways, is the most important part of the course.

 

After you take the course, you can apply what you learn to tons of other recipes. I’m all about teaching TECHNIQUES rather than just a single recipe- you will be able to apply the techniques I teach you to tons of other canning recipes. Believe it or not, canning peaches isn’t that different than canning tomatoes 😉

 

If you’re not sure about taking an online workshop, here’s what it looks like inside one. There’s no homework, no time limit, no deadlines; you have forever access to a locked “classroom” full of videos, checklists & PDFs you can print off, an ebook, and more.

The Canning Tomatoes Video Workshop is a screamin’ deal at just $29!

Yes! I Want Instant Access!

 

Not sure what you’d do with jars of delicious, wholesome homemade tomato sauce?

 

If I had to can ONE recipe for the rest of my life, it would be tomato sauce.

Canned tomato sauce can be dinner in about 5 minutes: Just open a jar of sauce, warm, and pour on top of pasta.

By investing an hour or two to can a batch of tomato sauce now, you can have a dozen or more jars of sauce ready to be transformed into:

  • Tomato soup (just add a little cream!)
  • Pizza sauce
  • bread stick dip
  • Spaghetti sauce
  • Stromboli filling
  • Lasagna
  • Spaghetti squash topping
  • Sauce for roasted vegetables like eggplant
  • Stew and crock pot meals
  • Sloppy Joe’s
  • and more!

I want you to grab this workshop at the amazing price of just $29 and learn how to make all this with just one base recipe + the video workshop.

Enroll Now!

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Free Canning Basics Course

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If you have wondered about canning, thought maybe you’d like to try it out, but didn’t know how to start, this post, and free canning basics course is for you.

Free Canning Basics Course

I have created and updated a rad little course that teaches a beginner the basics of canning and it is completely free.

There are three main areas that cause a newbie trouble when learning about canning and this course addresses all three.

The Free Canning Basics Course teaches the canning process which is essentially what happens when, and for how long.

When I started canning, this was the part that caused me the most grief. A good cookbook is a helpful start, but there’s no way for it to SHOW you what happens when. There’s no shame in admitting that, hey, you don’t really cook all that often and having 3 pots going on the stove at once is kind of overwhelming. Really, no shame from this girl. I am here to tell you (and explain, in detail in the course) that canning is WAY LESS COMPLICATED than cooking a big family dinner.

I always say that I’d rather can every single day than cook Thanksgiving dinner once. The basics course teaches you what is supposed to happen when and how to be efficient with your time at the stove.

The Free Canning Basics Course teaches a beginner about safety. This is one reason that lots of people don’t decide to learn more about canning; they are afraid of making themselves sick. For good reason, too: You could make yourself sick if you just made up a recipe in your head, poured it into some canning jars and stuck in on a shelf. In this course, I explain the 3 amazing elements that are indeed a science, not an art, that are actually really comforting for a beginner to understand, that make canning work. Canning requires high temperatures, high acid foods (like strawberries, tomatoes, vinegar, etc), and the absence of oxygen (created by the submersion in the boiling water bath) to create an other-planetary-like environment inside the jars where no germs can grow. This trifecta is proven and tested by the USDA and you and I will ONLY be using safe recipes and procedures.

The Free Canning Basics Course will detail (in a helpful video with pictures 🙂 the equipment you’d need to get started. This is a valid concern many newbies have; they think they won’t have all the gear you need to get going. I really love this module for two reasons. I have a couple savvy little tips that save you from buying the gear you don’t need AND I think it leaves most people feeling like they already have most of what they need…because they do. You don’t need 25 different pots and pans to start canning…you just need 2 pots and a saucepan. The course will explain exactly what you can use, what you can skip, and smart ways of avoiding space-hogging equipment.

It also will teach you which items you need to order from Amazon or grab at your local grocer to have on your shelf for when you are ready to can your first…second….and every batch thereafter. What the heck is canning salt? What kind of vinegar do you need?

I’ll tell you in The Free Canning Basics Course 🙂

Enroll Now!

Canning is preparing hot foods that are high in acid (either naturally or by the addition of high acid ingredients like vinegar…hello pickles!) and putting them into hot jars. You then put a lid on and submerge the hot jars into hot water and let them boil for a specific length of time. Then, a vacuum seal is created and no air can get in and no germs that that might have been inside are able to live.

What can you can? Well, it will be hard to rein in my enthusiasm as I list so bear with me.

You can preserve in jars things like…

jam | jelly | syrup – not just for pancakes- think in drinks, on ice cream… | conserves (fruit & nuts!) | fruit & alcohol (like cherries in wine!) | pickles | pickled pearl onions for garnishing a cocktail | applesauce | fruit butter | slices of peaches, pears, etc. | shrubs | marmalade | pickled mixed & spiced vegetables like escabeche | hot sauce | salsa | marinades for meat | tomato sauce and every incarnation of tomato you can think of | roasted bell peppers | bread & butter pickles | and MORE

Sign up for this super valuable Canning for Beginners Equipment Workshop! This video workshop teaches you all about how to use what you already have in your kitchen!

Canning is NOT using a pressure COOKER like an instant pot (though I hear those are great for tough cuts of meat!), it is NOT just putting food into jars and sticking it in the fridge, and it is NOT fermenting sauerkraut on your counter in a jar (great idea though!).

There are countless advantages to canning your own produce but here is the short list of why I LOVE it and why I know you will too:

  • Canning saves a ton of time.

  • Canning saves money.

  • Canning allows you to have wholesome produce ready to eat year round.

  • Canning helps you eat sustainably.

  • Canning eliminates the worry about mystery ingredients or allergens– canning jars are literally and metaphorically clear.

  • Canning is easy. Hot food goes into hot jars, which goes into a hot water bath. Done.

  • Canning helps you eat more produce, that tastes better, that you got to CHOOSE.

  • Canning gives an enormous sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

How to Save Time Cooking | The Domestic Wildflower read the #1 time saving tip for cooking. This article is so good- it's perfect for busy moms! Start saving time now Mamas!

I want to invite you all to join this super valuable, FREE online course now!

Enroll Now!

If you’re not sure about the whole “online course thing” I don’t blame you. Here’s a little walkthrough of what it will look like inside. There’s no homework, no deadlines, and you don’t have to enter your credit card information or anything like that.

Join me today and learn how to can your own jams, salsa, applesauce, pickles, roasted veggies, and more!

Enroll Now!

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Filed Under: Can