This is quite easy to do, and when the jars are this hot anything really can set them off. Even a stiff wind, no really. I used to can outdoors when I was using a turkey fryer burner. Yeah don't do that.
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I didn't bother with the rack because the jars won't stand up straight with it in there anyway. There were only 3 pint jars in there to start, then one broke. When I put the last one in, I immediately started seeing stuff that was in the jars floating in the water of the pot. I went back in with the jar holder because I thought I had a lid on wrong or something, and everything poured out of the bottom. I strained out the the jalapenos and just kept boiling.
Now that the jars have been cooling, they both have sealed, so that's good. On the plus side, I'm trying a cheddar, jalapeno version of my no knead bread.
Awesome!
I think the culprit was the absence of the rack. My G'ma said to never can without the rack at the bottom. The heat is too intense on the other side of the pot of the burner.
However, since it broke immediately; It could have also been that the contents of the jar were either too cold (the liquid you used to fill the jar was cold and you put it in hot water) OR the contents of jar were too hot (you hot-packed the contents and put the jars in cool water)
I had the bad luck with 16 quarts of chicken stock Thursday. I decided I was going to try out some Tattler reusable lids and not read the directions. Had to reprocess ALL of them.
Probably a bad jar. None of the jars I used were brand new, and everything was hot inside and out.
Always use a rack- they sell racks separately as well. They keep the cans from the direct heat.
I'll have to grab a rack to go into this thing. It's so large I had to use a cutting board and a crock pot lid TOGETHER to try and make a lid to keep the heat up. It worked perfectly, but was less than ideal...
I have also successfully used my tamale steamer to hot water bath can. Usually they have a rack a few inches above the bottom. A great multitasker. It has been a brew kettle (6.5 gallons), stock 'simmerer' (6.5 gallons), tamale steamer, and a hot water bath canner. It also holds more jars than my blue canner like you got there.
This one can hold 7 quart jars in the rack. I can't imagine making that much food at once, but maybe one day I will.
I put a turkey carcass, as well as extra roasted bones, veggie trimmings, etc into my roaster oven, added water and stock and simmered it for 24 hours. I canned seven quarts of stock, and have three more quarts to can tomorrow. :)
Once you start, you'll be amazed at how much food you can put up.
Shoot! This sale lasts only through the 24th, but it's still a good one!
Sprouts has pineapples on sale for .98 each.
Asparagus is $1.98/lb
Certain brands of apples are .88/lb.
Time to break out the Canners and the dehydrators!