Survival prepping with a steam canner (not the same as a pressure canner)

Has anyone used a steam canner? Pros? Cons? Brand recommendations?

My traditional enamel water bath canner has rust issues. The metal insert rusted and the canner is starting to have rust issues. I ordered a replacement insert, but it arrived smaller than advertised and only holds 6 quart jars instead of 7.

It takes a lot of water to run the water bath canner, and when the recipe or bounty only fills, say, 5 jars, it seems such a waste of resources with all of that water and energy to heat it up.  Because I need to replace my canner, I’m considering a steam canner, because it uses less water, but have never seen one in person.

I enjoy canning and prepping my pantry for winter survival as I am off grid and off road.

I’ve only just heard of steam canners but I’m similarly intrigued..
Also the owner of a rusty water bath canner.

My friends’ grandmother has used a steam canner for decades and swears by it; seems like A good system and a lot less water to boil.

There’s also older generations in my family that instead of water bath, get the brine and jars real hot then pack them and set upside down to seal. Learned that in the 4H club I guess.
I know that works for pickles, but tomatoes are still processed in water bath.

Gillian, thank you for the insight, fellow 4H’er.

I have the All American Canner.  We bought mine on eBay used then bought new parts to refurbish it:

https://www.allamericancanner.com/All-American-Pressure-Cooker-Canner-Parts.htm

Here are some threads you might find interesting:

https://permies.com/t/173781/kitchen/pressure-canner

https://permies.com/t/131982/kitchen/Wanting-fire-pressure-canner-time

Anne Miller wrote:I have the All American Canner.  We bought mine on eBay used then bought new parts to refurbish it:

https://www.allamericancanner.com/All-American-Pressure-Cooker-Canner-Parts.htm

Here are some threads you might find interesting:

https://permies.com/t/173781/kitchen/pressure-canner

https://permies.com/t/131982/kitchen/Wanting-fire-pressure-canner-time

Thank you, Anne, for the pressure canning links. I’m delighted you have an All-American canner. I understand it is a robust tool.

I do have a Presto pressure canner, which I use for meats and low acid recipes that require pressure canning and I value its success. It’s a hand-me-down from my mother and still going strong!

It’s the water bath canner I need to replace and I heard a steam canner uses less water and can be used instead of a water bath canner, so I tossed out a query to see if anyone had used one.

When I got the pressure canner I gave my water bath canner to my daughter.

I can see no reason to have both.  (There may be one that others might have for having both) I live in a small house and do not have room for a lot of gadgets.

The research for USDA pressure processing for vegetable and meat products was conducted in pressure canners that are most similar to today's 16-quart or larger pressure canners.

https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/HYG-5344

Maybe I just don't know the latest information.

Please let us know which one you decide on as I am sure others will want to know.

I'd like us all to confirm  our language here:

Are we using: "Pressure Canning" and "Steam Canning" to mean the exact same thing?

I ask, because I've only recently been hearing/reading the term "steam canning" and want to be sure we're comparing the same things - English is a wonderfully complicated language with interesting regional differences!

I just purchased a 16 quart Presto pressure canner from Tractor Supply for around $150.  Not cheap, but it should last for my time here.  I canned 12 quarts of green beans last weekend because we had run out of room in our freezer.  After reading through the instructions a few times, I found canning the beans to be quite an easy task.  Somewhat time consuming if you are making more than one batch though, because you have to wait for the canner to depressurize before you can open the lid.  This took 20 minutes or so.  I'm looking forward to canning all sorts of other things like soups, stews, and other veggies!  Also, I'm banking on my 2+ year old forest garden to really start pumping out fruit in a few years and will be canning fruit as well!

Jay, I have always considered a pressure canner a steam canner due to the steam gauge.

I think someone has come out with something new to take the place of a water bath canner called a steam canner.  It does not look like the description that google gave me for a "steam canner" as that looked like a pressure canner.

So for this thread like the title says "steam canner", something to take the place of a water bath canner.

Here is the steam canner.  It looks much like what I used years ago to sterilize baby bottles:



https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Crop-Brands-Canner-capacity/dp/B0058SSUV0?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=A15P3MXY8PHT18

I have a Victorio steam canner (not a pressure canner). I love it. The one I have is just a big stainless pot. The glass lid has a steam valve and temperature gauge. I like that I can use it as a stock pot if I want.

I've seen snarky comments in reviews about the temperature gauge, things like "What kind of idiot needs a temperature gauge to see when the water's boiling!" That's not what the gauge is for. You have to calibrate it for your location, put a mark on it, then use that reading to determine when the steam has brought the interior up to proper temperature. You can also just wait until there's a full, steady stream of steam coming out the vent.

Things that are great:

- you only need a small amount of water in it, which means
  - easy to move, even when full of jars
  - takes very little time to get the thing up to temperature
  - cuts down on time waiting for water to heat up or cool down to start next batch
  - saves energy by not having your burner going full throttle for hours to keep a massive amount of water boiling
- the pot can be used as a pot. I hated having a huge single use canner I had to store
- you can stack small jars like in a pressure canner
- probably more things

Things that are not so great:

- they're a bit expensive compared to a water bath canner, but they're much better quality and will save you time and money
- the lid on mine is ever so slightly wonky, if I want to get picky. The metal rim has a bit of a wobble in one spot, so it doesn't fit perfectly on the pot. It's not an issue, just a nitpick.

Jan White wrote:I have a Victorio steam canner (not a pressure canner). I love it. The one I have is just a big stainless pot. The glass lid has a steam valve and temperature gauge. I like that I can use it as a stock pot if I want.

It might be helpful, Jan, if you could take a picture of yours and post it. Yours does not sound at all similar to the one in the picture above, as yours sounds both heavier weight, and shaped like a typical stock pot.

In fact, a large, quality, stainless stock pot is what I use to "boiling-water-bath" my high acid foods. It is 27cm in diameter and 23 cm tall. A local shop had a sale, and I took measurements of my stove top, and my canning jars, and chose a pot that fit as close as possible. I then ordered a pizza pan with holes in exactly the right diameter to fit in the bottom upside down to keep the jars off the bottom. It is just barely tall enough to do 750 ml jars, but I mostly use 500 ml jars anyway. By the time I'm getting up past that, I'm into pressure-canner territory.

I can fit 6 x 500 ml jars in it, and a bonus 250 jar in the middle. That's pretty much as much "raw material" as I can manage with my large pots to heat the jam/sauce/pickles in anyway. If you're seriously doing lots of high acid foods to feed a lot of people, someone posted a picture of a rectangular water bath that fits across 2 burners if you have the right sort of stove.

What bothered me about the description in the link above, is that it's a light weight aluminium pot - the melting point of aluminium is *much* lower than stainless steel or cast iron. Putting such a pot on too small a burner so the heat is concentrated in a smaller area, or letting the water level get too low, can have a bad outcome. In discussing the concept with Hubby (who likes to play with steam trains as a hobby...) steam does not transfer as much energy as hot water does. I read about people "canning" in their oven using essentially "hot air" which transfers even less energy than steam does. When I did some research, there were many experienced people who felt the risk wasn't worth it. There are also plenty of people who will tell you they grew up just filling up the jars, putting the lid on, and calling it done. So ultimately, it comes down to how big or small your risk factors and aversions are. I give food as gifts to a number of elderly and friends with chronic illnesses. I tend not to use a lot of sugar, and I'm well aware how much less natural acid is in many foods now than 50 years ago. Thus, I tend to err on the side of safety.

By using a quality stock pot to do my canning, I've also got a quality stock pot to use for a big batch of spaghetti sauce or chili, with less splattering to clean up!  

The "steam canner" referred to by the OP is more precisely called an "atmospheric steam canner". There's info about these (including my own badge bit for it) in the Steam Canning PEP Badge Bit thread: https://permies.com/wiki/140394/pep-food-prep-preservation/Steam-canning-Food-sand-steamcan

Edited to add: I really love the steam canner for lots of reasons, including the lower water need (so much lighter to lift!) and much easier to see what's happening with the jars once the lid is off since they are not submerged.

Jay Angler wrote:. When I did some research, there were many experienced people who felt the risk wasn't worth it. There are also plenty of people who will tell you they grew up just filling up the jars, putting the lid on, and calling it done. So ultimately, it comes down to how big or small your risk factors and aversions are. I give food as gifts to a number of elderly and friends with chronic illnesses. I tend not to use a lot of sugar, and I'm well aware how much less natural acid is in many foods now than 50 years ago. Thus, I tend to err on the side of safety.

The canning powers that be in the US approved steam canning in 2015. There is no more risk to it than water bath canning. Of course you have to use the equipment properly, just like other types of canning.

https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/safefood/2017/10/24/safe-preserving-using-a-steam-canner/?ss_redir=1

Canning in an oven is something totally different and not approved as safe by the canning gods.

If you're worried about acidity, it's easy enough to get some pH strips to test. Then you know for sure and don't need to go overboard on anything, just in case.

Sugar is only a preservative if there's so much of it that it saturates the water in the recipe, which is what prevents bacteria from growing, so low sugar won't necessarily change anything as far as safety goes. However, it will result is more browning and mushier textures - like the stuff I grew up eating, canned by my sugar phobic mum 😁

https://extension.psu.edu/canning-with-less-sugar

Canning without Sugar

   It is safe to can fruit in water without added sugar. However, you may find that the fruit is less firm than you are accustomed to.  

Another thing everyone can stop worrying about is sterilizing their jars! Waste of time, energy, and water.

All following quotes from
https://www.healthycanning.com/sterilizing-canning-lids-jars/

Don’t sterilize or boil the canning lids. Since 1970, you haven’t needed to heat or sterilize the canning lids. You don’t even need to warm the lids anymore, you can just use them room temperature;

Mississippi State University Extension Service says,

   Jars do not need to be sterilized before canning if they will be filled with food and processed in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes or more or if they will be processed in a pressure canner. Jars that will be processed in a boiling water bath canner for less than 10 minutes need to be sterilized by boiling them in hot water for 10 minutes before they are filled.”  [1]

The USDA Complete Guide (2015) says,

   Empty jars used for vegetables, meats, and fruits to be processed in a pressure canner need not be presterilized. It is also unnecessary to presterilize jars for fruits, tomatoes, and pickled or fermented foods that will be processed 10 minutes or longer in a boiling-water canner. — USDA  [2]

It’s redundant for you to sterilize in advance because the process will do it, (and probably better than you could in the first place given that your jar could get contaminated again from the air while filling). The National Center for Home Food Preservation says,

   When a process time is 10 minutes or more, the jars will be sterilized DURING processing in the canner. — NCHFP  [3]

The National Centre for Home Food Preservation says,

   Sometimes people choose to increase a 5-minute process time for certain jams and jellies to 10 minutes so that they do not have to pre-sterilize the jars. The extra process time is not harmful to most gels and spoilage should not be an issue as long as the filled jars get a full 10-minute treatment in boiling water. (And remember your altitude to increase this process time as needed.)”  [4]

Bernardin says the same,

   Heat processing time recommendations for jams and jellies was been increased from 5 minutes to 10 minutes in 2003, thus eliminating the need to pre-sterilize mason jars before filling. Tests have shown that increasing the processing time does not adversely affect the product.”  [5]

I was told in the past, that one of the reasons to sterilize the jar was so you weren't putting hot liquid into a room temperature jar. Preheating the jar was supposed to also reduce the stress on the glass. Did you see any comments about that?

I was wondering why the recommended boiling water bath suddenly seemed to go from 5 min, to 10 min - now I know why!

Jay Angler wrote:I was told in the past, that one of the reasons to sterilize the jar was so you weren't putting hot liquid into a room temperature jar. Preheating the jar was supposed to also reduce the stress on the glass. Did you see any comments about that?

I run an inch or so of hot tap water into a sink, then fill my jars full of hot tap water and leave them upright in the sink, full of hot water, until needed. The hot water is dumped into jars for the next batch. After that, the water is too cool to help much with thermal shock.

I don't do anywhere near as much canning as a lot of people, but I've never had any of my jars break from thermal shock.

So, yes, heating jars is good, but there's no reason to full on sterilize them just to avoid thermal shock...I don't think.

Jan White wrote:I have a Victorio steam canner (not a pressure canner). I love it. The one I have is just a big stainless pot. The glass lid has a steam valve and temperature gauge. I like that I can use it as a stock pot if I want.

I've seen snarky comments in reviews about the temperature gauge, things like "What kind of idiot needs a temperature gauge to see when the water's boiling!" That's not what the gauge is for. You have to calibrate it for your location, put a mark on it, then use that reading to determine when the steam has brought the interior up to proper temperature. You can also just wait until there's a full, steady stream of steam coming out the vent.

Things that are great:

- you only need a small amount of water in it, which means
  - easy to move, even when full of jars
  - takes very little time to get the thing up to temperature
  - cuts down on time waiting for water to heat up or cool down to start next batch
  - saves energy by not having your burner going full throttle for hours to keep a massive amount of water boiling
- the pot can be used as a pot. I hated having a huge single use canner I had to store
- you can stack small jars like in a pressure canner
- probably more things

Things that are not so great:

- they're a bit expensive compared to a water bath canner, but they're much better quality and will save you time and money
- the lid on mine is ever so slightly wonky, if I want to get picky. The metal rim has a bit of a wobble in one spot, so it doesn't fit perfectly on the pot. It's not an issue, just a nitpick.

Jan, thank you for your input, experience, and product review. You’ve described exactly what I’m seeking to learn about. How many quarts does your steam canner hold?

Anne Miller wrote:Here is the steam canner.  It looks much like what I used years ago to sterilize baby bottles:



https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Crop-Brands-Canner-capacity/dp/B0058SSUV0?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=A15P3MXY8PHT18

Yay! This is a model of steam canner I ran across thank you for posting this.

Jay Angler wrote:I'd like us all to confirm  our language here:

Are we using: "Pressure Canning" and "Steam Canning" to mean the exact same thing?

I ask, because I've only recently been hearing/reading the term "steam canning" and want to be sure we're comparing the same things - English is a wonderfully complicated language with interesting regional differences!

Jay, yes, steam canner and pressure canner and water bath canner are 3 different products.

It should fit seven quart jars. Canadian jars are a little bigger than American. In order to fit seven, I have to make sure there are a couple skinny American ones mixed in.

I saw this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXFrs9Y7iWs : of a woman who uses a steam canner in lieu of what I would typically have used a water bath canner to preserve. It looks like a lot less hassle than a big kettle. I haven't watched other canning videos by her but it seems like she primarily uses the steam canner.

Jan White wrote:It should fit seven quart jars. Canadian jars are a little bigger than American. In order to fit seven, I have to make sure there are a couple skinny American ones mixed in.

Jan, thank you.

Mercy Pergande wrote:I saw this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXFrs9Y7iWs : of a woman who uses a steam canner in lieu of what I would typically have used a water bath canner to preserve. It looks like a lot less hassle than a big kettle. I haven't watched other canning videos by her but it seems like she primarily uses the steam canner.

Mercy, thank you for sharing the link.  I learned more about the steam canner thanks to your efforts.  Her serviceberry project was amazing! I did not realize steam canners had been around for decades.  I thought they were a new invention.