A few Questions

[TOF]

(1 September 2012, 20:43)Prepaday Wrote: Is there a diff between a pressure canning machine and a pressure cooker pot thing? I looked on Ebay and the Us is the only place that does pressure canning machine, even though it looks like a pot, one of our pressure cooker pots.

Yes there is, a Pressure Canner is much bigger and the pressure control is more accurate than a pressure cooker. To 'can' low acid foods such as veg, meats and fish, you need to raise the temperature above boiling point and maintain it for a considerable period of time. Also, the processing time is calculated to include the heating and cooling period of the canner, because a pressure cooker is so much smaller and is made of thinner gauge metal, the heating and cooling times are affected and there may not be sufficient processing to destroy the target bacteria(namely Botulinum). HTH