Our bologna we canned this weekend turned out excellent! To be honest, it doesn't really taste like Oscar Mayer type. This bologna reminds me of a deer bologna and it is delicious! Ernest and the boys are looking forward to taking it out on the boat and also to the deer lease.
Now, let's talk about something lots of people are scared of....pressure canners. I remember when I was first starting out in my canning adventures, I was scared to death of them and for a long time wouldn't can anything that would require using a pressure canner. Now, I own two of them!
Why do you use these things in the first place??? Mainly because low acid food (things like meat, vegetables ect.) HAVE to be processed at a higher temperature (above 240 degrees) that will kill harmful bacteria. Hot water canners no matter how hot you get them don't have the ability to get to that temperature. You use your hot water canner to process high acid food (most fruit, anything pickled, jellies/jams).
An important piece of advice to follow is that you should ALWAYS check your pressure canner out carefully before you use it to make sure it is in good working order, if something isn't functioning right don't use the pressure canner until you fix whatever the problem is. In the beginning, I admit I didn't always check things out every time and yes, I admit once I almost blew a hole through my kitchen ceiling so I had to learn the hard way!
How much to spend on one? I guess the sky's the limit there. Both of mine (20 quart and 22 quart) came from Walmart (both Presto's) and we didn't spend more than $70 on each of them. Mine are workhorses (sometimes I use both simultaneously) and I've been real happy with both of them. I know you run into used ones at Goodwill or garage sales but don't think I would advise going that route unless you somehow can get the instruction book that goes with it. The reason why is the little instruction book that comes with the canner is like gold. For example, my canners may be both made by the same manufacturer but they behave quite differently from each other and they have different instruction booklets. If you can't get hold of the manufacturer's info about the canner, I wouldn't go there.
When properly used, you can have a lot of fun with a pressure canner. I do all kinds of stuff (spaghetti sauce, chili, green beans, charro beans, corn, meat ect.) in mine. If you haven't tried it, you should!!!
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