I pressure canned some raw packed Roma tomatoes yesterday. When taking them out of the pressure canner, I am seeing a drastic change in water levels. Are these still safe to store? I used a tested, safe recipe that also included citric acid. Canner acted appropriately during the canning and ptessure release stages, but it is an older model from a family member. Still new to canning, any help or tips are much appreciated. Thank you all
by Unusual-Motor-4445
7 Comments
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Curious what you find out. I pressure canned tomatoes and lost about 1-1/2” of water. (Same as you it seems). Tomatoes looked great otherwise.
They are safe as long as they are sealed. Possibly processed at too high a temp or too long. I can all heirloom tomatoes which are higher in acid so I still water bath can them even though I know the current recommendation is pressure canning. Continue pressure canning for safety reasons.
can you share which recipe you use? also is your pressure canner a dial garage or weighted gauge?
I’ve tried every trick in the book and still get siphoning with pressure canned tomatoes, so don’t beat yourself up. The only thing that seems to help a little is allowing the pressure to come down all the way then slowly removing the lid inch by inch over 20-30 minutes. If I just pop the lid off, even after fully releasing all pressure, they will siphon.
I use pressure cookers and canners a lot and my experience is if you want the vegetables to remain in one piece and firm, you release the pressure on the pressure cooker naturally very slowly without help. If you put it under cold water release the pressure quickly, the vegetables tend to disintegrate. I never pressure canned tomatoes. I always water bath tomatoes using citric acid. I have done green beans in a pressure canner for 90 minutes and had some loss of juice inside the jar also known as siphoning, but it’s never been a problem.
I pressure can all my tomatoes and have no issues with siphoning either in pints or quarts. I do what others have said in this thread. In addition, I fill my jars just a hair below the inch and I never move the canner until the jars are removed. After carefully removing the lid, I wait another 10 minutes before removing the jars. I also am very careful with pressure regulation, using the dial plus weights, allowing the pressure to increase very gradually and then maintaining the correct pressure/jiggling of the weight without overshooting AND at the lowest temperature necessary to maintain the pressure. I would also point out that it took me at least several times pressure canning to resolve the siphoning issue. It does take a bit of practice because everyone’s setup is different— different canner, heat source,etc.