I’m sharing this here to hopefully help someone else who may have the same problem.
I have a drawer full of jigglers. We have old (very old canners); we have the Presto canners; we have Mirro canners. We have All American canners. I think a Mirro jiggler I saw had their name on it.
Yesterday when I started canning, I grabbed one out of the drawer. I’ve never been particular about which jiggler I put on which pot. I’m still not sure it matters but I can’t think of anything else that would have caused the problem.
Load #1:
I was canning the meat and it had to pressure can at 10 PSI for 90 minutes. I put the water up to the line and started the canner. Usually I have trouble keeping the canner around 10 or 11 SPI. It wants to zip up to 15 PSI on a gas stove (same thing happened in Texas). This time, it stayed right at 10. I kept checking it to be sure it wasn’t going below 10.
When the load was finished, there was hardly any water left in the cooker. That was weird. I was thinking maybe I hadn’t screwed the lid down tight enough. All American canners don’t have gaskets.
Load #2:
This was another load of meat and had to process at 10 PSI for 90 minutes. I did everything the same but added about 1 cup more water. At 55 minutes, the jiggler stopped. I had never had a canner run out of water and figured that was the only thing that would make the jiggler stop. I turned it off, let it cool down, removed the lid and no water! I added water . . more than I thought I should be adding, started it again and right at the 90 minute mark, the jiggler stopped again. It was out of water but it had processed long enough.
Load #3:
This was 4 pints of enchilada sauce and it needed to process at 10 PSI for 50 minutes. I dug around in the drawer and found a newer looking jiggler, put in the same amount of water I always put in. Right off the bat, the pressure zipped up to around 13. I had been putting the burner at 7 to keep it at 10 PSI. With the different jiggler, I kept it around 4 and it stayed between 10 and 11 PSI.
Lesson Learned:
Use the jiggler that was meant for the pot! I’m going to order new jigglers for the AA canners today and not let this ever happen again. Vince said he will etch something into them so we know which ones they are. I’m not sure I’ll ever use the really old canners again but I don’t want to throw out their jigglers. We’ll figure something out.
Shelley says
I take my canner in yearly and have the pressure checked to make sure it is accurate and get any adjustments made. Also I AWAYS use the parts that come with the canner and don’t substitute. Just a thought
judy.blog@gmail.com says
The only “part” on the All American that can be substituted is the weight gauged jiggler and they never need to be re-calibrated. They do, apparently, need to be on the right pot! 🙂
Only the gauges need to be checked.
Helen says
That’s unnerving! Are you confident the jars are processed enough? I would be a little worried about using the food. I would hate to reprocess, and it might overcook the contents, but since you ran out of water could the pressure have been consistent?
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Of course I’m confident! I re-processed them all at 90 minutes again. It’s meat for enchiladas and it will be finely chopped. The second time it ran out, the timer had just gone off. I can hear the jiggler and it did not stop before the 90 minutes were up.
Helen says
I should know by now after reading your blog for so many years, you would NEVER use something you were not absolutely sure about. I hope you didn’t take offense regarding my comment.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
No offense taken. But, if it had been green beans or potatoes . . they would have been mush. Stew meat . . not so much. It will be fine. In fact, the original recipe said to pressure cook for 75 minutes. I did and it still wasn’t tender so I pressure cooked it for 75 more minutes.
Vivian says
I only have one pressure canner, so I don’t have that problem!! 🙂
RuthW in MD says
Why would someone store the jiggler separate form the canner it belongs to? The canner itself is plenty large enough to toss the jiggler into for storage. Besides, storing them together means more drawer space in the kitchen.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
First and foremost, not everyone uses a canner only for pressure canning. I also use the canners for water bath canning and the jigglers aren’t used for water bath canning. I have four All American canners and usually used only one at a time. Their AA jigglers fit on all the AA canners so I kept three in a drawer. I did all the canning outdoors and kept the one jigger I was using in the outdoor cabinet. All the rest of the jigglers stayed safely in a kitchen drawer. There were times we used the big canning pots for other things and the jigglers weren’t used. (shrimp boil, soaking 10 pounds of beans to be canned, etc.)
I’ve even used the huge canner for soaking knitted items when I didn’t have a big laundry sink. No jiggler needed for that. 🙂
Also we have two canners that are now used as vacuum chambers for freeze drying and those jigglers were saved because they will fit on any Mirro canner. They were in the drawer.
No, it shouldn’t have happened but it did and it isn’t THAT big of a deal — 90 minutes wasted but the food was all fine.
RuthW in MD says
Separate FROM the canner it belongs to, Sorry!
Linda+Garcia says
See if you can find a picture online of each of your canners and then compare the jiggler in the picture to the jigglers you have in the drawer. Maybe you can figure which one belongs to which of your pressure vessles.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
They all look exactly the same except one that’s very, very old. I just ordered more for the AA canner and Vince will etch something into them so I know which ones they are. I’m actually living dangerously and using the old one today and it seems to be fine. It’s all too weird. I know I’ve used that one before on the AA canner.
JustGail says
Is it possible that one is a ringer and not right for any canner? I would not be surprised if Vince has a caliper and could measure them all. Or weigh them? I have 2 canners. One smaller with jiggler, and one large canner with a dial. I’d rather it have the jiggler as then I wouldn’t need to stand over it staring at the dial dreading the big caboom I was raised fearing. I could at least listen while in the kitchen doing other things like cleaning up the mess and preparing the landing spot for the jars.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
No, it’s a regular weighted gauge. I found on the back where it says Mirro on it but I can’t believe after all these years of canning, I haven’t picked it up and used it before. I’m not sure if it wasn’t something else last night . . maybe putting jars in that weren’t hot, with water that wasn’t hot took longer. I don’t know but I’ll be very careful from now on. I won’t can with a canner that only has a gauge only. Yes, I sit in the living room and stitch while it’s doing the work in the kitchen. I can hear the minute the sounds change.
Nelle Coursey says
If you know which jiggler goes with which pot, why not put it inside the pot when you store it? Woouldn’t that make it simpler than having to look at each one every time and try to figure it out? Maybe I am just being lazy! LOL
judy.blog@gmail.com says
We use our pots for so much more than just canning and I figured keeping the jigglers in a drawer would be safer than taking a pot outside to boil shrimp, removing the jiggler and forgetting where we put it.