Canner Going Again

I mentioned the other day about the canner cooking dry and having to start over. I have canned for 30+ years and never had that happen. I’ve canned on glasstops, gas stoves without much power, gas stoves that had what I thought was too much power, I’ve canned on the Camp Chef outside when the wind was blowing the flame so that I couldn’t get it adjusted properly . . I had never had a canner cook all the water out.

As I mentioned, I keep all the jigglers in a drawer. These are just a few that I pulled out and weighed. They all weigh 92 – 93 grams and I think 5 of them are All American jigglers. I know the Mirro is an odd one for my Mirro canners. The All American jigglers will definitely work on all AA canners so keeping them with their pot is not an issue.

According to the All American canner manual, the jiggler should rock 1-4 times per minute (same as Mirro recommendation). I’m having to keep this burner, which is the lower BTU burner on the front, at “1” to get it to jiggle that slowly.

Yesterday, I canned three loads and did a bit of experimenting, so long as it was safe to do so. The first load I did, I kept the jiggler rocking at about 6 times per minute because that was as low as I could get the burner to go. It did not run out of water. Hardly used any water. The second pot was placed on the middle front burner. It took forever to get the steam to flowing and I was able to keep that burner at about 5 rocks per minute and that pot ran out of water but it was after the timer had gone off. I was in the laundry room sorting laundry, the timer went off, I finished what I was doing and by the time I got into the kitchen, which did not take more than 2 or 3 minutes, the jiggling had stopped and there were just drops of water left in the bottom of the canner.

The third pot was on the front right burner, the jiggler was rocking about 6 times per minute, the burner stayed on “1” and there was some water gone – it wasn’t near empty but it wasn’t as much as I had started with.

All three times, I was careful to have the lid equally tight on all sides. All three results were somewhat different.

I’m still kinda baffled by it all. I’ve been using AA canners for about 14 years. I’ve never been super careful about having the lids on and screwed down so that the distance all the way around the lid is equal; I’ve almost always had the jiggler rocking more than the minimum and I have never run out of water before. Often, on the outside Camp Chef stove, the fire was way too high because of the wind, and the fire wasn’t consistent because of the wind. Never ran out of water.

I’ve done 7 loads in the canner in three days. Two of them ran out of water – one during the process, after 55 minutes, and I had to start over; one at the very end after the timer had gone off.

I’ll be anxious to see what the inside looks like on this load. I just turned it off. I know it didn’t run out of water but I’ll see how much water evaporated out.

I’m thinking it’s just a freak combination of the lid not being on right and the fire being too high but I’ll pay very close attention to EVERYTHING in the future.