This year for my birthday I received a complete canning kit for water bath canning. I was so excited!
I usually get about one batch done a week, which is to say, I get one load of cans in the canner each time. Most of the time I'm canning a couple of different things. For instance one day I did beets, carrots, and green tomatoes. Another day I did pickles and beans... you get the idea.
The night I did beets, carrots, and green tomatoes I tried a new technique. You see, we have a glass top stove. It is not recommended that you can on glass top stoves for a variety of reasons. Allegedly, some stoves have a sensor in them that is designed to keep the burner from getting too hot so the burner will automatically turn off when it reaches a certain temperature and therefore the water doesn't stay at a rolling boil. I've also heard stories of glass top stoves cracking under the weight and heat of a canner.
I haven't had any problems keeping the water at a rolling boil for the 15 minutes it takes to process pickles so I wasn't worried about that... the cracking seems like the only potential problem I might run into with this particular stove. I've told Parker of this risk and he didn't seem to concerned by it and told me it was OK to continue to can on the stove.
Well, the night I did the carrots, beets, and tomatoes he was out of town. The carrots and beets have to stay in the canner for 30 minutes which is longer than anything I'd done so far on this stove. We have a pretty nice gas grill that I recently learned to light and I'd read an article about canning on a grill so, I decided to give it a whirl. I figured, if I'm going to break the stove I'd rather Parker be there to witness it.
So, I hauled my canner out to the grill. Now, I should probably explain to you that I cannot simply walk out a sliding glass door on to a deck to access the grill. Our grill is in the front of the house. To get there I have to walk through a door into the entry way go down 2 steps and through another door into the garage, and finally, through a third door out of the garage onto the driveway.
A canner filled with water is by no means light, the doors all open inwards so I need to have a free hand or to set the canner down, and did I mention I'm dodging dogs and cats the whole way? Oh! The most exciting part... the water had been preheating on the stove. And there was some kind of gross bug hatch so all the lights had to be turned off in the garage. This was going to be fun. But with a lot of gliding steps and setting the pot down and picking it up again I made it with out incident. The tomatoes only process for 15 minutes so I had to devise a plan on how to get them out of the canner and into the house. Thankfully I only had one quart of them. So, I jury rigged a safe place to set them using a washcloth over a welding glove not wanting them to cool too quickly or get covered in the gross bugs flying everywhere I had to move them to the house. For this step I simply used the other welding glove but, mistakenly picked the jar up by the metal ring. About halfway to the kitchen my fingers started to get really warm. The dogs sensing my urgency became concerned and began to circle my feet slowing my progress. After much shouting and maybe a few curse words I was finally able to let the tomatoes rest in their rightful place on the counter top.
I still had 2 pints of carrots and a quart of beets in the canner though. Through some careful preparations and planning ahead I was able to carry the jars inside in their canning rack without incident.
The entire process was not nearly as easy as the article had made it sound but I was successful. I did like using the grill because the water boiled faster and hotter. The obstacle course I had to navigate was a huge pitfall but I think in the future when I have to process for a long period of time I will use the grill again. Hopefully, Parker will be home to open doors for me.
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