Safe to keep? Pressure canner malfunction

cajunmama · Dec 3, 2015

The day after Thanksgiving, I canned about 40 4 oz. jars of hot sauce. It took forever for my pressure canner (Presto 16 quart with the 3-piece regulator) to lock and the regulator always rocked too fast. Then, as I was cleaning up, I discovered that my vent pipe was loose. It was probably loose the entire time and the cause of all of my problems. Now I'm not sure what pressure I was at. My goal was 10 pounds of pressure for 15 minutes. If I was too high, then no real issue. So I need to know if my sauce was canned safely or if I should just toss the whole lot.

Thanks,
CajunMama

suitcase_sally · Dec 3, 2015

If your sauce had vinegar in it, I'd say it was safe. You can always re-do them, but I'd think they are ok.

arrocks · Dec 3, 2015

Agree that the safety would depend on the recipe used to make the sauce in the first place. Since you were pressure canning it rather than BWB it I'd suspect it has little to no vinegar in it since vinegar sauces don't usually require pressure canning. But that is just a guess.

Personally I'd just dump it all back in a pot bring it up to boiling, re-jar with clean jars and new lids and reprocess it correctly. That way you don't have to worry about it.

For future reference, checking over all parts of the canner before using should be routine as it is easy for things to happen to them during down time.

cajunmama · Dec 3, 2015

arrocks said:
For future reference, checking over all parts of the canner before using should be routine as it is easy for things to happen to them during down time.

You are right. When I noticed the loose vent,...:facepalm:. I knew I should have checked it before I even started.

suitcase_sally · Dec 4, 2015

I had that happen a couple of months ago. In the 40 years that I've been canning, I've never had it happen except this one time.

Safe to keep? Pressure canner malfunction

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