This electric pressure canner is AWESOME. Jarring sauce the old-fashioned way in a boiling pot of water is tedious and kind of a pain (and I was too chicken to use an old school pressure canner) but I didn't want to spend money on a fancy canner. I finally took the plunge and bought this NESCO canner in early Fall 2024, and it is worth EVERY PENNY. The first time I used it I was floored by how easy it is to use. I took a picture of the directions to pull up at first, but you memorize how to do it pretty quickly if you use it a lot. Every time I made a huge batch of sauce on Sundays, I'd ladle the rest into mason jars (either pints or quarts, both fit easily) and use this canner. After the machine has been done for an hour or so, I carefully take them out and let them cool completely on a towel and then you can write your date on 'em and stack them up in the pantry. The sauce is a billion times better than anything you buy at the store, and it's so easy to pop one open and throw together a super quick dinner.
This especially gets used nonstop in the summer when my tomatoes and peppers are bursting from the vine. I'm able to jar tons and tons of sauce, and tons of peperonata (peppers cooked down for hours in tomatoes and garlic and olive oil). It's one of my husband's favorites – he can just pop open a jar at the start of the week and use it to make a lunch with it every day: roast beef or ham sandwich and peppers; crispy chicken reheated with peppers and mozzarella; peppers on fresh bread or pita with whatever leftover meat we had last night, etc. Thanks to this canner being so easy to use, I'm able to make nonstop jars of both all through summer and early fall, and then we have a burst of summertime that we can just open from the jar all winter long.
I have seriously put this canner to WORK and it's still chugging happily along. I don't even put it away at the end of summer because I'm constantly using it. It performs perfectly every single time, and it is very strong and durable (reminds me of a beefier Instant Pot) AND has fail safes on it so I'm never worried about safety. I can only cook 4 jars at a time, but it'll fit quarts as well as pints, which is usually how much is leftover after making a huge batch for dinner so I'm able to fit it all in there each time in one go. I love giving away jars of perfect delicious marinara and peperonata to friends and neighbors – one of my neighbors jars amazing jam from her fruit trees and we swap treats to one another. How nice is that? 🙂
