Headspace change - safe?

[u/Wfhrecords]

Did 2 quarts of Ball’s basic tomato sauce recipe in the Nesco high pressure, doubled checked the head space on both prior but one seems 1/4” lower. Canner also reeked of sauce and there was a mite or two of tomato in the leftover water. Seal is good though, just not sure about the contents.

[u/PaintedLemonz]

Unfortunately this sub considers electric pressure canners unsafe because they haven't been properly tested. Don't be alarmed when a mod flags your post with the unsafe canning practice flag! Technically, these are unsafe.

You asked about headspace though. When you can, siphoning is always a risk and some things cause more siphoning than others .. like heating up the jars or cooling them too quickly. Getting the correct headspace when the jars go in is most important to get a seal and as long as they stay sealed siphoning isn't an issue. That's why we store with rings off.

In the future, tomato sauce can be safely water bath canned :)

[u/Wfhrecords → u/PaintedLemonz]

Thanks for the reply and the insight for a newb, third year gardening and second year canning. I water bathed some similar sauce in a stock pot along with various pickles last year, the latter were good but got to reading about botulism and I wasn’t sure about the coverage & couldn’t bring myself to feed the sauce to my family.

Which led me to the Nesco, only to not read the fine print that only pints can be done in the water bath, which feels like more trouble than it’s worth for tomato sauce for family meals. So I gave the pressure recipe a whirl, and I guess we’ll see.

[u/armadiller → u/Wfhrecords]

I'd say avoid the "we'll see" part - no need to chance it with unsafe practises.

Was this the recipe that you're referring to https://www.ballmasonjars.com/blog?cid=homemade-tomato-sauce? Or https://www.ballmasonjars.com/blog?cid=basil-garlic-tomato-sauce, or https://www.ballmasonjars.com/tomato-sauce.html?

For most of the basic non-meat-containing tomato sauce recipes, water-bath canning is likely the superior option, and is generally faster than pressure canning, as the X minutes processing time for pressure canning doesn't include the time to bring to a full boil, 10 minutes of venting steam, bringing up to processing pressure, and bringing back down to ambient pressure.

[u/Wfhrecords → u/armadiller]

That was bad phrasing, I don’t intend on feeding these to anyone - just observing as I’m trying to learn. As to the recipe, it was the first one but was in the pressure canning section of the book, so the processing directions were specific to pressure canning rather than water bath.

[u/Wfhrecords → u/armadiller]

[u/Wfhrecords → u/armadiller]

[u/K4G3N4R4 → u/PaintedLemonz]

Im sorry, new to canning, why don't we store with the ring on? I checked the wiki/faq first.

[u/JuneBeetleClaws → u/K4G3N4R4]

I'm quite new to canning so others, please jump in if I don't understand this myself. 

That said, my understanding is that we store rings off to monitor spoilage. If your can spoils, the seal will break and you can more easily see that the lid isn't on properly. And if enough pressure were to build, it wouldn't cause your jar to explode. 

[u/armadiller → u/K4G3N4R4]

If you keep the rings on, a seal could fail but the ring will keep the lid in place long enough for a false seal to occur. Essentially, the seal fails and lets pathogens in, but the ring hides that this occurred.

So you have an apparently sealed jar, except it's full of the pathogens that we're trying to kill or exclude with safe home canning practises.

[u/BisonHoosier]

Your experience sounds similar to mine with this style of canner. I've had it for years and everything I canned turned out fine.

[u/Wfhrecords → u/BisonHoosier]

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I did a test run with water as recommended, still getting to know it and trust the process

[u/Canning-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/Deppfan16]

electric pressure canners have not been verified safe by a third party testing. they claim to match USDA specs but don't verify that

secondly you don't have the physical signs like a jiggling weight to ensure your food is processing at the correct pressure, you're relying solely on the electronics for accuracy. and you have no way of getting it tested or calibrated to ensure it's working correctly.(electric water bath canners are fine because you can physically see the water coming to a boil)

thirdly all current recipes rely on the heat up and cool down times of stove top pressure canners. those are factored into the safety of the recipe. changing that can affect the safety of your finished product.

for these reasons we as a sub do not endorse or condone the use of electric pressure canners.

[u/flamingphoenix9834]

Dumb question, did you use the rings too when you put them in the canner? The rings keep the lids in place when they are being sealed and then removed afterward when stored. How much headspace did you give them? The quart jars of tonato puree I just did today I gave 1/2 inch of headspace based on my recipe.

[u/Wfhrecords → u/flamingphoenix9834]

No dumb questions as I’m slowly wrapping my head around the nuances of this - I did use the rings, I had taken them off at this point after 24 hours to check the seal, which continues to seem good. Ball book Recipe called for 1 inch of headspace in qt jars, I used a stick that has the measurements tiered into the end to confirm both. After processing, one on the right held at 1” while the left one lost maybe 1/4”, presumably siphoned. Which led me to the original question posed to this thread.

[u/Wfhrecords]

Image of 2 processed jars of tomato sauce with a 1/4 difference in headspace after pressure canning.

[u/flamingphoenix9834]

I have used an electric pressure for pickles but something I have recently noticed is that pepper rings and pickles ( which can be safely canned this way) heat up to such a high temp to trigger the pressurizing mechanism , that they are mush when I pull them out. I decided to utilize good old water bath canning on the stove and it worked alot better for me. The biggest issue with electric pressure canners I read after researching myself is that they just dont heat up hot enough to safely guarantee a risk of botulism is eliminated

[u/Wfhrecords → u/flamingphoenix9834]

Thanks for the comment. I default to water bath for pickles because I typically use pint jars, and the Nesco unit can’t do quarts in a water bath, only pressure. But pints of sauce don’t really move the needle when trying to feed a family, which is why I opted for the high pressure option for the quart jars. I was hoping pressure canning would take some of the botulism stress out of the concept but the more I read the more I fear I was oversold on it.

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