Beekissed
Garden Master
Think about weight, height, convenience of use and price. If your range hood is low, the taller, heavier canners are going to be a pain in the butt....every time you use them. If you have a glass top stove, they put a lot of stress on those as well...it's recommended not to even use the canners on the glass top stoves but you can get by with it with the lighterweight and smaller canners.
Seals don't go bad as often as people claim and they are cheap and easy to replace. If you get one of the more common brands, the seals are also easy to find. I love the ease of the rubber gasket canners as you don't have to tighten down all those knobs all over the canner each time you apply the lid...just sit it down, swivel it sideways and you have a seal. Done and done. Same with removal...twist the lid sideways, lift straight up. It's a time saver, it's easy and I love it.
My mother started out with an All American, back when they just had a gauge but no weighted jiggler. She was canning on a wood stove back then, so hard to get the right pressure anyway, but add to it the fact that the pressure gauge climbs silently...have to keep checking it. Well, when you are prepping veggies and fruit for 100 qts of food per type of veggie or fruit, you have no time to hang around watching a gauge. It creeps up...and then ensue the stories of canners exploding that discourage many generations to come from ever trying canning at all.
She soon got rid of the heavy cumbersome All American with the scary gauge and moved onto a lighterweight Presto canner with a jiggler weight that let her know at all times where the pressure was as she continued to work across the kitchen. Thousands upon thousands of qts later, we are still in love with the canners that are cheap to be bought, cheap to maintain, won't kill you to lift, easy to manage and monitor and still get the job done. In the past 40 yrs of canning we've had to replace two seals on two separate canners...one an ancient Mirro we borrowed from an older lady just some years ago. One time it was the old Presto that we had used for 20 odd years by the time it finally needed a new seal.
I am currently using a small Mirro, cost me $38 and free s/h off Amazon and I LOVE this thing. I'm canning a lot less than we did back then, so don't need a big tall canner I can stack stuff in. It also fits under our low range hood with much room to spare, doesn't break my back to lift, clean or store away. I can only can 7 qts at a time, but that's fine with me...we aren't canning 100 qts at a time now for each veggie we grow. Max we do now is around 40-50 qts per item, if that on some items. The smaller, jiggle weight canner is just right for us.
It all comes down to what you need, how it fits your stove or style, how much you want to spend and why, etc. Don't be afraid of canners with the seals...they rarely go bad and they are very easy to use. I'd advise definitely getting a weighted jiggler/spinner gauge, especially as a newbie canner...they can help you keep on top of your pressures and you can then multitask. After that,it all comes down to preference.
Seals don't go bad as often as people claim and they are cheap and easy to replace. If you get one of the more common brands, the seals are also easy to find. I love the ease of the rubber gasket canners as you don't have to tighten down all those knobs all over the canner each time you apply the lid...just sit it down, swivel it sideways and you have a seal. Done and done. Same with removal...twist the lid sideways, lift straight up. It's a time saver, it's easy and I love it.
My mother started out with an All American, back when they just had a gauge but no weighted jiggler. She was canning on a wood stove back then, so hard to get the right pressure anyway, but add to it the fact that the pressure gauge climbs silently...have to keep checking it. Well, when you are prepping veggies and fruit for 100 qts of food per type of veggie or fruit, you have no time to hang around watching a gauge. It creeps up...and then ensue the stories of canners exploding that discourage many generations to come from ever trying canning at all.
She soon got rid of the heavy cumbersome All American with the scary gauge and moved onto a lighterweight Presto canner with a jiggler weight that let her know at all times where the pressure was as she continued to work across the kitchen. Thousands upon thousands of qts later, we are still in love with the canners that are cheap to be bought, cheap to maintain, won't kill you to lift, easy to manage and monitor and still get the job done. In the past 40 yrs of canning we've had to replace two seals on two separate canners...one an ancient Mirro we borrowed from an older lady just some years ago. One time it was the old Presto that we had used for 20 odd years by the time it finally needed a new seal.
I am currently using a small Mirro, cost me $38 and free s/h off Amazon and I LOVE this thing. I'm canning a lot less than we did back then, so don't need a big tall canner I can stack stuff in. It also fits under our low range hood with much room to spare, doesn't break my back to lift, clean or store away. I can only can 7 qts at a time, but that's fine with me...we aren't canning 100 qts at a time now for each veggie we grow. Max we do now is around 40-50 qts per item, if that on some items. The smaller, jiggle weight canner is just right for us.
It all comes down to what you need, how it fits your stove or style, how much you want to spend and why, etc. Don't be afraid of canners with the seals...they rarely go bad and they are very easy to use. I'd advise definitely getting a weighted jiggler/spinner gauge, especially as a newbie canner...they can help you keep on top of your pressures and you can then multitask. After that,it all comes down to preference.
It would be really great to can some of DW's great soups though... she never did know how to make small batches. 
At present, we just freeze the excess... but canning would allow us to free up more space in the freezer for other things.
