seysonn's question reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of pressure canning. The goal of pressure canning is to achieve a specific temperature, not a specific pressure, within the canner for a specific time period (which has been tested for the specific food being canned) In pressure canning, the goal temperature is higher than 212 F, the boiling point of water at sea level, in order to kill botulinum spores among other baddies. The boiling point of water at higher altitude is already reduced due to the decreased atmospheric pressure. Thus, the water in the canner will boil at a lower temperature at elevation, and though the canner is full of steam and pressurized to a specific psi (or close to that psi of a canner at sea level), the temperature inside the canner will be lower at elevation if the same canning wieght is used at altitude and at sea level. As it is temperature, not a given pressure, that has been tested to ensure canning safety, the canner at elevation must achieve the same internal temperature for the same time period as the canner at sea level for a given recipe to be safe. The only way to to raise the temperature of the steam inside the canner at elevation is to increase the pressure inside the canner to compensate for the decreased atmospheric pressure at altitude. Thus, the need to have the larger weights at altitude. In this way, the temperature inside a canner at sea level and at altitude will be equivalent, enabling the use of the same recipes and time requirements at sea level and at elevation. Here is a link that might be useful: Understanding boiling point at altitude

When I blended the roasted ingredients with the remaining ones, the consistency was just what I wanted. So, the herbs, wine, vinegar, (and the parts of the scallions that were greener) didn't even get cooked. They just got pureed together into almost exactly the sauce I have been yearning to can! So I will once again plague you all with questions before I take a break from the forum for a few days of not-canning, followed by a tiny vacation. I didn't have as many tomatoes as I thought, so I cut the recipe down to a fourth! I didn't process the ONE PINT that resulted :-) but is there a reason I couldn't have? In other words, wouldn't the 35 minutes of processing (40 for quarts) sufficiently "cook" anything that needs to be cooked for safety's sake? Next time I plan to de-glaze the roasting pan with the wine to get more of the caramelized essence into the sauce. As a result it will evaporate a lot of the alcohol in an instant. Last question - at least until next week - I think it would be safe to add some garlic POWDER and omit the sugar. Would one of the experts be kind enough to confirm that?

This is your own made-up recipe? Or is it a tested recipe from one of the approved canning recipe sources? If it your own recipe then not only would it violate the first rule of safety in home canning - that you cannot make up your own recipes - but canning it would be considered unsafe to do per the accepted guidelines. Not only do you not know the pH or the density of it but the pressure canning processing time would just be a guess. Weight used is determined by your altitude, not the ingredients. Time is determined by the ingredients, the pH, and the density of the food. If this is a tested and approved recipe then the proper processing time would have been provided for you. Otherwise canning this is something you do at your own risk and, since it is a low-acid vegetable mixture, with all those other unknowns it is a very risky thing to try to can. Freeze it. Dave

Very different recipes. You can't generalize from one recipe to another even if they appear to be for similar things - like soup. Each recipe is evaluated independently. For example, Katie's roasted soup has much less tomatoes, no sugar which can bind up free water, olive oil, chicken broth which also contains fats, and MUCH more garlic which is ranked very high on the botulism source list. Different ingredients mean different pH and different density so different processing requirements. Dave