You can cook in a pressure canner. Many of the bigger ones are made of aluminum, though, which is reactive, and you might not want to cook a highly acidic recipe in it. If you think you might be doing pressure canning a lot, you might want to consider WAFCO's All American line. They are built like a tank and will outlast you--your great grandkids will fight over it. Sorta pricey, though, but absolutely top quality. I had the 921, and gave it to a relative and bought the 930. The 921 was fine, but it could only process 7 quart jars at once; the 930 can process 14 quart jars at once, so it nearly doubled my efficiency. They are available at different internet outlets, with some (but not much) discounting. Here is a link that might be useful: wafco all american canners

We've bought a pressure reducing valve. Plumber will be here this week. We're on a community well in the country. Water guy came out last week with a gauge. It read 90psi and then went up to 100. He said "in the middle of the night, your pressure is probably over 100psi" :o He measured from an outside faucet. Last summer when we had a sprinkler system installed, our pressure was 65 to 70. David, faulty pressure regulator...is that the water company's responsibility or ours? They're saying WE need to install a pressure reducing valve. The main is at the street. DH thinks we should install the valve at the house's shutoff box (I'm sorry I don't know all the correct terminology), this way the sprinkler system (between the road and house)will retain the extra pressure we've gain by moving the meter. What's everyone's thoughts on that? If I need to explain better, just lmk :) Monica

" But I see the steam canner I would need for my glasstop stove is about the same price as a pressure canner." That all depends on which brand and model of pressure canner you are looking at. Steam cannersa re for sale at Walmart for $37. You won't find a quality PC for that price. Brands are not all the same quality and you can do different things with different (more expensive) PC models. Plus there are PC models that cannot be used on glass top stoves and other issues with trying to pressure can on a glasstop even with the approved models. So it may not be a valid comparison. " since I read on here you can do same time as water bath at 5 lbs. pressure? I'm assuming the heating time would be about the same since both use about the same amount of water?" I'm afraid there is some misunderstandings here. While some deep models of PC can be used as a boiling water bath canner the jars must still be submerged and no pressure is used. "I read on here you can do same time as water bath at 5 lbs. pressure" would not be accurate or was taken out of context. Could you point to that comment? The overall processing time would end up being longer than the BWB time called for simply because you would have to vent and bring it up to pressure. That could easily affect the quality of some foods. Bottom line the only advantage to spending the money on a PC vs. a steam canner would be if you plan to actually use it for pressure canning. If all you can is high acid foods that would normally be BWB processed then the steam canner is the better deal IMO. Dave

Many of us do our BWB canning in our pressure canners regardless of the brand. But it depends on the model and if it is deep enough for the jars to be covered by 1-2" of water throughout the processing without boiling out over. Some models are too shallow to work well with that much water in them. So it needs to one of the really large deep models to work. You just loosely set the lid in place, no locks on and no weight on the vent pipe. Dave