I did it!

It was scary, there was lots of steam and noise.  I successfully canned pumpkin. Unlike the store bought canned pumpkin, home canning requires peeling, chopping and blanching chunks of pumpkin. My pumpkins came to us late last fall from a friend overwhelmed with garden pumpkins. The are still hard and fresh, I just love how squash and pumpkins keep over winter.

The blanching took 3 minutes in boiling drinking water. Then I filled the hot jars, 6 wide mouth pints, with chunks of hot pumpkin and ladled the water from the blanching pot on top.  In retrospect I should have got out a ruler to measure the headspace, as the one inch for vegetables looks a whole lot different than the 1/4 inch for jelly.  Next went on the clean hot lids and rings, into the pressure canner they went. I easily filled the canner with room to spare. Then came the steam, let it steam out the vent for 10 minutes before putting the weight on and bringing up the pressure to 11 pounds. Once at 11 pounds I set the timer for 90 minutes and waited checking and turning down the heat to maintain a steady pressure. It was interesting on my gas stove I had to turn is all the way to low or else the pressure kept rising.

Constantly I was checking the pressure canner user guide and my Ball Blue Book Guide to Canning books making sure I was doing everything right. It was kind of nerve racking, having read the warnings of under processed food and the tragic story of a MN family who died from eating under-processed peas.

Finally the timer rang and I turned the heat off. Life got in the way for the next hour as my dad blew a tire and needed help. Once back at he house the canner had cooled and carefully opened and lifted out the still boiling jars. Pretty cool site to see the contents still boiling away in jars that have been off the heat for over an hour. I lined them up on a towel on the counter, four out of the six jars had a good solid seal. As for the two that didn't seal I'll be using them soon in soup.

All in all I'd call it a success.