There was an America’s Test Kitchen review of pressure cookers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiCUKA7dDUs
(Disclaimer: I have no experience with food preserving, except for freezing, and drying in the Excalibur.)
Apparently they make electric and stovetop pressure cookers; but in the event of serious “breakdown”, could you even use a stovetop pressure cooker on some kind of outdoor cooking system?
(Come to think of it, how do the Amish can? Don’t they only use wood-fired stoves and cooktops?)
-JT
The Amish use the ‘cold pack’ method mostly, at least in the past, but some do use pressure cooking now. The ‘cold pack’ is a processing the FDA does not redeem safe. Mainly because one has to be extremely careful, and must know what they are doing, it’s not for novices.
My mother had used that process off and on years ago, but for really long term storage the pressure cooker works best. It has the ability to take guesswork out of canning. One must be sure those lids have popped and sealed.
http://www.theashevillefoodie.com/2011/06/home-canning-amish-way.html
I was lazy in my description. Meant canner instead of cooker but that’s like saying coke instead of soft drink. Ack, no, I’ve heard too many bad stories about electric ones with touch pads. We can’t even keep coffee makers working with touch pads and went back to one with just an on/off button. One would think you could use a stovetop pressure canner on an outdoor set up during SHTF times as long as you could keep the temperature going. Water baths would be fine. Tomatoes can be canned using a solar oven if you can keep the temp up. But then I’d want to dry tomatoes rather than use a valuable jar on them.
In olden days they’d salt and smoke meats. The early meat canning was to cook the meat, layer it with fat, put the lid on and the heat would seal the jar when turned upside down (no thanks, I’ll pass). I would imagine water baths and drying would be the easiest food preservation for other foods. In cooler areas, they had/have root cellars. With all those different ways of preserving foods, they didn’t know they were missing out on pressure canners.
My grandpa would tell about the time grandma had him clean out the cellar. He brought over the neighbor to “help” emptying the fruit juice when he found it had fermented.