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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.

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.

:-)

We recently bought a book about building a root cellar, because that's on our 'wish list' for the tiny homestead we imagine for the future.

We're especially interested in preserving things like cabbages over-winter, so that we can make kimchi and sauerkraut, because they are so healthy and immunity-supportive.

My husband's family has, for generations, canned about 500 quarts of tomato sauce every year, from tomatoes grown on their land. From what I understand from this thread, they use the 'cold pack' method - boiled like crazy over propane, poured into sterilized ball jars; tipped over once to scald the lid, and left to sit until 'popping' (sealing). We've had jars of this that we didn't use until 2 or 3 years later, and it was fine. But, tomato sauce is very acidic. Doing things like string beans and corn worries me.....

Thanks to everyone; gotta do Santa Claus stuff now; but I'll continue watching the thread.

Merry Christmas!

-JT