Sometime yesterday, Jarden Home Brands added a new Ball branded appliance to the Fresh Preserving online store. Called the Ball FreshTECH Automatic Home Canning System, this device takes the place of a traditional water bath in the processing of jars for shelf stability. A couple weeks ago, I went up to New York for a media event at which the FreshTECH Automatic Canner was demonstrated and was intrigued by its potential (though just to be clear, I also have a number of reservations about it. We’ll get to those later).
Instead of submerging the jars in a pot of water, it works with just a few inches of water. The device uses that water to create steam and a small amount of pressure to ensure safely processed and sterilized jars. For those of you who are made nervous by the talk of pressure, know that this canner doesn’t get anywhere near the amount of pressure that your average pressure cooker or canner reaches. It goes to just 3 psi, in order to get the temperature to between 215 and 218 degrees F.
The capacity of this canner is three quart jars, four pint jars, or six regular mouth half pints. They don’t recommend stacking jars inside the canner, so if you were to use wide mouth half pints, it would only be able to hold four.
The way it works is that you put your full, closed jars of product in the canner and punch in a code that corresponds with the recipe you’ve used. It will slowly heat and build pressure. Once it has reached the appropriate temperature and pressure setting, it sings a little tune and the processing period begins.
When the time is up, the canner then cools and depressurizes. The period the jars are in the canner are often longer overall than in a traditional canning, because of the necessary heating and cooling. However, it’s all hands-off time. You don’t have to tend a canning pot or check to ensure that it’s maintaining the proper boil.
I haven’t had my hands one of these FreshTECH Canners yet, but am expecting a review unit in the next week or so (I’ll follow up with first-hand thoughts after I’ve had a chance to use it). But from observation, here are some of my initial thoughts.
It could be a great device to get nervous beginners acclimated to canning. It may also be a boon for people who want to can but have small kids or work responsibilities that makes it hard to tend a canning pot. You put the jars in, set the machine and it processes them without another thought. You just have to stay close enough to open it and remove the jars once the time is up.
One thing that gives me major pause is the fact that the manufacturers currently recommend that you only use this device with their recipes and they have no plans to offer instruction as to how you can adapt it for use with your favorite recipes. I can understand that they don’t want to be responsible for preserving projects gone awry, but to my mind, if a recipe is safe for boiling water bath canning, it should be safe for use in the FreshTECH Automatic Home Canning System. The fact that it seems like they’re trying to create a closed system of recipes and products makes me hesitant.
The other thing that concerns me is what the FreshTECH communicates to the canning uncertain. I spend a goodly portion of my life calming the fears of beginning preservers and so am well acquainted with the level of anxiety that canning carries. Because this device uses a small amount of pressure to elevate the temperature a few degrees over the boiling point, I worry that some will interpret that to mean that the boiling water bath (the gold standard of high acid canning) is no longer good enough and that an elevated temperature is necessary for all products.
All that said, I am still curious about it and am looking forward to seeing first-hand how it works. My best case scenario is that it becomes a useful appliance in a home canner’s toolbox (though at $299.95, it will be a pricy tool).
What do you all think? Is this something you’d use?
Seems to be a digital steam canner. Good for jelly or jam but little else. If you use a steam canner good for you I’m just not as crazy about them. The idea of a timer to turn it off is great but if you forget it and leave it the product still could overcook…it’s not worth 300 to me to try it.
I have been canning for 50 years and I understand that novices have concerns. That being said, I would not use this machine. If a novice used it and only had access to a few recipes, where would the joy of trying new things be? Give me the old-fashioned water bath.
not a good value, for many of reasons already stated above. i use two water baths sitting on two propane burners in the garage. works. great. 14 quarts at a time vs. 3.
I have two little ones at home–one who has no regard for the word “hot” and staying away from the stove/oven. So, I was thinking, “Yeah, I might ask for one of these for my birthday.” But, $300???? No way!!! I cold buy 60 jars of my favorite locally-made jam for that. It jus does not make financial sense–especially if I can’t use it with my already beloved recipes. For $50? I’d be ordering it now. For $100? It would go on the birthday list. Any more is just too much, I think.
I’m a new canner this year (Marisa your book inspired me to finally take the plunge and I will never EVER look back!!!), and I’m also a traditionalist at heart. I don’t like the idea of this. I get the whole ease factor, but to me, canning is the prep, waiting for the water to boil, the rush of getting the product into the jars before everything cools too much, etc etc. I love every part of it and I can’t get enough. So although I understand the idea behind this item, it’s not something I’ll ever use.
I agree with many of the comments – this is too expensive for a single-purpose gadget that takes the place of the least labor-intensive part of the canning process. The only possible advantage I see is that this probably would not kick off the amount of heat that a big boiling pot does. Still not worth $300.
One of the problems that I have with gadgets is that they can remove one from the tactile process of cooking. Yes, the mandoline is handy, but I still prefer chopping and slicing with a knife, and any time spent using one gadget or another is time I am not spending honing my skills. So I’m just generally anti- gadget – with exceptions, of course.
I would be VERY interested in the high altitude ability of the unit! I live at 8300′ and the extra time in water bathing at high altitude tend to “overcook” things. This may help!!!
I an hoping that you will be able to figure out how to use any recipe for that machine and if you do, I would most certainly buy it. I am all for making high quality jam and if this makes good jam, canning easier and bides us more free time to do other things, why not?
Nicolas Appert 1749-1841 is spinning in his grave in France at the idea of this foolish American
contraption.
I wouldn’t want to use it even if it was given to me, I like the ritual of canning. An appliance like this would take that away.
Nope.
Would have to pass on this. I cannot justify that kind of money to take longer and can fewer jars of food. Sure can purchase quite a few jars and lids for $300.00 If it held more jars and could stack them AND do either hot water bath or pressure canning I would be interested for the money. Hope that they can re-figure this appliance to make it work better for the novice and long time caners. Good Luck with it.
The time-consuming part of canning for me is preparing the food for the jars. Once that is done and the jars are filled, popping them in a hot water bath is easy.Doesn’t seem like this is all that useful and certainly not for the price.
For that kind of money I’d want it to handle 6 quarts or stacked pints or half-pints, and I would want it to offer a choice of water bath canning or pressure canning, and be totally programmable. Then, and only then, I’d consider forking over something that does what I can already do in my pressure canner. They are on the right track, but this train won’t leave the station.
If I had $300 burning a hole in my pocket, I would get an All American pressure canner, that I could use for all my canning needs, with my favorite recipes. That’s money well spent!
Oh yeah! That’s a great point!
My BIG concern is having to plug anything in! What happens in a prepping situation? I can can ( heheheh) over an open fire or on a campstove with my ol’ enamel baby.. and only 3 big jars and no room for 1/2 gall specials? I don’t think I am interested. I think it is easier to can in my old baby!
Use it? Oh, yes. There are plenty of times when I have only a small amount and don’t want to freeze to preserve. Buy it? Uh, not so much. Steep price tag and I’d rather have a good pressure canner AND a waterbath canner w/ accesories for that price.
I could see this would be nice in the summer when the house is too hot. If it let me use my own recipes and cost an awful lot less (under $100), I’d buy it. Otherwise nope.
I don’t see this ever making it into my kitchen. This past summer, I have commandeered my sister-in-law’s huge Amish waterbath canner that holds 18 quarts at a time. Tiny batches that would fit into that thing are pointless in my house with a family of 6! With little ones around, the concept is great, but not for my needs.
I wouldn’t pay for it. I taught myself to can from reading the Ball Canning Book. That’s it. Between that and the Internet (including your site), I figured it out.
I can’t rationalize spending $300 for a device that’s not even a pressure canner. I initially got excited because I assumed it was a pressure canner, but not only is it just a regular canner, it also only holds a handful of jars. Some of my recipes yield 10-12 half pint jars. I’d be babysitting that machine all day!
If someone gave it to me for free, I’d use it. Otherwise, I can find other uses for my $300.
Do you do any pressure canning? Is it difficult? No one seems to talk much about it.
I do quite a bit of pressure canning and have written a few posts about it over the years. It’s really not difficult at all.
Don’t know where you live, but in Texas our county agricultural agent offers classes, for a small fee. My husband and I both grew up around canning, both grand parents and parents, but we both enjoyed attending the classes offered by our county agent. Yes, it was a pressure canning class, but offer water bath classes. Hope this helps.
I probably wouldn’t ever get one mostly for the size. For goodness sakes, only three quart jars?! We upgraded to a larger water bath canner so that we could fit nine quarts instead of seven, because if you are canning 100 pounds of peaches or asian pears, you want to process as many jars as you can at one time.
I also don’t like the recipe limitations. While many of the recipes I use do come from the Ball Blue book, I do have many recipes that come from many other sources, including this site. That would be very frustrating.
Nope. It holds LESS jars, and takes LONGER then a regular boil, so it would take way to long to get through the amount of jars I can. You CAN’T transfer other recipes to its use. It takes away the understanding of the safety basics of canning, which are essentially needed for those learning. It does NOT allow for low acid items, only small amounts of high acid items. Its a “one-trick pony” and at $299 it is too expensive, too space consuming, too limited to belong in my kitchen. As well, I prefer to use methods that do not rely only on electricity in my home, and this would not fit that requirement.
If perhaps it fit more jars, took less time, and was useable as a pressure canner, then I might reconsider my opinion.
I sorta do this already, but much cheaper. I bought a Presto Pressure Canner/cooker from Walmart…model 01745 $65. Doesn’t have a gauge, but has a 5, 10, and 15 lb regulator weight. The gauge on the models with it look cheap and inaccurate. I said looked inaccurate. I like low tech to the weighted regulator is good enough for me. This 16qt model is not tall enough to water bath qt jars…so I steam them at 5 lbs for the prescribed length of time.
I love the idea and I expect it is probably more energy efficient then the stovetop but with the price tag, the fact that it does not also function as a pressure canner and the space it would take to store it, I think I will most likely stick with traditional canning methods.
Sounds like they are trying to cash in on the canning revival. Why do we need to replace what has worked for decades with a new, expensive steam device? I wouldn’t be interested, and I just learned to can this summer.
Yup, what they said. It’s a heck of a lot of kitchen real estate compared to the canning kettles which nestle nicely inside one another to take up a small amount of basement shelf space in the off season. The only benefit I can see is not heating your kitchen to hellhouse temperatures during the two hottest weeks of the year (which, where I live, always ALWAYS fall during Strawberries Week and Tomatoes Week) and really, the capacity of the thing is way too limited to be useful during Tomatoes Week for most people who can.
But it’s only good for items that would normally be canned using a water bath method, correct? 95% of my canning is of meats, vegetables, etc. that require using a pressure canner.
canning jokes? ok let us in on it!
I would use it if it meant I could let it go overnight. I most likely would not purchase it for that price though.
Sorry, $300 for a limited task canner is not really practical in my mind, especially if Ball won’t step up and address how to use the thing for more advanced recipes. Wouldn’t let it take up cabinet space…
So it holds less, takes longer, can only do a limited number of recipes, and costs $300? Pass.
Interesting but I don’t need the space waste and it would seem that their ‘cool down’ time would just slow me down. I’ll stick to hot water baths, thank you, and if, as a live alone elder, I want to up my production, I’d be just as happy with a pressure canner.
My husband is diabetic and the traditional recipies have too much sugar. I would not even consider it with limited recipe restrictions. Also when I can I do it big and only being able to can 3 quarts at a time would take me a month of Sunday to get anything done. Canning only 7 jars at a time is slow enough.
I can’t say I like the idea. I have small kids at home and it is completely possible to tend them and can without a fancy, expensive gadget that takes up space in my kitchen. Honestly, I don’t think I’d get it even if it were a $10 find at a yard sale. I have a perfectly good canning pot that works as long as I have means to heat it up. It will never need to be repaired. I will never need parts for it. It serves more than one purpose in my small kitchen. I can use an recipe I want in it and I can put far more jars in it. If I want to do a small batch I can use my stock pot and it has all the same advantages. I see no benefit to this product for me and I certainly wouldn’t spend a few hundred on it.
I like the idea of an easy way of canning; however, with the steep price tag and limited recipe base, I wouldn’t use it. If the price dropped to $200 – $250 and they opened it to allow me to use my recipe for mimosa jelly, I’d be all over it.
This seems like an expensive uni-tasker that would take up lots of precious kitchen cabinet space.
At that price I can only think that they are going for the gourmet-wannabe crowd with more money than sense with this and their electric jam-maker. They certainly won’t appeal to the high-volume “prepper” crowd or most gardeners with lots of produce to preserve. For the occasional canner like me, who does jams for holiday gifts, water bath processing is NOT the difficult part of the work of preserving. It might have some utility for those with handicaps or the need to avoid a steamy kitchen, but at a high price.
As others have observed these will eventually end up next to the breadmakers at garage sales and thrift stores. Might pick up a barely used one for $10 if I could figure out where to store it, but would never spend anywhere near the suggested price.
cost too much
I like to create my own recipes. A kettle and water. maybe $25 or a slick machine, their recipe and all day getting a batch through and $300. easy choice.
I am an empty nester so I like the concept of doing smaller batches of things without having to haul out all my canning supplies. However, that little bit of convenience isn’t worth anything close to $300.
I wouldn’t use this. I agree with those above who have commented that this is expensive and only has one use. I don’t stand over my HWBC, I just check in on it after i have set the timer, so this seems unhelpful. Then again, I don’t have the jam machine and that you do need to stay close to the pot. I also agree with Marisa’s comment about needing to use certain recipes. Seems to make the whole canning process harder _and more mysterious_. The last point is not to be overlooked. Newbie canners won’t actually understand canning using all these machines. They remove a connection to cooking: even if we don’t complain about rice cookers, people don’t cook rice to experiment, feel good about the product, etc. the connection to making food seems reduced. I imagine this will be a low-use status gadget to sit on counters. Not for those who have been canners or will remain canners and preservers of food, but for the hip status it currently has.
I’d use it if I could use my own/other recipes with it. I like that I’d be able to not baby-sit my pot and could use the stove for other things and set this elsewhere in my tiny kitchen (or not even *in* my kitchen).
I can’t, however, afford $300 for a small appliance with such a narrow purpose.
I completely agree about the “only use this device with our approved recipes” thing. It creates a bad rep for other canned products, and would prohibit me from using it since I like doing low-sugar stuff and trying out new recipes.
I agree…There are many qualified canning folks who have great recipes that are not in the Ball book. I think it’s important to respect the science of canning, and that this machine may perhaps keep folks from taking the time to understand why they do what they do in the various canning processes.
Even if it was inexpensive & able to be used with any recipe, I still don’t get the draw. Right now, the “hands on part” is everything BEFORE and AFTER the water bath. I don’t DO anything while it’s IN the water bath. So, it’s not really saving me either time or labor. I still have to put it in and take it out. I have the jam & jelly maker and used it in addition to doing jam the regular way. It was nice to try different recipes with smaller batches, so I didn’t make a ton and nobody liked it. Plus, when one is using one’s own fruit/produce, it’s nice to be able to do smaller batches. I don’t see any redeeming qualities for this offering from Ball at present.
For $300 I want this thing to plant the crop, harvest it, wash it, slice and dice, pack the jars and print the labels ….
Seriously, from what I read here, I don’t see how this is an improvement on tried and true methods in any way. It actually seems quite limiting and as already mentioned-expensive.
To me, this is a unitasker, and I’m not a fan of unitaskers in my kitchen – not enough room in there! If this was something that could do full on pressure canning as well as water bath, I might consider it. But it just cannot beat my pressure canner that can also be used as a water bath.
Interesting development though. Maybe they have a pressure canning one in the works.
As a fairly new canner, I feel like I am still trying to perfect my canning routine and don’t want anything to take away from that. I like the process of boiling my jars, and seeing that steamy pot on my stove and waiting for the timer, etc. I wouldn’t take any short cuts now, because I want to make sure that I continue to learn the proper, old-fashioned way. I also want to teach my kids and maybe grandkids how to do this, and using a machine such as this new one won’t help me accomplish that. I don’t usually do small batches either, so I don’t think the FreshTech is for me.
I would not use this. Why would I want to be dependent on some techno-gadget when I can trust the always trustworthy natural laws (water boils at 212 degrees [at sea level]) and the pretty trusty clock hanging on my wall. Me and techno have an anxiety-riddled relationship at best. I see NO advantage and a lot of disadvantage. Who would sucker into this thing? Maybe someone whose stove top is too small to accommodate even a ‘stockpot’ size canner? Or, whose burners are so slow that it takes forever to bring their pot to boil–or can’t even maintain a boil? The $300 would be much better invested in a good stove. My Aunt bought a single hotplate that she puts out on the porch that brings a full-size canner to boil in about 10-15 minutes. Even though my stove has no trouble with the canner, I’ve considered the advantage of keeping all that heat out of the kitchen.
I wonder how it works at higher elevations too.
I have never canned before in my life , I am terrified of something going wrong and getting very ill or causing someone to become very ill with something I’ve canned. I would love to be able to expand my summer garden fully to the winter months. I am going to keep my eye on this product for a while and if the price is reasonable, this is something that I just get .
I wouldn’t waste my money. I could buy alot of jars and lids instead..
$300! That is way to steep for me to justify. With a toddler at home, I do like the aspect of being able to just leave it to do its thing. He always wants my attention when I’m filling jars and the canner is boiling away! 🙂 But there is no way I would pay that much money for another appliance to store. And I don’t see beginner canners investing that much money in a hobby. I’d be interested to see who ends up buying this product.
if it becomes a popular wedding gift I might be able to get a used-once one at yard sale prices in a couple of years 🙂 So for $10 it might be useful for small batch type of stuff.
I like your thinking! I’ll be on the tag sale lookout, too!