How We Compare Electric Pressure Canners

A site about canning can do real harm with one careless sentence. So you should know what stands behind ours, and what does not.

What do we not do?

• No lab tests. We have not measured any machine. Nothing here reports on a machine in use.
• No processing times and no recipes. Those come from tested recipes and your manual.
• No safety verdict of our own. We report who said what. We are editors, not food-safety experts.
• No prices, star ratings or review counts. We use price classes in words: budget, mid-range and premium.
• No paid placements and no invented stories.

What do we read?

We start with the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning and the CDC. Next comes the National Center for Home Food Preservation and the advice it shares through university extension offices. Then come state extension offices such as Penn State, NDSU, Oregon State, Utah State and UNH. Last come maker manuals, FAQs and spec sheets. We always mark those as the maker's word.

Each page names its sources and gives dates, because this topic moves. A statement from 2019 can be older than a machine that came out later. When that happens, we say so.

What do we do when sources disagree?

We show each view with its date and leave it there. Two disagreements are open right now.

• Which recipes can a Presto Precise use? Presto's FAQ says tested stovetop recipes work. The National Center, through K-State, and Penn State say to follow only the manual. NDSU says to use tested recipes from the National Center or your extension office.
• Is a plug-in canner made just for canning a good idea? UNH recommends only stovetop canners for low-acid foods (vegetables, meat, chicken, fish). K-State and Penn State leave it to how much you trust the maker. NDSU treats the Presto as a usable option.

We do not settle either one. We have no data that could.

How do we pick?

We pick one machine per need. A pick goes by method and the jar count the maker gives. It does not mean the machine's process has been checked. Our main pick, on the overview of all machines, is a stovetop canner. The National Center says its advice was written for stovetop canners.

The NESCO NPC-9 has a sourced warning above every link to it. It gets no badge and no place in our picks or our finder. Penn State says it cannot recommend combination canner and cooker appliances, because research on their safety is missing. Penn State names no brand. Putting the NPC-9 in that group is our reading. The expert statements on plug-in canner safety are set out side by side.

Some products say "Seller data only." For those we have only the Amazon listing and no manual. We show them as options, not recommendations.

What could we not read?

We could not check some things, and we do not present them as fact.

• Oregon State's testing remark, and two state extension pages on steam canning. We saw only search snippets.
• Ball's own product page. Direct access was blocked, so we saw only a snippet.
• A separate maker's site for Carey. We did not find one. We did read the DPC-9SS guide on nesco.com. It gives the same jar counts and regulators as the NPC-9 guide. It does not say the machines are the same, so we leave that unconfirmed. Our Carey page explains.
• Two buying guides from magazines that our tools could not open.

We found no published test of a named plug-in canner by any government or university source. America's Test Kitchen did not turn one up either. That does not prove no such test exists.

How do we make money?

This site is funded through Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through one, we earn a commission and your price stays the same. Links are marked with an asterisk and labeled as an ad or paid link. Details are in the affiliate disclosure.

Did we get something wrong?

Please tell us. Contact details are in the imprint. More about the site is on the about page. We correct errors and update the date on the page.