Preserving with an urn

[Laine]

Hey Lyn,

thought I would move your comment to a forum page.The trick with these preserving urns is instead of needing to steralise your jars before you fill them, you can clean them, fill them with your preserve and then just put them in the cook/steralise after. They are best for things that are OK with further cooking. If it is a short cook type chutney etc then best to steralise the jars first in the oven and bottle them after. Thats about the extent of my knowledge, other than they are great to heat up water for the baby birth pool! 

Sorry I cant answer your question re how long to preserve fruit. I would guess it is comparable to cooking them in a pot first and then jarring them - its just the other way around - but hopefully this kicks off a discussion wiht some input from people who have used them more.

Laine

[Isabell Strange]

Hi, I finally got around to asking my friends mum. she packs raw fruit into the cooled sterilised jars and covers with a warm syrup screws on the seals and then places them in the urn (preserver with an element) and covers them with warm water to about an inch above the jar lids. the fruit is ready when you can see the syrup boiling in the jar and the fruit rises off the bottom of the jar. She has a special rubber coated tool for removing the jars from the boiling water (a semicircle a bit bigger than a jar top and parallel handles running off each end of the semicircle. She is careful not to place the jars on a cold hard surface or they may crack, she puts them on newspaper on the bench. If you want to do a a second batch you have to cool the water in the preserver first before you start again so the jars dont crack being put from cold into near boiling water. The seals will depress as the jars cool on the bench. the fruit done this way look really pristine and it is the best way to bottle berries.

[Sealander]

I recently acquired an Agee preserving urn, with the original instruction booklet. The times listed in the booklet seem to be way too long - it's recommending several hours in some cases. Instead I'm going with the times mentioned in other preserving books for hot water bath canning. Usually that's about 10-20 minutes for fruit that has already been cooked before you put it in the jars.

[Lyn]

Hi Laine
Many thanks for the reply. I still prefer to bottle fruit and veges the ordinary way that is sterilizing the bottles and putting the cooked mixture inside them. I guess my preserving uinit will have to stay put for another year. I was hoping to do a lot more preserving that time is limited working full time. Will have to plan things better next year.