Today I received my newest canning purchase in the mail – a three piece pressure regulator for my pressure canner. 

What’s the purpose of it? There are two kinds of pressure canners – weighted and dial gauge – they’re simply two different ways to measure the building pressure inside the canner.  The canner I bought, which I’m very happy with, came with a dial gauge.  The challenge with a dial gauge is they have to be professionally recalibrated each season, and a hard bump could affect the accuracy.

Since the pressure times have been scientifically determined for safety purposes, it’s really important to be able to accurately measure the pressure.  The more expensive canners have the double measurement system of a dial gauge and weighted measure, and now I’ve found a way to inexpensively duplicate that.

This three piece pressure regulator can be used in place of the one piece weight that my canner came with.  Each of the three pieces measures 5 pounds of pressure.  Different foods required different processing times and different amounts of pressure.  With this weighted gauge, you can food with its necessary timing and pressure, by removing or adding any of these weighted pieces when canning.  (I know that probably is hard to picture if you don’t can.)  Now that I have this new set, I won’t need to use my dial gauge to measure pressure, and a weighted measure is safer to use, because you hear it rocking when it reaches a certain pressure, unlike the dial gauge, which silently builds up and you have to stay very close by to monitor.

I bought mine through goodmans.net, which was the best price I found, though I can’t honestly say I did an extensive price search.  It’s the Presto 3 piece pressure regulator, no. 50332, and cost under $14 including shipping.  Since the American canners that have the double features cost upwards of $250, it’s nice that I can have a similar feature on my $80 + $14 canner. 🙂

Avivah