Thread: Pressure Cooking Stoppers

What do you guys put your stoppers in when you are pressure cooking them? This will be my first time sterilizing my own vials. I was thinking of trying to find some sort metal basket to do them in but thought i'd ask here first.

I have the presto 23q pressure cooker and thats what I did since they dont sell one for it...So either find one that fits yours or you can make one.

Originally Posted by SloppyJ

What do you guys put your stoppers in when you are pressure cooking them? This will be my first time sterilizing my own vials. I was thinking of trying to find some sort metal basket to do them in but thought i'd ask here first.

I dont think that would be necessary, Steam is what is really transferring the heat more efficiently to the equipment that is being sterilized. adding a metal basket can potentially reduce efficiency (depending on the material). If your pressure cooker is at 15 psi and at 121 C it will kill pretty much all bacteria...

Using a pressure cooker as an autoclave. - PubMed - NCBI

https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/adint.site...okers_for_.pdf

Just some links that I found

Best regards

I dont think an open basket would effect the efficiency of the cooker or the steam reaching the products to be sterilized as long as you reach the right temp pressure and time as you stated. I think hes just looking for something to hold the stoppers together in the cooker. If its anything like mine it just comes with a plate to keep the cans off the bottom of the cooker. So I bought some round cake pans and drilled a bunch of holes in the bottom to hold my vials and stoppers etc im gonna put some stilts on the pans so i can stack more then one pan in the cooker at once similar to how pans are stacked in an autoclave.

Originally Posted by Smiley2327

I dont think an open basket would effect the efficiency of the cooker or the steam reaching the products to be sterilized as long as you reach the right temp pressure and time as you stated. I think hes just looking for something to hold the stoppers together in the cooker. If its anything like mine it just comes with a plate to keep the cans off the bottom of the cooker. So I bought some round cake pans and drilled a bunch of holes in the bottom to hold my vials and stoppers etc im gonna put some stilts on the pans so i can stack more then one pan in the cooker at once similar to how pans are stacked in an autoclave.

Yeah that's all I'm looking for is just something to hold them. All my pressure cooker came with is a stand to keep jars off the bottom. They make autoclaveable bags but they seem a little pricey when I could rig something up.

Originally Posted by SloppyJ

Yeah that's all I'm looking for is just something to hold them. All my pressure cooker came with is a stand to keep jars off the bottom. They make autoclaveable bags but they seem a little pricey when I could rig something up.

Get a steam basket.

Rigged up a metal basket on top of some mason jars in my 23qt cooker to do a test run and make some bac water. Everything turned out great. It was an easy solution. Thanks for the idea.