Apologies And A WARNING To All Canners !!!!!

For those of you that also have blogs you will understand that I am contacted regularly from different companies and individuals wanting me to review products, books etc. My blog continues to be an ad free blog. I have no advertisers and no sponsors. I pay all expenses incurred by this blog myself. I write all the posts myself and take 99.9% of the pictures myself.   Occasionally I will write a review about a book or author that I like and I occasionally will recommend a deal that I find. I have only done a hand full of reviews in the years that I have been blogging. I have literally turned down hundreds. Last year I was contacted and asked to do a review on a new brand of canning jar called Legacy and I agreed to try these jars and write honestly what I thought of them. Since canning jars are so pertinent to the subject of this blog I agreed. I received no payment for this but rather was shipped one dozen half pint jelly jars with lids to use for the review of this product. 

On December 10, 2012 I wrote a post about these jars and my experience using them.

Link to jar post  

Like most new jars they came with lids and rings. You will notice in the picture above that the lids had a white rubber gasket ring as opposed to the red rubber ring that we are all used to on most name brand lids. Other than not having the lining they seemed the same weight. They did not have any writing on the lids like most lids either but were blank. 

I made one batch of blackberry jam for holiday gifts with these jars. They were processed in a hot water bath and seemed to perform just fine. There were a couple lids left over so I simply put them  into a box with my other jar lids for the next canning project. All was forgotten. 

Yesterday was a busy canning day for me. It was time to process some of the meat that I had frozen this fall and get it out of the freezer. My first project was rabbit meat. I also had came across a bag of pork fat that I had overlooked when I had rendered my lard last week. So I threw it in the crockpot to cook while I worked on my rabbit canning. I also had laundry on. Notice in the picture above the jar with the blue lid magnet on it. It is a Legacy lid that when I put lids on these jars of rabbit picked up out of the lid box that I store my lids in. 

Notice in the picture above that same lid on the jar that the jar lifter tool is on. All the other lids are Ball lids.  Now while my pressure cooker was building pressure and cooking I was folding laundry and watching my lard rendering in the crockpot.  As I sat at my kitchen table folding towels I heard a huge pop and considered hitting the ground for surely we were under  attack from something. My next thought was that I had blown a jar.

 Occasionally when processing in your pressure canner a jar will explode. Many times it is a jar that had a chip or crack in it that I didn't catch. Which is why it is important to check your jars thoroughly before filling them. Many times once that damaged jar gets in the canner and starts to heat up it will crack under the pressure. Figuring this is what happened I continued with my laundry knowing that my batch of jars in the canner only had a few minutes left to go and there was nothing to do but allow the batch to finish out. 

Once my batch had cooled down I expected to find a canner full of shattered glass shards and rabbit meat. I was suprised that when I opened the canner that the glass jar was intact. There was not one shard or even one piece of rabbit in the water. The lid had exploded. The flat canning lid had totally separated during processing. Notice the white rubber circle sticking to the side of the pot. The jar ring clear on the other side of the canner. The flat metal lid part was clear on the bottom of the canner under two jars.

In all my years of canning I have never seen this happen! Ever.....

The rubber gasket had literally separated under pressure and notice in the picture above how the flat metal lid part is bent.  Notice also how the ring is bent. The ring was also bent during the explosion. 

Thank God this had not happened while I had been taking hot jars from the canner and blown up in my face. This Legacy lid obviously did not hold up under the extreme heat of pressure canning. Of the twelve lids sent to me this was the only one that was used under pressure. 

Every other Ball jar lid used that day performed just fine. Now in the past I have occasionally had a traditional jar lid to buckle from over tightening ( when hubby helps: ) or even the occasional lid not seal. I have never had a lid blow completely off the jar and separate bending the ring outward and off the jar.

I have sent an email to the company that had contacted me to do a review immediately to inform them of this dangerous problem. Unfortunately this is the only legacy lid that went through the pressure canner as the initial test batch was jelly that was boiling water processed. I notified the company that sent me the free jars that these lids could potentially be a health issue and pose a danger to canners. As of the publishing of this post I have received no comment. If you have purchased these jars or plan to do so in the future for the purpose of using in your pressure canner please be careful. 

All you canners out there spread the word. We don't want anyone hurt!   

So canners beware that there is obviously some sort of issue with these Chinese produced Legacy jar lids. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter