Homemade Water Bath Canner

My first canner was actually homemade, and I still use it when I am making a small batch of something because it is smaller than most store bought canners. I don't have to heat up as much water. In fact, I just did a little arithmetic, and determined that it uses a little more than half as much water.


First you need a stockpot that is tall enough to be able to cover the jars with water. As you can see from the picture above, my homemade canner is nearly as tall as my other canner, but it is smaller in diameter.

The rack in a water bath canner serves two purposes. It keeps the jars slightly off from the bottom of the canner, and it makes it easy to lower the jars into the water. Lowering the jars into the water with a homemade canner is no problem. Just use your jar lifter.

If you can find a cake cooling rack that will fit into the bottom of the pot, that serves the purpose of holding the jars off the bottom. My pot is about 9 1/2 inches in diameter, so a 9 inch cake rack worked quite well. You can also try tying screw bands together as shown on this website. If you get creative, you can probably come up with other ways to make a homemade canning rack.