Can I use an Instant Pot or an electric canner

Start with the measurements

Most pages on this question argue from authority in one direction or affiliate links in the other. There is bench data, and it should come first.

Utah State University Extension ran three electric programmable pressure cookers — the Carey Smart Canner and Cooker, the Duo80 Instant Pot, and the Power Pressure Cooker XL — with temperature data loggers sealed inside canning jars of chicken, green beans and pinto beans. They ran them at three elevations: Monticello at 7,070 feet, Provo at 4,500 feet and St. George at 2,917 feet, three complete replicates each [F-7.5].

The finding: two of the three, the Instant Pot and the Power Pressure Cooker XL, did not reach an adequate temperature to kill botulism spores in low-acid canning. The third, the Carey, reached 121.1°C in most conditions, but whether it did depended on altitude and on the food [F-7.5].

Altitude mattered, and it mattered strongly — a significant difference in the maximum temperature reached, with foods bottled at higher altitudes more likely to be under-processed [F-7.5].

The authors' conclusion is not hedged: regardless of manufacturer advertising, these appliances should not be used for low-acid canning, and they urged Extension faculty to say so in the strongest terms possible [F-7.5].

That is what "no" is built on here. Not a policy. A logger in a jar.

Why pressure is the wrong thing to measure

The most common argument for canning in a multi-cooker is that it reaches the same pressure as a canner. NCHFP answers that argument in one line: what matters is temperature, not pressure [F-7.2].

Here is the mechanism, and it is worth understanding rather than memorising.

Every pressure figure in every tested table is a stand-in for a temperature. The guide is explicit: the whole system is based on the temperature obtained in pure steam, free of air, and at sea level a canner at 10.5 lbs of gauge pressure sits at 240°F [F-1.8].

That relationship only holds when the vessel contains steam and nothing else. If air is mixed in with the steam, the temperature is lower than the same pressure of pure steam would give [F-7.2]. The gauge reads exactly the same. The food gets less heat.

This is why stovetop canners are vented for ten minutes before they are pressurised, with the air driven out deliberately, and why the guide calls trapped air a cause of under-processing rather than a nuisance [F-3.3].

So when a manufacturer says the appliance reaches the pressure required for canning, the correct response is not "no it doesn't". It is that pressure alone does not prove the food in the jars was heated at the same rate as in the canner the process was developed in [F-7.2] — which is precisely what NCHFP says, and precisely what the Utah State loggers went and checked.

And why come-up and cool-down count

There is a second mechanism, less obvious and more interesting.

A tested process time is not the whole heat treatment. NCHFP's own account: the process times rely on a combination of heat from the come-up to pressure, from the timed process, and from the early stages of cooling the canner and jars. Bacteria are not killed only during the process time — all three periods matter [F-7.3].

Now the size rule makes sense. A small cooker cools faster, so anything that shortens the cooling period — including using a very small cooker — can leave the food under-processed [F-7.3]. That is the stated reason for recommending only canners that hold four or more quart jars.

And then the sentence that makes this site's kind of page possible at all: there is no way at this point in time to know exactly the percentage of contribution from cooling for each of the canning recommendations [F-14.9].

Sit with that. The organisation that writes the processes cannot quantify how much of the treatment comes from the cool-down. It says so publicly. That is a limit in the tested guidance, honestly declared, and it is exactly why the guidance will not extend to a machine with a different cooling curve. You cannot transfer a number when you do not know what fraction of it comes from a stage the new machine does differently.

The thing almost every page gets wrong: there is an exception

"Electric canners are unsafe" is not a true sentence, and repeating it costs credibility with the readers who most need the rest of the page.

On the same NCHFP page as the warning: the statement about electric cookers does not include the Ball Automatic Home Canner for acid foods only, which is electric but is a dedicated canner rather than a multi-cooker, comes with its own instructions and pre-set options, and has had proper thermal process development done behind it [F-7.4]. The same note mentions an electric boiling water canner, which is not a pressurised appliance at all and operates like a traditional boiling water canner [F-7.4].

The distinction is not electric versus stovetop. It is process development versus a button.

Both limits in that exception are load-bearing, so say them plainly. It is for acid foods only. And it is that appliance, not electric canners as a category.

The Presto Precise: an open question, and it is still open

Presto publishes low-acid canning instructions for its Presto Precise digital canner on its own site, in an electric unit, with the machine handling the altitude adjustment [F-7.6]. It is the most marketed dedicated electric pressure canner in the category.

Here is where it stands as of the last check on this page, and each part comes from an Extension service rather than from me.

Penn State Extension, last updated 13 September 2024, notes the canner carries a seal indicating it uses USDA canning guidelines — and then reports that NCHFP has written that it has no information on the type or extent of Presto's research and cannot independently verify the company's statements, and recommends that consumers follow only the digital canner's own manual rather than instructions from other sources [F-7.6].

Oregon State University, replying through Ask Extension on 31 March 2025, records Presto's claim that the canner was subjected to extensive testing and designed to match the internal canner and jar temperatures achieved in a stovetop pressure canner — and states that Cooperative Extension has not conducted independent testing of this product [F-7.6].

So: a manufacturer says it tested the machine and matched the temperatures. No Extension service has seen that data. NCHFP says it cannot verify the claims. Nobody has replicated it, and nobody has refuted it either.

I am not going to resolve that here, because it is not resolved. What I will say is what the state of the evidence is, and that a page telling you confidently in either direction — that it is approved, or that it is proven dangerous — is telling you something nobody currently knows. If you own one, NCHFP's position via Penn State is to follow that canner's own manual and not schedules written for other equipment [F-7.6].

What the affiliate pages say, and the precise correction

One widely-circulating page selling electric pressure canners states, verbatim: "The Presto Precise line, for example, holds 240-250°F throughout the entire process, which is the temperature range required by USDA guidelines for low-acid food preservation" [F-13.9].

The correction is narrower than "that is false", and the narrow version is the useful one. That temperature claim originates with the manufacturer. No Extension service has seen the data behind it, and NCHFP has said on the record that it cannot independently verify the company's statements [F-7.6]. Presenting a manufacturer's internal claim in the voice of a measured finding is the error.

The same page also says, correctly, that USDA does not approve or certify pressure canners at all and only publishes guidelines [F-13.9]. That is true. It is also being used to wave away a question it does not answer — nobody asked whether USDA certifies canners; the question is whether anyone independent has verified the temperature claim. Watch for that move. A true sentence deployed against a question it does not address is one of the most effective ways to be misled by a page that never quite lies.

Worth knowing as context rather than as an argument: that page is wall-to-wall retail affiliate placement [F-13.9]. It does not make the claims wrong. It does explain why the page is confident.

Where this leaves you

If you own a multi-cooker with a canning button and low-acid food you want on a shelf, you need a stovetop pressure canner that holds four or more quart jars [F-3.1], and the tested schedule for that food from NCHFP. What a pressure canner does covers what you are buying and why.

If what you actually want to can is jam, pickles or acidified tomatoes, you do not need any of this. A deep pot and a rack will do it [F-2.1].

And if you are choosing a canner now, the next decision is the gauge, because one of the two options comes with a job every year: dial gauge or weighted gauge.