Home-canned fish in a pressure canner

Name: Home-canned fish in a pressure canner
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 5 h
Total time: 6 h
Yield: 2 l (four half-litre jars)
Ingredients: Any fish — 500 g per half-litre jar Salt — 1 tsp per jar Black peppercorns — 10 pcs. Allspice — 4 pcs. Coriander seeds — 1 pinch Ground paprika — 1 tsp Bay leaf — to taste Oil — optional

Published: 04.09.2026

Updated: 04.09.2026

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Cooking time 6 hours Portions 2 l (four half-litre jars)

A pressure canner differs from an oven or a pan in one thing: it works under pressure. Water in a closed jar cannot get hotter than 100 °C, whatever the oven dial says — under pressure it can, and that is exactly what separates canned food that keeps from a preserve that only lives in the fridge.

That is why a pressure canner is the only home method that comes close to an industrial process. Thirty minutes is enough for a half-litre jar; the longer part of the work is the cooling, and it takes several hours. The lid is not opened during it: a sudden drop in pressure blows the lids off the jars.

If you have no pressure canner, the same pieces can be put up in the oven or in tomato sauce. But that will be a different product: without pressure the sterilisation is incomplete, and jars like that can only be kept in the fridge.

The same fish is jarred in the oven and without pressure in home-canned river fish, and under tomato in home-canned fish in tomato sauce.

Caloric content: 180kcal

Ingredients

Any fish — 500 g per half-litre jar
Salt — 1 tsp per jar
Black peppercorns — 10 pcs.
Allspice — 4 pcs.
Coriander seeds — 1 pinch
Ground paprika — 1 tsp
Bay leaf — to taste
Oil — optional

Prepare the fish and the jars

Scale the fish, gut it, rinse it and cut it into pieces. Put half the salt and spices into the bottom of the clean jars.

Fill the jars

Pack the fish in compactly up to half the volume, add the rest of the salt and spices and pour in oil if you like. Fill the jars with fish to the top and close them tightly with screw-on lids.

Put them on the tray

Stand the jars on the canner tray and cover them with a piece of heavy cloth. Fill the empty spaces with jars of water so that nothing can turn.

Process for 30 minutes under pressure

Fix the tray in place and put it in the pressure canner, pour water in up to the mark and close the lid. Over a medium flame bring the temperature to 100–112 °C and process for 30 minutes. Turn the heat off and leave the jars in the canner for several hours, until the temperature drops to 40 °C — do not open the lid.

Take them out and leave them to ripen

Take the cooled jars out, stand them on their lids and, once they are completely cold, move them into storage. After two weeks the fish tastes like lightly salted fish; the canned fish ripens fully after no less than three weeks.

Notes

Screw-on lids only. Crimped-on lids get blown off under pressure — the source says so outright, and it is not an excess of caution but mechanics: at 100–112 °C the pressure inside the jar is higher than atmospheric.
Fill the empty spaces on the tray with jars of water. The jars must not turn or knock against one another while they heat up.
Do not open the canner lid until it is down to 40 °C. This is the part that makes the recipe take half a day rather than an hour; you cannot speed it up with cold water — the glass will crack.
The flavour ripens over three weeks. After two weeks the jar tastes like lightly salted fish; the canned fish only comes fully into its own after no less than three weeks.
⚠️ A bulging lid goes in the bin, untasted. This applies to any home-canned fish: an oxygen-free, low-acid environment is exactly the one in which the bacterium that causes botulism grows, and it has neither smell nor taste.
A pressure canner is a pressurised appliance. Work with it according to the manufacturer's instructions: going over the water mark, opening it hot and home-made modifications are dangerous.

Recipe and step-by-step photos — kolizhanka.net.ua.