Kitchen Crop Steam Canner Reviews: Our Editorial Verdict

The short version

It does what it promises. All the friction lives in the fine print, and there is more fine print here than on any other pot in your kitchen.

What's good:

• About 2-1/2 quarts of water instead of a full bath, so it comes up to temperature fast and stops heating the whole kitchen in August.
• Holds a full canner load: 7 quart jars or 8 pint jars on the flat aluminum rack.
• The dome-and-shallow-pan shape is the design most canners point to as the researched one, and the temperature indicator gives you a visible start signal.
• Backed by a 5-year warranty, and the maker sells the lid, rack, water pan and indicator knob separately as replacement parts.

What's not:

• The 45-minute ceiling is hard, and altitude adjustments count against it, so long-process recipes still need a water bath.
• You have to run a calibration test on the temperature indicator before the first batch of every season, and it takes 20-45 minutes.
• Aluminum, hand wash only, no dishwasher, and softened water can corrode the pan over time.
• Boiling the pan dry damages the canner and under-processes the food, so it is not a set-and-forget pot.
• The brand name on the box keeps changing, which makes finding the right manual or part confusing.

Who it's for

Jam, pickles, salsa, fruit, in volume: this pot is close to perfect. Green beans, meat, plain vegetables: wrong pot entirely, and no setting on it changes that.

Buy it for:

• High-acid preserving in volume: jam, jelly, pickles, relish, fruit, salsa and acidified tomatoes, in repeated back-to-back loads.
• Summer canning when you cannot stand heating 20 quarts of water in an already hot kitchen.
• Anyone who struggles to lift a full water bath canner off the stove, since the loaded weight here is jars plus about 2-1/2 quarts of water.

Skip it if:

• You want to can green beans, corn, meat, stock or soup. Those need a pressure canner, full stop, and nothing about this pot changes that.
• Your regulars run past 45 minutes after altitude adjustment. A 20-quart stainless canning pot such as the Harvest gives you the same jar count with no processing ceiling.
• You want one pot that does both jobs. The stainless Kitchen Crop steam canner and the Harvest 20-quart both cover water bath duty as well.
• You would rather spend less and keep it simple. A plain tall canning pot with a rack does every high-acid recipe at any processing time.

Plenty of canners have never seen one of these in person. That is why so many of these threads open with somebody asking what the thing even is:

I’ve heard rumblings about steam canners but they seem uncommon. Curious how different the process is. The other thing, yeah I’d only ever use it for dry goods.

The specs that matter

The manual is short and the listing is shorter. What little is in them all shows up at the stove:

7 quart jars or 8 pint jars on the rack: a full standard canner load, the same as most water bath canners, so you are not trading capacity for speed. Half-pint and smaller jars can be double stacked with a rack between the layers. Half-gallon jars are not allowed in a steam canner at all.

About 2-1/2 quarts of water, level with the top of the rack: this is the whole pitch. Less water means less time and fuel to reach temperature, a much lighter pot to move, and far less steam dumped into your kitchen. It also means the water can run out, which is why the manual tells you to check the level after every batch and never let it boil dry.

Aluminum pan, lid and rack, with silicone handle grips: light and quick to heat, but hand wash only, and the manual warns that softened water can corrode the pan over extended use because of the salts. Expect the aluminum to darken with use; the maker says that is normal.

A temperature indicator built into the lid knob: it reads the temperature of the steam inside the canner, not a fixed number, so you calibrate it for your elevation with a test run of four water-filled jars and mark your maximum with the adjustable pointer. One owner explains the physics behind that better than most product pages do:

I'm not sure I understand your question. You don't need a regular thermometer. If you live in the Rockies and the water boils at 210 instead because of the altitude, then it's just going to boil at 210. The water itself will keep on boiling at that point, it's not going to rise to a higher temperature. It's the steam that's going to get at a higher temperature. The higher the pressure, the higher temperature the steam will be. (Think of pressure canner, to bring the steam temperature to 240). There will be some light pressure building in the steam canner. By venting it, you chase the air out, and the pure steam will be able to rise higher than 210. So the knob measures the steam temperature and as long as you are in the green zone for your elevation, then you are fine.

If you are canning anywhere above sea level, work out your adjusted processing time before you start. Our canning altitude calculator will tell you what your recipe becomes at your elevation, and whether that pushes it past the 45-minute line.

How well it preserves

Inside its lane, this canner does the job the research says it does. Steam in an atmospheric steam canner reaches the temperature of boiling water, which is why NCHFP and the extension services accept it for naturally acid or properly acidified foods at pH 4.6 or below. Processing times are identical to water bath times; you do not shorten anything. The manufacturer's manual states the same rule and points you at the USDA guide for the actual schedules.

Owners who commit to it stay committed. Nobody claims it preserves better. They say it preserves the same while asking for far less:

I've been doing a lot of research on steam canning. They use less water, so less electricity or gas to get them up to temperature and they take less time to get up to temp to start the timer for the canning process. Less water does limit you to recipes that need less time to process, but I only do pickled stuff so that falls into the range.

One owner had been using this exact style of canner for a year before she went looking for reassurance. That is most owners in a sentence: happy with the results, unsure whether they are allowed to be.

When I learned steam canning was an acceptable alternative to water bath canning, I checked out the best one using my America’s test kitchen subscription and purchased it. I’ve been happily using this model for a little over a year. I purchased the Ball #38 and was expecting to see updates / recipes using steam canners. I did not see any information about the safe use of steam canners. Thank you. Please tell me I have a safe product here !

That unease deserves a straight answer rather than a brush-off. The skepticism usually comes from careful canners who have only ever seen water bath and pressure canning endorsed:

What is your source that says steam canners are safe? I’ve only seen water bath canning for high acid and properly preserved foods, or pressure canning. This has to be done in combination with a tested and safe recipe.

There is also a persistent belief that only the tall dome shape was ever tested, and that flatter multi-use lids were not:

My understanding is that the top hat version is the one that was tested safe for steam canning and this version hasn't been tested. I have the same one you have.

The published guidance does not actually split by silhouette. NCHFP's position is about the process, not the brand: the food must be acid or properly acidified, the air must be vented out of the steam before timing starts, and the total time must be 45 minutes or less including altitude adjustment. This canner is the tall dome design in any case, and the temperature indicator exists precisely to tell you when the venting condition has been met. Follow the calibration procedure, use a tested recipe, and you are inside the validated method.

The knock is the ceiling, not the heat. Forty-five minutes is not much room once altitude adjustment eats into it, and the manual is blunt that anything longer has to go in a boiling-water canner instead. Siphoning is the second knock. Steam-canned jars lose liquid and come out sticky more often than water-bath jars do, which catches people off guard:

I steamed canned these zucchini pickles using the USDA recipe. Times for steam canners are the same as water bath canners. However, I’ve noticed that when I leave the headspace specified in the USDA recipe, I will get sometimes some leakage during processing. The lids have definitely popped/sealed, but I can feel stickiness and dried liquid on the jars from where they leaked from the top during processing. Are they safe to store at room temperature? *This is a hot pack recipe. I think that I’m not having this issue as much with cold pack recipes. In my observation of the contents of the jars and how much they are still bubbling after processing, it seems the steam canner gets the contents hotter.

That is worth understanding rather than fearing. A steam canner cannot make the contents hotter than boiling; only pressure does that. Siphoning is a heating-and-cooling-rate problem, and the community consensus, which matches the tested-recipe guidance, is that sealed jars are still good:

A bit of siphoning is fine if they sealed, as long as you have more than 50% of the product covered in liquid. This is one of those cases where you seem to have done everything right, and have to trust the tested recipe and count on good seals = safe product. But most recipes won't also tell you to remove the rings after 24 hours max, and then rinse/wash your jars before storing once cooled.

Built to last

Aluminum drags this score down. The pan, lid and rack are all aluminum with silicone handle grips, which is what makes the canner light and fast and also what makes it a pot you have to watch. It cannot go in the dishwasher. It discolors. The manual specifically warns that softened water can corrode the pan over extended use because of the salts, and that letting the water boil dry may cause serious damage and render the canner unusable.

The counterweight is unusual in this category. VKP Brands backs the VKP1054 with a 5-year warranty and sells the water pan, lid, rack and temperature indicator knob assembly as individual replacement parts. A canner whose one fragile component can simply be reordered ages very differently from one you throw out when the gauge quits. Parts do get superseded and go out of stock, though, so do not assume the number on your lid will be listed forever.

The strangest risk with this product is not knowing what you own. The same canner has carried four names, and owners lose track of which manual, which part and which review applies to them:

Hahaha, my order says “kitchen crop” but the canner itself says “Harvest”

The other recurring complaint across this canner line is the rack. Jars sit on a flat aluminum rack, and owners who process a lot of quarts complain about wobble, to the point that VKP sells an upgraded flat rack and people buy it on the strength of a single recommendation in a thread:

Thanks for the tip on the rack. The wobble makes me crazy. I just ordered one for myself.

None of that is a reason to avoid the canner. Nobody reports split pans or warped lids, and the warranty and parts catalog beat most competitors. Between the aluminum, the boil-dry warning and the moving-target branding, though, this pot rewards attention and punishes neglect.

Living with it

Two and a half quarts of water comes up to temperature in a fraction of the time a full canner takes. The loaded pot is light enough to move without a second pair of hands. Your kitchen stays noticeably cooler. Among people drowning in September apples and tomatoes, that combination gets recommended in exactly this tone:

Get yourself a steam canner. So much faster and easier then waterbath.

Back-to-back batches are the real payoff. Each load only needs the base topped back up to the rack instead of a full reheat, which shortens a long canning evening more than any number on the box will.

Now the friction. The temperature indicator is not a thermometer with a number on it. It needs a calibration test before your first batch of each season, and again any time you can at a new elevation. Run the canner with four water-filled jars, wait for the needle to stop moving for a full 10 minutes, mark that spot with the pointer. Twenty to forty-five minutes, and skipping it means you do not know when to start timing. More confusion traces back to this one step than to anything else about the canner, and all of it is a first-day, first-of-season cost.

Cleanup is easy but manual: warm soapy water and a soft cloth, never the dishwasher, and a vinegar boil to clear hard-water buildup from the pan. Budget an extra wipe-down for the jars themselves, because steam-canned jars come out stickier than water-bath jars when they siphon:

Some amount of siphoning is normal and it happens in waterbath canning too, but you don't get sticky jars when there is lots of water to dilute it. Steam canning is more like pressure caninng light, you may need to wash or at least wipe off the jars afterwards.

Two more habits worth planning for. The lid must stay on for 5 minutes after the heat goes off, which is part of the process rather than an optional rest. And you cannot open the canner mid-process to top up water, so plan batch sizes around the base rather than fixing it on the fly.

How it compares

Anyone weighing this canner is weighing it against a stainless twin, a big stockpot, or a rival dome.

Versus the Kitchen Crop stainless steam canner: same maker, same method, stainless instead of aluminum. It sidesteps the corrosion and discoloration warnings and feels more substantial on the stove, and plenty of owners in these threads say they would pay up for stainless over aluminum if given the choice again. It costs more and it moves in and out of stock, so grab it when you see it rather than waiting.

Versus the Harvest Stainless 20-Quart Canning Pot: the do-both upgrade. It holds a comparable jar load, works as a deep water bath, and therefore has no 45-minute ceiling, which is the one limit you cannot design around on the steam canner. You pay more, heat far more water, and lift a much heavier pot.

Versus a plain canning pot with a rack: the cheapest answer. If steam canning's rules feel like more homework than they are worth, a tall pot with a jar rack processes every high-acid recipe at any tested time. You will heat and haul a lot more water, and your kitchen will feel it in July.

Versus the Concord steam canner: the closest like-for-like on method: another dome-lid atmospheric steam canner, in stainless, at a similar level of ambition. The Kitchen Crop's edges are the 5-year warranty and the published parts catalog. The Concord's edge is the material. If you are choosing between them and cannot decide, that tradeoff is the whole decision.

One thing no alternative changes: a steam canner and a water bath canner are not interchangeable with a pressure canner, and none of them are a jar sealer. That confusion is common enough to be worth stating plainly:

No, the first picture is just used to suck the air out of jars when you store dry goods in them. Keeps things like nuts and flour fresher longer. It's not canning since there's no heat processing. The second one is a steam canner. This is used instead of water bath canning for some recipes. They are not interchangeable.

Using it well

Run the temperature indicator test before your first batch of the season, with four water-filled jars, and mark the maximum with the pointer once the needle has held still for 10 minutes. Then work in this order every time: rack in flat side up, water filled to the top of the rack, jars preheated and filled per a tested recipe, lid on with the vent hole toward the back. Bring it up on high, and start timing only when the needle hits your marked maximum. Turn the heat down to a slow rolling boil for the rest of the process; if the lid is rattling or spitting water, the burner is too high. When time is up, kill the heat and leave the lid on for 5 minutes before lifting it away from you.

Check the water level after every single batch and top it back up. Keep your recipes at or under 45 minutes including altitude adjustment, and send anything longer to a water bath. If you are planning a big day, the canning yield calculator will tell you how many jars your produce should fill, which is how you work out how many loads you are committing to.

If you decide the 45-minute rule is too tight for the way you preserve, the fallback is a plain water bath setup, and it is worth buying that well the first time. Our guide to the best water bath canner for beginners covers what to look for, including the pots that also handle steam.

Is it worth it

This is the cheapest way into a method that saves real time and real water without cutting a single safety corner. Seven quarts on the rack, about two and a half quarts of water in the base, a temperature indicator that tells you when timing starts, a 5-year warranty, and every component available as a spare part. For a household putting up jam, pickles, salsa and fruit in volume, it pays for itself by the second batch of the evening.

It asks more of you than a stockpot does, and that is what holds the score down. Aluminum needs hand washing and dislikes softened water. The pan must never boil dry. The indicator needs calibrating each season. The hard 45-minute ceiling means you will still own a water bath canner for the long recipes. Know all four going in, keep it strictly to high-acid tested recipes, and it will change how your canning days feel. Expect a magic shortcut and it will annoy you inside a week.