Pressure Canning: Raw or Hot Pack?

Which do you prefer? For which things?

I notice in the Blue Book and the other USDA preserving manuals that I have, that either method is OK for many things, but makes no difference in the process times.

Obviously hot pack is applicable for many things like cooked sauces, soups, stocks, etc. Precooked meats to lower the fat content, etc.

But I also see raw and hot pack directions for plain vegetables. I raw or hot pack these depending on how my mother or grandmother did it. (And there seems to be no rhyme or reason for why one is hot packed, but not the other.) But since directions are given for both, I am curious if there's any real difference if you raw pack or hot pack your corn, green beans, etc.? You're already cooking the hell out of it with a 50-90min process time, and for a lot of things, I just see it being severely overcooked if you hot pack it.

Anyone do either or both? Anyone see any difference in final quality?

TAG

TRG

We normally raw pack everything except as you indicated sauces.

We normally raw pack all fruits and veggies. The first batch of peaches we did, we used the hot pack method, and they came out pretty squishy. Tried the raw pack on the next batch and they were great!

The mushiness is what I've been noticing in some of my stuff. And when I look it up and see the raw pack listed, I started to wonder if that's not part of the problem. Also, I wondered why I was wasting the extra electricity/gas to blanch or cook stuff that apparently didn't need to be.

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