Is a pressure canner it worth it for vegetarians?

Water bath or steam canning can only be used for high acidity foods such as pickles, jellies, salsa, and tomato based products (see my summary of modern canning methods). For anything else, such as meat, fish, seafood, and low-acid vegetables, a pressure canner is the only safety tested way to can. I am sure that the ability to can meat ups the value proposition for any meat eating household - but my husband is vegetarian and I am mostly vegetarian (I occasionally, but increasingly rarely eat fish and seafood), so I wasn't very sure that a pressure canner was worth it for us. After all, most low-acid foods, although they cannot be water bath canned, can be preserved in other ways, for example freezing, drying or cellaring.

That being said, it's now been about 3 years of using a pressure canner, and I am very glad I have it. I do think it is a little bit less essential for a vegetarian household but it is still very useful. Every year, my freezer is totally full, so it is quite helpful to have an alternative when it comes to storing vegetables. Otherwise I wouldn't have enough space. It also allows for a few shortcuts in terms of food prep since pressure canned vegetables are already diced and cooked in the jar. 

Here are the main ways in which our mostly vegetarian household uses pressure canning:

• Canning carrot cubes and potato cubes, for use in recipes all winter long. The main way in which I store these vegetables is in bins of sand, however that method only lasts until late spring, so canning allows me to keep these veggies longer. It's also a shortcut when throwing suppers together - it's helpful to have already peeled, cubed and cooked cubes ready to go. 
• A half/half mixture of carrot and potato cubes, which I use mostly to make samosa-inspired puffs in the toaster oven or pie irons. I just drain the cubes, add seasoning, and stuff it in pillsbury crescent dough. Super quick recipe when the potatoes and carrots are already prepared. I could also use the half/half mixture in other recipes of course.
• Canned pumpkin cubes, for use in recipes especially pumpkin bread. It's not safe to can pumpkin puree (it's too thick for heat penetration) but cubes can be canned. They are very mushy so they can be pureed easily out when you dump out the jar contents. We also use this in homemade cat food. In my experience, pumpkins don't keep that long so it's great to be able to can them. 
• Canned butternut squash, for use in cooking, especially butternut squash soup. Similar to pumpkin, this can be canned in cubes but not puréed. Butternut squash keeps a long time on the counter (at least 4 months), but if I get a bumper crop it's handy to be able to can it. It also saves prep time. 
• French onion soup. To be honest, knowing that I could can French onion soup tipped the balance when I decided to buy a pressure canner... I love French onion soup, but caramelizing the onions takes a significant amount of time. Knowing that I could caramelize a big batch (I usually do 4 pans at a time on my stove) and have delicious soup ready to be heated up has changed French onion soup from an "event" to a frequent treat in the winter time. I can it in quarts (2 portions) and pints (1 portion). I just dump it in a bowl, add a piece of bread and slice of cheese, and pop in the oven. 
  
• Diced sweet pepper - I had a huge pepper turnout this year and it's the first time a pressure can some. I am not sure if it will be worth it compared to frozen. Pepper is one of the only vegetables you don't need to blanch before freezing, so it's pretty convenient to freeze. I will report back!
• Celery "slurry" for cream of celery - another new recipe this year, we'll see how that goes.

In the future I might can corn (if I ever get more than we can eat fresh), sweet potato (it's hard to get slips here but they grow quite well), and kidney beans (for convenience - they store dry quite easily though). 

Some water bath recipes can also be done with the pressure canner and may take less time, but I haven't found that to be worth it. Once you count the pressurizing/depressurizing time it's not always worth it (especially now that I've replaced my water bath canner with a steam canner, which heats up much quicker). Usually, foods done in the pressure canner will be more mushy than those done in the steam canner, which can be a disadvantage (for example with whole tomatoes). 

There are also some people in Quebec who have described a method for using a pressure canner as a steam canner - if you follow that train of thought, I would say a pressure canner would be totally worth it since you would only need that one vessel in order to do all types of canning. But I have a small hesitation in terms of whether I feel like the method was sufficiently demonstrated to be equivalent. It is not accepted by US canning experts as far as I know.

So, all in all, I've found pressure canning pretty useful especially in the soup department, to free up some freezer space, and for food prep convenience (having veggies already diced and cooked). All this is probably not as life changing as for someone who consumes meat, but it's been worth it for us.