Debbie S. left a comment on my last post that she had never heard of canning meats. I thought I would write a little post about my experience of canning meat. Its fabulous. So much better than store bought canned meat. Its also a way to spread your eggs out, in other words don't have all your eggs in one basket. I have some meat frozen and some meat canned. That way I should have it covered if something happens to the electric or so on.
I personally have canned pork, chicken, beef, bacon, taco meat, meat loaf, meat balls, chili with meat and sloppy joes. Just last night I opened a can of cubed pork I had canned and poured off the juice and added salsa and warmed it up. We ate it on taco shells, its such an easy tasty and quick meal.
I cold pack my meats and do not add liquid generally, the sloppy joes and meatballs I did add tomato sauce with some brown sugar in it. All meat has to be pressure canned. If you are canning meat and dont quite have a pressure canner load full, can some beans for more quick meals. I also do not cook the beans first. If you look under canning you should be able to find the bean canning method. I forgot about that the other day when I canned the taco meat and sloppy joes, I could of canned a pint or two of beans, shoot.
If you have never canned meat and you find a good deal on some and have a pressure canner, give it a go, you will be glad you did.
Edited to add: I do cook my ground meat before I can it. I have been told that if you dont do that it will form a huge lump in the jar that is almost impossible to get out. When I made the meatballs we put them in a 9x13 pan and cooked them almost done on the grill, then I canned them. The sloppy joe meat, chili meat and taco meat I cooked in a pan with the desired spices.
Oh, yes! I am relatively new to canning meat and it is so easy, compared to other things. Once I got 60# of chicken legs quarters for $.49 a pound and canned them. That has been very convenient. I just open one, take the meat off of the bones, use the broth and meat and add some more homemade chicken broth and some homemade noodles and seasonings and voila! Chicken and noodles Really Fast! You have some good ideas there of other things to can, and also the idea about spreading out your eggs... Freezing things is nice, but then when the power goes out - ouch! A few weeks ago my freezer failed and I thought I was going to have to try to can everything in there. Ugh. Fortunately, Jim was able to get it going again. Whew!
ReplyDeleteThat is always a fear I have, the freezer going out. When we first moved here the freezer got unplugged and we didnt know until it was too late because it was in the shed. I was so thankful because just before we moved I had canned 80lbs. of bacon and 40 lbs of pork or the other way around, in any case I was sure thankful I had done that and that all that meat wasnt lost.
ReplyDeleteMany many years ago, our freezer got unplugged too! We had just brought home half a hog, frozen in packages. When I discovered it, there was red liquid running across the floor! I re-froze the bacon and hams, but the fresh things I cooked all in one day and froze it. That's a LOT of pork chops!
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