Canning qustions

[ch1ch2]

How does the flavor/texture of the bacon turn out?

Aaron Z

Like when cooked with beans. And greatly improves the favor of the venison.

 

[teejk]

Like when cooked with beans. And greatly improves the favor of the venison.

I bet it does (and probably doesn't require much). I knew a lady that would can venison and always used a chunk of beef fat or "salted side pork" in the jar. For some reason the art of canning seems to be making a come-back after disappearing for years. My dad owned a grocery store and come the middle of May we would have to clear a large space for stacks of jars and lids and rings and "Sure gel" and wax and all the stuff that come with the process. Jams/jellies were early then veggies would take over then the boxes of Colorado peaches and Bartlett pears would arrive and then the apples would start to ripen. That all seems to be coming back now. Nice to see I think. Time consuming no doubt but somehow relaxing at the same time. As an aside, was in SD a few weeks ago and got to try a veggie medley of carrots, green beans, cauliflower, broccoli, bell pepper and probably some other stuff...was pickled/canned in 1/2 gal jars so beyond what I can do with my equipment but it was good. Occurs to me that all the ingredients are available year round and even store bought would not be an expensive proposition. It's on my list...

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I did it! 10 qt. Jars filled with venison chunks and all top sealed.

If you are in any way concerned with botulism, be aware that cooking will make food botulism safe. Just boil it for a while. If you use the meat in a stew, it will be safe to eat by the time the stew is done. You can't destroy the spores by boiling, but the toxin is denatured by heat and will be gone after 5 minutes at 85 degrees C (185 degrees F). That's why cooking home-canned food is a good idea. That said, I like to make tuna salad with home-canned tuna, but that's because I know how it was canned.

BTW, canning a tuna is a production because of the long pressure time and it's a big fish. I have a friend who built a surplus autoclave into a large capacity canning retort. He can do 80 half-pint jars at a time in it.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I have been canning soups. The soup simmers for 3-4 hours until it is ready to can. There surely is not any wee bad bugs in the soup that has simmered for hours. Putting the soup in a jar does not take long and it is boiling hot. The pressure cooker takes 15-20 minutes? to pressurize but the food is at boiling temperature for that time. Then it is cooked for whatever the books says and there is another 15-20 minutes for the pressure to drop. I know the food is boiling during the depressurization because I can see the food boiling in the jar for 30 minutes or so after I put the jar out to cool on a towel. As long as the lid is sealed there ain't nothing bad surviving in that jar. It really makes me think that the cook times are VERY conservative. I have found some of my lids very difficult to get off too. :laughing:

Because the cooking time seems very conservative, i.e., erring on safety, I really prefer to pressure preserve.

Later,
Dan

Boiling doesn't kill botulism, but heating the soup to boiling before serving destroys the toxin. Just don't eat it without reheating.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

How will a pressure canner make food safe at 10 psi??

To me,,, 250 degrees F needs 20 psi,,,
Recently, meat has been considered impossible to make safe with pressure canning.

What is 10 psi achieve? 225 degrees F.?

At sea level you start at 14.7 PSI atmospheric pressure, so you need to be looking at 24 or 25 psi on that chart.

 

[Bird]

I haven't seen any information in this thread about canning jackrabbit sausage. When I was a kid, we never canned any, but we ate every jackrabbit I could shoot. But my paternal grandmother would not eat jackrabbit. She said the first couple of years she and my grandfather were married, they didn't have much money, but jackrabbits were plentiful and she said she canned lots of sausage made from jackrabbits so they ate a lot of that. She said she'd already eaten all the jackrabbit she wanted and wasn't going to eat any of it anymore.

 

[teejk]

I haven't seen any information in this thread about canning jackrabbit sausage. When I was a kid, we never canned any, but we ate every jackrabbit I could shoot. But my paternal grandmother would not eat jackrabbit. She said the first couple of years she and my grandfather were married, they didn't have much money, but jackrabbits were plentiful and she said she canned lots of sausage made from jackrabbits so they ate a lot of that. She said she'd already eaten all the jackrabbit she wanted and wasn't going to eat any of it anymore.

Well known fact...you could eat as much rabbit meat as you wanted and essentially starve to death (kinda like celery)! I like rabbit meat but it needs to be supplemented with some fat.

 

[jack707]

Rabbit meat needs to be seasoned to be good it plan meat.

 

[TnAndy]

How does the flavor/texture of the bacon turn out?

Aaron Z

Texture doesn't work out good when canning it raw...which is what that pic is. Falls apart when you pull it out and cook it....makes good salad crumbles, but not strips.

The secret we later learned is pre-cook it to about 75% or so done....not crisp, still 'limp', and finish cooking after you pull it out of the jar. So, now we kill a pig, cure the bacon (Morton cure, refrigerator for 10 days in ziplock bags), then rinse it several times in cold water to get rid of excess salt, slice and have a big 'fry day'.

couple big skillets, camp stove, outside:

Piles of semi cooked:

Roll in parchment paper:

Stuff roll in a pint jar. We get 4 servings per pint. (quart in this pic, but we switched to WM pints later....too much wasted space in quarts.)

Process:

Finish product:

 

[jack707]

I looked it up to that the way they did it in mother nature mag.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Stuff roll in a pint jar. We get 4 servings per pint.

I use to spend a LOT of time in the Alaskan bush, I ALWAYS took cans of bacon with me, most grocery stores carried it.

It was just plain GREAT to have around to add flavor to what ever I was cooking and left me some brease to cook with.

Open the can, and pull out the bacon rolled up in parchment paper...

SR

 

[dirt ditch]

Guys, this is a great thread. Love seeing how other folks do it. In our family I'm just the gofer while My wife is the canner. About 30 years ago she learned the art of canning vegetables from my grandmother but she had never canned meat. A couple years ago, in a nearby town, the community collage put on a Saturday "hands on" canning class where she learned how to can meat safely using a pressure cooker. My wife says it was well worth the cost of the class. Now she has two pressure cookers, her fathers Presto pressure canner and a 921 All American pressure canner.

Bird, your jackrabbit sausage story reminds me of my grandfather who's family did not have much when he was growing up. To survive, grandpa would shoot rabbits with his single shot .22, clean and skin the rabbits giving his mother the meat for meals and tan the hides to sell for more .22 shells. He said they ate a lot of rabbit but it got them through some really tough times.

 

[Gunny]

I don't know about jackrabbit sausage, but our family canned a lot of pork sausage when I was growing up. The ladies cooked up the sausage patties outside over kerosene stoves, then packed the patties pretty tightly into quart jars, then filled the jars with the grease from the sausages. Since we slaughtered six hogs every year, there was plenty of lard on hand to make up any shortages from the sausage cooking. They canned the sausage to save on freezer space and back then we didn't really like the sausage as much when it was frozen.

Good stuff to have on hand, just warmed it up to make a quick meal or an after school snack, since we always had plenty of biscuits left over from breakfast and there were plenty of times where I was so hungry I just scraped the lard off and ate them cold. We didn't have microwaves back then and I thought it took too long for the electric range to warm them up in a cast iron skillet

 

[teejk]

I use to spend a LOT of time in the Alaskan bush, I ALWAYS took cans of bacon with me, most grocery stores carried it.

It was just plain GREAT to have around to add flavor to what ever I was cooking and left me some brease to cook with.

Open the can, and pull out the bacon rolled up in parchment paper...

SR

Years ago we fished a big lake (about 30mi x 30 mi) in northern Sask. The sweet spot was a large bay all away across the lake and we really had no idea how the big lake was behaving until we left. On one of the return trips we encountered waves too big for the 28' boat and had to break-into a trapper's cabin where we found enough canned food to eat with our boiled northern pike (our host knew the guy and made it right and even got a key for the padlock so we didn't have to break anything to get in the next time). All that was before anybody started putting "expiration" or "use by" dates on anything and I'm sure some of that stuff was old. A friend of mine uses those dates as a rule to toss stuff. I laugh at him...I inspect the container for rust or other signs of possible air leakage...if I find none I open it and then use that thing in the middle of my face above my mouth.