How are the taste of these meats canned up? Best ways to use them?

[BarredBuff]

We are canning a lot of our meat this year instead of freezing it. We will be given a deer, and a pig. Plus we are slaughtering off roosters from my incubations, quite a few rabbits, plus some Cornish Rock Xs, and are buying a beef. I don't plan on running out of meat again this year.

We canned up some stew meat from last years beef, as well as a variety of meals in a jar. Monday, I butchered 3 roosters, and canned up 1 quart of dark meat chunks, 3 pints of breast meat chunks, and 4 half gallons of broth. I have to do that about 7 or 8 more times. Then on September 19th we get 15 Cornish Rocks in and what I'd like to do is can the breast filets, and bone in legs separately then chunk up the thighs like I have been. Any thoughts, ideas, experiences? Then I will have rabbits to slaughter and can in December and would like to do something similiar.

Then the beef, venison, and pork should arrive from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Venison may be sooner. I hope to can most of the roasts, the stew meat, half of the ground meat, then all of the pork. Any tips, ideas on that?

The meat department should be quite full this go around, and we aren't to short on veggies either, al though a few things did not go as planned. But I have a new canner and it can do 19 pints at a time, so this all shouldn't be to hard.

 

[terri9630]

I've found that we like the ground meat "dry canned". (cook meat and drain grease) it has a better texture. I am also not breaking it up into small chunks like I would if I was going to ser e it right away. When we canned in broth the meat chopped smaller it seamed kinda mealey.

 

[Cindlady2]

Wow... sounds like you got quite a plan! Well, I've never done rabbit or pork so no help there. I've never done roasts either! I hope you get some good replies because I'd be interested in answers too!

I have done chicken, beef, venison and fish (and 1 rabbit). The only advice I can give is get QT. or bigger wide mouth jars for your bone in meat (but you probably know that. If your doing bone in, it's going to take creative packing. As much as you can try to keep the bones vertical in the jar, you can usually get more in that way. (but you probably know that too. lol) Like terri said, what she calls "dry pack" works well for "small" meat. When done with too much liquid it seems to "over cook". I like to "specialize" some jars and add special seasoning. Like a little treiki sauce, chili powder, onion & garlic.... etc. I've done some meat sauces too, but again, careful about too watery of a sauce, seems the thicker, the better the meat holds up.

Wish I could have been more help
Good luck!

 

[moolie]

I've done ground bison, stew bison chunks, chicken chunks, and pork chunks, but not rabbit or anything bone-in so I'm no help there, although from all I've read about bone-in Cindlady2 has perfect advice.

For the ground meat, I fry it up and rinse the fat off with boiling kettle water in a colander in the sink, without breaking it up too much. Then I cram it into pint jars and fill the space with boiling water from the kettle. Lids on and process--we only do pints which take 75 minutes and we need to do them at 12lbs pressure for our altitude. Turns our really well, we use it in everything--pasta sauce, shepherd's pie, chili, anything you use ground for. Some dishes we like to make with it, like tacos, need "dry" meat so I pour the water out first and save it for soups or sauces.

For the chunks, it's the same process for everything--cram in as much as you can, lids on and process. Again 75 minutes for pints. We use it for anything you'd use cooked meat for--sandwiches, salads, casseroles and one-pot dishes etc.

In addition to canning jars of "just meat" we also can Spaghetti Sauce with Meat, Chili with beans, Bison Stew, and various soups. Next time I have a small pork or bison roast I'm going to be making:

Barbecue Sandwiches

2 quarts canned tomatoes
3 onions, chopped
2 green peppers, chopped
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp dry mustard
salt, pepper, hot pepper sauce to taste
1/4 cup pickling spice
4 lb pork or beef roast, chopped (about 6 cups)

Combine first 8 ingredients, tie pickling spices in cheesecloth bag and add to sauce, cover and simmer 15 minutes. Remove spice bag, add meat to sauce, cover and heat through. Pack into pint jars leaving 1" headspace, process 75 minutes at 10 lbs pressue (correct for altitude, I need 12 lbs). Serve in buns with coleslaw.

 

[SSDreamin]

Sorry BB, I haven't done any bone-in meat or rabbit either, so I'm zero help there.

I have canned ground venison (DH thinks it's OK, but prefers the ground venison as hamburger rocks/taco rocks), venison chunks (these come out so tender, I like to mix them with gravy and serve them over noodles or mashed potatoes), bacon, pork chops (boneless. Every meat I've canned so far, except for the bacon - and ground meat, which can be mushy, has come out of the jar fall apart tender and delicious), chicken breasts (boneless ), chicken tenders, beef steaks, ham 'steaks' (they are pretty small, to fit in the jar, so tough to call them steaks!), cubed pork and cubed ham. That's all I can think of right now. I haven't done up the carnitas yet, but will be soon. I usually can everything plain (no spices), to give myself more flexibility with recipes and because I was always told that some spices become bitter after being canned. The carnitas are an exception - they take forever to make, so I plan to do a huge batch (with fresh hot peppers as the spice)and can multiple quarts, so all I will need to do is pour it in a dutch oven and let it cook until the sauce thickens. Saves me time, and is about the only way my guys will eat pork roast! I am also planning to play around with seasonings for the sausage, and then can up patties. The processor was VERY happy when he found out I wanted leaf lard, so he gave me 20 pounds of it, that I will be doing up the J.C. way here as soon as the weather cools. We are quite found of flank steak and pork loin in this house, but I am not sure how I could can it up, since the guys will only eat it grilled (This may not be as much of an issue for you if you have your pork loin made into chops) The ribs are an issue for me as well - I'm thinking we'll need to eat those soon, since I don't think they'll can up worth a hoot :/ I have avoided chicken chunks, as my guys gripe about it being 'too stringy' when I use it in recipes Also not sure how I want to do up the ham this time - we got a 14# ham, whole, and I sure wish I could can 1/2 gallon jars, so I could do big chunks of it! A 1/2 gallon chunk of ham would be about perfect for Sunday dinner in this house! Do you plan to can up the hocks too? Or are you going to convert them first (I mean, cook beans with them, remove the bone, chop up the meat and can them up that way?). I want to do at least one batch of fast beans with one (ours were split, then smoked, so we got 4 off a half a pig), then I'm not sure about the rest. Maybe I'll experiment with salting one to preserve it!??!

What meals-in-a-jar did you can up BB? I did can up a batch of chicken soup base (chicken soup, minus any noodles or rice) and bean soup but, for the most part, I have gone a different route than J.C. on that one. I have been working on dry stacking, with stuff I've dehydrated, then vacuum sealing it in. I even dried a bunch of my tomato skins so I could make my own tomato powder - two full trays of skins equaled about 1/8 cup of powder! Guess I have a new found appreciation for those #10 cans of tomato powder now! With the dry stack, you open the jar, dump it in a pan, add water and cook it. DH prefers it because 'stuff didn't get mushy'. Ugh! Are you beginning to see how picky the guys in this house are?

Sorry I'm not much help!

 

[me&thegals]

We loved our pressure-canned venison chunks. I would dump out a quart jar, add some cornstarch and fried onions and cook it up into a gravy. Excellent!

 

[Beekissed]

I've done on the bone chicken and it turned out great. That was in a water bath canner...everything turned out tender and yummy.

 

[BarredBuff]

I've done on the bone chicken and it turned out great. That was in a water bath canner...everything turned out tender and yummy.

Why?

Thanks for the help, ya'll are great!

SSDreamin', we did Vegetable Soup, Chili, Baked Beans, Sloppy Joes, Soup Beans, Tomato Soup, Chicken Soup Base, and plan to maybe do some more Meals In a Jar since I am going to have lots of ground meat around. Any suggestions?

 

[Beekissed]

Why what?

 

[BarredBuff]

Why what?

What I meant was how does canning meat ina BWB work? Im not going to do it I just want to know how it works.