WHAT ARE YOU CANNING TODAY?

[murphysranch]

I bought a pork shoulder blade roast for $12. I got three quarts of meat out of it and about 3 C of yummy slow cooked shreds that I simmered with rice- making two meals for the three of us.

 

[flowerbug]

View attachment 29286
Between the two multicookers on the right, I managed to fit in all the bones. Then I added as much water as I dared. They slow cooked for almost 24 hours, and now the first 5 quarts are in the pressure canner. I added more water to the bones and kept them cooking.

Phew! If I keep to this method I can see myself canning turkey broth for weeks on end! I wonder how many times I can remove broth and add water before the broth begins to get weak. A lot of times I think, because each one of those bags of turkey bones I had could have made a huge pot of broth by itself. I wouldn’t be surprised if I get over 60 quarts in the end. I better go count my empty jars.

bury those bones in the garden and i bet they crumble to nothing within a few years. plants will still love what is left of them.

 

[Finnie]

I bought a pork shoulder blade roast for $12. I got three quarts of meat out of it and about 3 C of yummy slow cooked shreds that I simmered with rice- making two meals for the three of us.

Oh yum! I love canned pork shoulder!

bury those bones in the garden and i bet they crumble to nothing within a few years. plants will still love what is left of them.

Thank you for that idea!

 

[Finnie]

5 made yesterday, 15 made today. (Today I started at 7am and kept the canner going pretty constantly.)

I did retire one of the batches of bones because I thought they smelled a little odd. Not before I canned 7 quarts from it though, so when it’s time to open jars, I will have to do a sniff test. Anything that doesn’t smell good won’t get used. But I think I can get another 15 jars from the cooker that is still going.

I did go to Target for two more packs of quart jars yesterday. Unfortunately I found a crack on one jar, a chip on the rim of another, and several that have little curve-like “cracks” on the bottoms. I call those “centipede cracks” because they seem to have tiny “legs” feathering out from a central line. I’ve seen these marks on lots of jars that I’ve gotten from garage sales and goodwill. I don’t trust them, so I don’t use them. Searching online has brought up both “they are safe” and “they are not safe” answers.

So one pack of jars is going back to Target, and I think I will go to the nearby Walmart to buy replacements because the Target only had the two I bought in stock.

This is an example of the “centipede crack”. Sometimes they are more of a half circle shape.

 

[Mini Horses]

Awesome looking broth!!

I make it but find I don't use it that often my cats adore me when I share

 

[flowerbug]

...
This is an example of the “centipede crack”. Sometimes they are more of a half circle shape.

chips and cracks i won't use, but i can't really tell about the one in the picture. if it is only a surface blemish i would use it, but if it is a defect down into the glass i wouldn't.

 

[FarmerJamie]

The wife has been devouring the canned chicken. She prefers my chicken salad recipe over hers (????). Down to 6 pints. We have 30 lbs frozen in the freezer because of the electric canner fail. The butcher shop has skinless boneless breasts on sale in mass amounts. May need to drag the big canner out and get the new propane burner started in the garage. Supposed to be in the 50s Sunday

 

[Finnie]

Awesome looking broth!!

I make it but find I don't use it that often my cats adore me when I share

I’m like you. I love to make broth so I save all the bones I get. But I don’t use it all that much. I have decided that I will not save any more turkey bones until these are almost gone, and at that time I will limit myself to only one or two carcasses. (Although I still plan to make some chicken broth and beef broth with the bones I have.)

One thing I learned is that because I had the one batch smell funny, going forward I will thaw the bones first and make sure they smell good instead of combining them all in the same pot from the frozen state.

chips and cracks i won't use, but i can't really tell about the one in the picture. if it is only a surface blemish i would use it, but if it is a defect down into the glass i wouldn't.

They seem to be only on the surface. They might actually be safe to use, and I think I will use a couple and check to see if the “centipede” gets larger with use. (For sure if one gets larger it will be the last time I use it!)

I’m really fed up with Ball, but perhaps it’s the retailers’ fault in their handling methods. I mentioned returning half of the jars I got at Target. So yesterday I bought jars at Walmart instead. (One package of their store brand Mainstays and one package of Ball.) Got home and examined them prior to washing them and found that almost ALL of them, both brands, had the centipede marks. There were also 2-3 jars in both packages that had real actual chips or cracks, and a couple that had an air bubble on the surface that had an opening, so it was like a crack. Part of me thinks that since there were some actual cracks, that the package itself may have been dropped or banged around, and that might be the reason for so many centipede marks on the bottoms. All of them got stressed enough to make bottom marks, but not enough to make actual cracks, except for a few?

So, I drove back to Walmart and returned them, and asked the really friendly customer service woman if I could open some packages and examine them before I bought them. She said yes, and if I wanted them she could ring me up there without me having to go to a register. So I went and got the same ones again and sure enough, not only centipede marks, but also some actual damages. She said maybe they got in a bad batch and were all like that. Maybe I would have better luck at a different store.

Gee wiz! So I go to Meijer, and this time I decide I’m buying two of the same kind like I did at Target so that hopefully I can make one good package out of two bad ones, if necessary. Sure enough, one package has a jar with a crack down the rim, and that package had lots of centipede marks. And I was lucky, the other had 6 perfect jars! And 4 jars without centipedes, but with some questionable flaw type spots that I think are just cosmetic. Maybe that package was never dropped. I only had to keep two centipede jars, of which I chose the two with the smallest marks. That leaves 12 jars to return, and 3 different retailers with the same problem.

So I am fed up with Ball because this is a terrible quality control fail rate! I wish I could find other American made brands locally. I don’t dare order any to be shipped. (Sorry for the long rant guys. It just seems like this is something that should be discussed.)

 

[Finnie]

Oh, I got all distracted and didn’t post the photo I took of all 35 jars. You can see how the broth got lighter (right to left) the more I diluted the pot. I’m sure the lighter ones are still good broth, but not at all comparable to the earlier ones!

The 10 on the far right are from the suspect pot I believe, and a couple mixed. After that I started paying better attention to which jars were which.

 

[flowerbug]

wow, i'm sad for you for sure @Finnie to have that many be bad.

i don't think i've had any broken or cracked jars in new purchases, but from returns from giving things to people who didn't treat them well. chips can happen here at times. and i've had a few fail during processing but maybe at most two i can remember. that's out of many thousands.