I like to have a variety of home canned meat on my shelves. The one that I ran out of a while back was ham. I have used the boneless hams for canning in years past, but have not been completely satisfied with it. I'm not sure why. It tastes just fine. Maybe it is because when cubed and canned, the cubes remain very firm. Silly reason, I suppose, but there it is.
So I asked Son to bring home six hams from the grocery for canning. Last evening I cut the meat from the bones. I purposely left some meat on the bones and froze them for future use in making ham and bean soup. This morning I cut the larger pieces to fit into wide mouth pint jars. The rest I cut into about one-inch pieces and packed them into the small mouth pints. I don't add liquid to the jars as the canning process creates enough liquid in the jars. They are processed for 75 minutes at 10 lbs. pressure. I wound up with 42 pints of ham.
The larger pieces will be heated and used for meals, the same as if I were baking a ham. The smaller bits are good for ham salad sandwiches, mixed into scrambled eggs or in scalloped potato dishes. I think the uses for this ham is limited only by a person's imagination.
And now I think I am done canning meat for this year. It has taken some time, but I finally have enough canned to last at least a year, which was my goal.
The Medicinal Uses of Sunshine
18 minutes ago
Congratulations! The eating part should be much easier. lol
ReplyDeleteThanks, Gorges...Yep. The eating part is always the best part!
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine down the road was doing the same thing yesterday. Interesting. Maybe that should tell me something.....
ReplyDeleteFern
Fern...Sometimes there are coincidences - sometimes not. :)
ReplyDeleteCanning ham is a little spendy, but I really like having choices when it comes to meat. I can ham for two reasons. Right now there are two of us (my son and myself) and later on there will be just me. A pint of ham is just right for two and good for one with leftovers for sandwiches. The second reason is should I lose power for whatever reason and for whatever length of time, I don't need to worry about it thawing and going bad. And if you take into consideration that the bones from six hams will make lots of ham and beans to can as well, it seems worth it to me.
Bean and ham soup?? oh its been years since Ive had any. We eat cubed ham on salads, eggs, and mac n cheese. Now I'm hungry.
ReplyDeleteRob...I make ham and bean soup every once in a while. There are so many uses for the ham cubes, which is why I like to have some on my shelves.
ReplyDeleteVicki, I left a comment but I don't think I was logged on so it didn't take.
ReplyDeleteWhat I wanted to say was that ham is a good food to have stored. It goes with everything, has lots of protein, and it's something that's good for your peace of mind.
Harry...Ham is one of my favorites. If I weren't so strapped for storage space I would probably can another batch of it. As it is, I'm going to have to ration what I have.
ReplyDelete