Tuesday evening Oldest Son stopped at the store on his way home from work and bought a little over 25 pounds of beef roast that is on sale. I spent the evening removing fat and gristle from the roasts, cutting them into about one inch cubes, bagging it up and storing it in the fridge.
Wednesday afternoon my grocery delivery included another 15 pounds of beef. Cleaned and cut into cubes, that also went into the fridge.
Early this morning I started filling pint jars with beef cubes. When canning raw meat I rarely use water or broth in the jars. The meat makes its own juices during the canning process. Some like to add salt at this point, but I don't. I season the meat when I use it, and if I use bouillon as flavoring in a dish, that contains enough salt.
Because the meat is cold when I pack it into jars, I take time to get the canner up to pressure. Too much heat applied too quickly can crack jars, so I will usually take 45 minutes to an hour to heat it up. After venting the canner for ten minutes, the pints are processed at 10 lbs. pressure for 75 minutes. Quarts would take 90 minutes. (Canner pressure varies according to elevation.)
I wound up with 38 pints of cubed beef.
I really like having canned beef on my shelves. It has so many uses. I have canned quarts of potatoes, carrots and peas together and combined with the canned beef, a pint of tomatoes and a bit of dehydrated onion and seasonings, makes a wonderful beef stew. Just needs to be thickened and ladled over biscuits. I also use it in a gravy over rice, potatoes or noodles. Made into a sandwich and served with mashed potatoes and gravy, it makes a really good restaurant style hot beef sandwich. It can be added to home canned vegetable soup or mashed up with a little pickle, mayo and onion for a sandwich spread. Or it can just be heated in the oven along with home canned potatoes and carrots for a quick meal. The uses for home canned beef are limited only by one's imagination.
While the beef is processing, it is on to the carrots.
Early Thanksgiving
9 minutes ago
Gee, you're making me hungry! lol
ReplyDeleteNot just you, Gorges. :) I gotta stop and have some lunch. Just realized I got busy and forgot about breakfast!
ReplyDeleteA lot of great suggestions for using canned beef. One of the local community grocers has London Broil for $2.99 a pound and I plan on picking up a some and canning it for future use. Like you said it only takes a little bit of imagination and planning and you can prepare an unlimited amount of meals from it.
ReplyDeleteOn a day like today, a hot beef sandwich sounds really good. Duane
ReplyDeleteJim...Living alone, I can get at least two meals from one pint of beef - more if I make stew, soup, etc. Even with the higher prices here, it is well worth it for me. At a minimum, the 38 pints I canned today translates into at least 2 1/2 months worth of suppers for me. That really helps my years supply for food storage. Good for you in finding the sale on London Broil. I doubt food prices will go down and it just makes sense to can up what we find on sale.
ReplyDeleteDuane...I have one jar that didn't seal. Come over for supper when you get off work tomorrow and I think I might be persuaded to make hot beef sandwiches. :)
ReplyDeleteGreat examples of the versatility of canned foods, especially the ones you can yourself to your own specifications. Thank you for the explanation about cold pack canning, Vicki. We have always cooked the meat first. I appreciate reading a different technique from someone that has experience doing it.
ReplyDeleteFern
Fern...You are welcome. I prefer the ease of just cutting meat to the size I like, filling the jars and canning it without bothering with pre-cooking. I do pre-cook chicken and turkey in order to easily debone it and can that with liquid, and I like the bonus of broth created when cooking the meat that I can as well. I do brown hamburger, diced bacon and bulk sausage, but can those without liquid. I tried canning hamburger using liquid, but it turned out resembling bad dog food from a can. :) I think that's what I finally used it for - dog food!
ReplyDeleteI buy big cans of canned beef and chicken. It costs way too much, but it's really the only way I can store it, other than some dried meat like hams.
ReplyDeleteHarry...Canned beef and chicken, whether you buy it or can it yourself, is a really good addition to food storage. I'm lucky in that my son now lives close and is willing to shop for me, as well as using the grocery delivery service. That makes life a lot easier. I only keep what meat I will use in a month or so in my freezer. Should I lose power, I would have to can it all up anyway before it thawed and went bad, so canning to start with makes sense for me.
ReplyDeleteWe bought beef, pork, chicken, and no ground turkey this month. Scored 2 turkeys @$1.03 a lb for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Looking to add a fat ham for Christmas. Middle son asked if we wanted some ground beef, as his GF is getting 1/4 cow from her mom. I said yes so fast my wife said wait what??
ReplyDeleteRob...Sounds like you are doing well in the meat department. That was a really good price on turkeys. I haven't bought any ground beef for a while...not at nearly $5 a pound at Cub. Things seem to be going downhill at an incredible rate of speed. I am putting as much as I can each month into preps while I still can.
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