Canning Bacon and Sausage

I like to have a variety of foods in storage and having a selection of canned meats appeals to me.  While thinking about what kinds of meat to can, I decided that bacon or sausage are two I would like to have on hand.

There are several YouTube videos out there showing how people can strips of bacon by wrapping them in parchment paper before putting them into jars.  I have never tried this, so I can't attest to the success or failure of this method.  I buy the boxes of bacon ends and pieces.  Usually there are some nice slices included and those I package and freeze for future use.  There are usually some good sized chunks of lean bacon and some of those I will freeze for later use in canning pork and beans.   The rest I slice into about one-inch pieces and fry them until lightly browned and then drain, saving the bacon grease, and pack the bacon bits into half pint jars.  Wipe the rims of the jars well, add a lid and ring and process in a pressure canner for 75 minutes.

Bacon canned this way has lots of uses.  I like eggs scrambled with bacon pieces and cheese.  They can be used as bacon bits on a green salad.  They can be sprinkled on scalloped potatoes for extra flavor.  They can be used in one of those breakfast casseroles.  The possibilities are endless.  And the bacon grease keeps nearly forever in the fridge or freezer.  I use the grease in biscuits, cornbread, for frying potatoes, etc.  I consider the bacon grease a bonus.

Sausage is canned basically the same way.  I brown it like you would hamburger for sloppy joes and then drain it.  It is packed into jars and pressure canned same as the bacon.  Sausage canned this way can be used anywhere one would use sausage crumbles.  I use it the same as the bacon bits and have added it to spaghetti sauce or tomato based casseroles.  It is really handy to have for biscuits and sausage gravy.  It makes a nice change of pace and just another variety of meat to have on hand.  I have heard of some who can sausage patties by browning them, packing them into wide mouth pint jars, covering with broth and processing in the pressure canner.  I have not tried this, but I think I might experiment with it and see how I like sausage canned that way.

We hear people talk all the time about storing rice and beans.  I store rice and beans, too.  But a diet of rice and beans would get old in a hurry without a variety of additions to make them more palatable especially over a long period of time.  Canning bacon and sausage is just one way to make life a bit better in a lengthy shelter in place situation.

Quick and Easy Home Canned Meals

I am not a gourmet cook.  I am a plain cook.  About once a week I fix meals that are favorites from my childhood - fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, beef slow roasted with potatoes, carrots and onions all in the same pot, pork chops stuffed with sage dressing, Swiss steak (assuming I can still afford round steak).

The rest of the time I cook because a body needs fuel.  I have a lot of interests aside from cooking.  I sew, quilt, crochet, scrapbook, read, etc.  If I am in the middle of sewing together the pieces of a patchwork quilt, I don't want to take the time to cook a fancy meal.  If my kitchen table is covered with scrapbooking paper, photographs, glue, scissors, paper punches, and all the other supplies I use to make scrapbook pages or mini scrapbook albums, I want to quickly satisfy my hunger and continue cutting and gluing and creating.  You will never see photos of artfully arranged meals on this blog.  That just doesn't happen in my world.

What does happen in my world is the opening of a jar, the dumping of the contents into a pot, the heating on the stove and the eating, all done with as little fuss and bother as possible.  I know that I can't be the only person on the face of the earth who hasn't either the time or the inclination to spend hours cooking, so here are some of the meals in a jar that are a staple of my pantry shelves.

Chicken/Turkey Soup

I buy turkey or chicken on sale.  The birds are cut up into pieces to fit into my stew pots, covered with water and boiled until the meat is falling off the bone tender.  Sometimes I will roast a turkey, have a meal or two and then use the rest for making soup, boiling the carcass to make broth.  When the meat is cool enough to handle, it is removed from the bones and cut into approximately one-inch pieces.  The jars are filled 1/3 full of meat pieces, adding cut up vegetables (potatoes, carrots, peas, green beans, celery - whatever you like)  to within one inch of the top of the jar.  Pour in broth to cover the vegetables.  Remove the air bubbles, wipe the rims, add a lid and ring.  Process in a pressure canner (meat and vegetables must be pressure canned), 75 minutes for pints and 90 minutes for quarts.

I think I use this soup more than any other.  When I can it, I do not add salt or any other seasonings.  Nor do I add onions.  Instead I season the soup and add dehydrated onion when I heat it.  It can be eaten just as a soup with crackers or cornbread.  It can be thickened and spooned over biscuits as a stew.  It can be heated with the addition of dumplings.  Sometimes I toss in a little rice for turkey rice soup, or a little more rice for a turkey, vegetable and rice dish.  There are lots of possibilities.

These are some of the other meals in a jar that I can on a regular basis:

Vegetable Soup
Vegetable Beef Soup
Split Pea and Ham Soup
Ham and Bean Soup
Chili
Beef Stew Mix (The browned beef cubes and cut up vegetables are canned together.  Seasonings and thickening are added when heating for a meal.  This is especially good over biscuits.)

I suppose I could save time by just buying soup, stew and chili at the grocery store.  But I would rather spend a few days canning these meals and have them ready in my pantry.  I know what has gone into them and they taste so much better than commercially canned soups.  I don't know if I save much money-wise, as I have to buy the ingredients.  If I could have a garden, the savings would be far better.   But to me, it is still worth it.

The blessings of abundance (a link)

I've had a blog post idea rolling around in the back of my mind for a while.  But this morning I read a post by Patrice over at "Rural Revolution" that says what I would like to have said, only she says it better than I ever could.  For those who are into preparing and food storage and especially for those who don't think they need to prepare or store food, it is an excellent read.  Here is the link.

Walk for Autism

Today my oldest daughter Jill and my grandson Zach are at the Mall of America, participating in a walk that raises money for the Autism Speaks organization.  Looks like the day started out well, if this photo is any indication.

I am so very proud of Zach and his parents.  I can't be with them today, but I am cheering them on all the same.

Zach is so smart and talented and funny.  And he gives great hugs.  I just love being Zach's grandma.

Happiness...

is finding a forgotten bag of strawberries in the bottom of the freezer.

A small bowl of strawberries for dessert this evening.
Strawberry muffins for breakfast tomorrow.
Strawberry syrup over pancakes the next day.

Life is good.

Venison Stew

It's that time of year.  The leaves are changing color and starting to drop from the trees.  The nights are cooler - good sleeping weather.  Now that the rain has stopped falling, at least for now, the daylight hours are more pleasant with even a little sunshine now and then.

It is the time of year that I start craving homemade soups and stews.  I treated myself to a venison stew a couple of days ago.  I don't often get venison.  Not like I did when I lived in the north woods and had hunters still living at home.  So venison is a treat for me.

I had one jar of canned venison left on the shelf.  A couple of years ago I had canned potato cubes, carrot chunks and peas together in quart jars.  Into the pot they all went.  Tossed in some chopped onion and some beef broth along with seasonings.  Let it simmer on the back burner for about an hour.  Put a pan of biscuits in the oven and thickened the stew a bit.  The result was a meal fit for a king.

Last evening I heated up the leftover stew.  Can't recall what else I was doing at the time, but the stew stayed in the pan longer than it should have without being stirred.  Sure enough.  It was scorched.  I am not good at multi-tasking.

I don't like to waste anything, so I dished up the scorched stew over the leftover biscuits anyway.  It was delicious.

You just can't wreck a good venison stew, no matter how hard you try.

Noooooo! Not Yet!

Youngest son works for a landscaping company.  They do lawn care in the summer, among other things, and they plow snow in the winter.  David needs to keep track of the weather in order to know what his crews will be doing on any given day.  They can't do much of their outside work in the rain.  When the summer temperatures soar, David knows it is time to take large coolers of Gatorade around to the workers.  He needs to know how much winter snowfall is expected in order to schedule the plowing crews.  So he gets daily weather reports.  Sometimes he shares them on Facebook.  Like this one today.

"Turning cloudy and very windy behind a very strong cold front this morning. Highs will only reach the upper 40s. Light rain showers likely this evening with possible snow mixing in late evening into early tomorrow morning. Cloudy and still cold tomorrow with a high in the upper 40s. Mostly cloudy and warmer Sunday with a high in the lower 50s."

You want me?  I'll be right over there in my recliner, cup of hot chocolate on the table next to me, Kindle in hand, covered chin to toes in my big green fuzzy blanket.

No, I do not want to talk about the Great Minnesota Halloween Blizzard of 1991.