Hi it’s Jennifer from Preppertidbits.
Let’s talk about why we can meat.
So anytime I talk to anybody about canned meat the two questions that i always get is.
“Why in the world would you can meat especially when you can just cook it fresh?” and “yeah it looks disgusting they probably taste disgusting right?” so let’s talk about that there are three reasons why we choose to can meat .
1. Storage
The first one is storage.Now we like to keep about six months to a year’s supply of food on hand at any given time and that’s a lot of meat to store.
We don’t have the freezer space for it and even if we did we’d have to have the cost of running that freezer for the entire year, and so storing it in jars is much more convenient.
2. Convenience
Now the second reason that we like to can meat is for convenience sake.
So we’ve all been there, you come in from a day of work and it’s five o’clock and the kids are hungry, husband’s hungry and you’re like I don’t want to cook, let’s just order pizza or open up a can of soup or something and if you guys have canned meet you guys can have really quick healthy meals available immediately.
You just open it up and dump it into any recipe, you can make tacos or Raghu or you can even open up a roast beef and just serve some mashed potatoes and some green beans with it and it’s a delicious healthy meal.
3. Savings
So the third reason that we like to can our food is for cost savings.
If you’re like us you don’t have the land to raise your own meat then you’re going to need to source it from somewhere else such as a grocery store or a local farm, but when you do that you’re at the mercy of their pricing.
However, these places usually do have sales we like to source ours from a local grass-fed beef farm, and twice a year they have a freezer sale and that’s the time that we stock up, so you can really get a lot of savings by buying in bulk during those sales.
Ok so the big question that i always get is “doesn’t it taste disgusting?” Look at this jar its meat floating in a vat of water and when i looked at this I said there’s no way I’m going to eat that, I put it in the same category as spam and thought it’s gotta taste disgusting and then one day I just got a bug up my butt to try it, and i could not have been more wrong about the quality of canned meat.
Now of course if you’re using poor meat to start with and you can poor meat, canning is not going to improve the taste of that but we use good quality meat and i can tell you that it tastes just like I made it an hour ago, and the roast beef that i can is absolutely fantastic it tastes like it just came out of the crock pot.
We usually pop open a jar like i said earlier, we make some mashed potatoes and some vegetables to go with it and that’s our dinner and it is fantastic.
So what kind of meats do we can? Well I can ground beef, usually 95/5, I can roast beef.
I can Italian sausage and i also can stew meat and chicken.
If you guys aren’t convinced already that you need to try canned meat let me just tell you how easy it is.
Now this isn’t meant to be a “how to can” article, so if you are interested in learning how to can meat you’re going to want to go to an authoritative site such as the National Center for Home Food Preservation.
That’s a website that I frequently use and I always go on there to check the canning times and the recipes, i’m gonna leave a link below so you guys can check that out if you haven’t already.
Ok so to can meat you’re going to need a pressure canner.
Now i use a 921 All-American pressure canner and I do use it on a glass cooktop.
There is some controversy as to whether or not you can do that.
I have had no issues with the glass cooktop cracking, I’m just very careful about slamming it down.
You also are going to need some pints and some quart jars for the ground beef and ground sausage.
You can use either standard or wide mouth but for roast beef you’re going to want to use the wide mouth to be able to get the meat in there in a big giant chunk.
And then you’re going to also want to keep in mind you’re going to need about one pint for every pound of meat you have and i found that you tend to go over that a little bit so make sure that you have some extra extra jars hang around.
You’re also going to need lids and rings and you’re going to need, for the ground beef you’re going to need a vat of boiling water or broth.
I just use boiling water.
And you’re going to want some salt for that.
To can ground meat all you need to do is to lightly brown the meat and then drain off any excess fat.Then you’re going to fill the jars leaving about a one inch head space, add some salt if you like and then you’re going to fill it up to the one inch mark with some water.
Wipe the rims, and then you can pressure can it at 10 psi for 75 minutes for pints and about 90 minutes for quarts, but make sure you follow your instructions based on your location and your canner.
Now for the roast beef you don’t need to brown the meat, you can if you want to but i don’t.
I like to make it easy on myself.
You will want to trim off all the fat though because the excess fat can make it difficult for the jars to seal.
I usually add a slice of onion to the bottom of each jar and then put a chunk of roast on top.
I usually add a pinch of salt and sometimes I had some other seasonings such as a steak seasoning.
And then a lot of people recommend you do not add water to a raw pack, but I found that the grass-fed beef tends to be pretty lean and doesn’t produce a lot of water so i will add a little bit of water and then I just can as usual.
It’s about 75 minutes for pints and 90 minutes for quarts at 10 psi.
It took me about three days to can almost a hundred pounds of meat most of that time is it just waiting for the canner to heat up, hour-and-a-half processing time and then waiting for the canner to cool back down again and starting the process all over.
So let me just go through what I got out of the meat that i purchased.
I purchased 10 pounds of Italian sausage and I got 13 and a half pints out of that, I got 40 pounds of 95/5 ground beef and I got 43 and a half pints out of that, and I had 48.
6 pounds of roast beef and I got 18 quarts and eight pints out of that so for a total of 98.
6 pounds of meat i got a hundred and one pints which is about 1 pint per pound.
Now for something like this which is ground beef i can easily make this feed four to six people if I incorporated this into a recipe such as a Cornish miner pastries or if I incorporated into like shepherd’s pie i can easily feed a lot of people with this even soup.
Something like this which is my canned roast.
If they were served as the main course that would only feed about two, two and a half people, but if you did, again incorporated this into a recipe like a meat pie you can easily make it go much further.
Also, if you guys are interested in knowing how to use your canned goods i’m going to be doing some articles in the future to show you how to use canned goods, i know that that is something that I struggled with in the beginning and i think i got it down by now so i’ll show you some of the recipes that i use.
If you guys are canning meat and have any tips or tricks feel free to leave them below and if you guys are new to canning meat or have any questions go ahead and leave those as well.
I’m by no means an expert on canning I’ve just been doing it for a while and i can certainly try and help out, and I’m sure the prepper community can also help you out as well, so go ahead join our newsletter and we’ll see you next time.