Canned meat has always sounded unappetizing to me, for some reason. I guess I think about those little cans of potted meat and it reminds me of dog food. Some people like it, but I've never been a big fan. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. We decided, in an effort to diversify, to can some meat and put it up in the pantry. In the event of a disaster, we could lose everything in the freezer if the power went out for an extended period of time.
Since our cows gave us heifers two years ago, we didn't have any bull calves to bring to the slaughterhouse and our inventory in the freezer is running low. So Tricia drove to Elliott's Slaughterhouse in Morse, Louisiana (where we bring our beef for butchering) and she bought some fresh ground meat - twenty pounds of it. She put it in a big pot (14 pounds of it) and cooked it.
She cooked it all down, after adding salt. I won't show this. Everyone knows how to cook ground meat. For canning, they recommend that you drain off as much of the fat as you can.
As the meat cooked, we washed the jars, rings and lids.
When the meat was cooked, we used canning funnels to load the pint jars with meat.
We filled them up to the top and pressed it down a little.
We added a little boiling broth or water to cover.
Then we put half of the jars into the pressure canner, adding water and a tablespoon of vinegar .
Let the steam go out the top pipe for ten minutes and them put the weight on the top. We did ten pounds of weight. The pressure valve will pop out.
The top weight will begin to rock. That's when you start your timer. We pressure canned it for 75 minutes. When the time is up, we turn off the stove and move the pressure canner off the heat until the pressure falls. You are not to open the lid until the pressure falls.
We cool them off and then will label them and stack them in the pantry.
It's good to have a little food stacked away. Meat canned this way has a shelf life of 2 to 5 years.
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