Finally! The Canning Meat Thread

SD51555

5 year old buck +
After much boasting, I have done an end to end photo journal of how I can meat. Understand this recipe is designed to be simple enough to do while enjoying the spirits of the weekend. This recipe is also designed to leave your meat with a neutral yet delicious flavor that you can customize on the consumption end to meet your needs whether it be chili, lasagna, meat & gravy, omelets, tacos, stuffed peppers, stroganoff, alfredo, etc. The mechanics of it is the same for any meat, whether it be venison, chicken, pork, or beef.

Here we go!

Ingredients:

*Meat
*Canning salt
*Onions, minced
*Hot chick

There are no measurements. In true homesteader fashion, you do it by feel.

Step one, cut up your meat. It helps if your meat is about 3/4 frozen. It will cut like snow with a good cleaver.
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Once you have your mostly still frozen meat cut up, mix a drink and allow it to thaw a while. This is necessary so the meat will pack better in the jars.
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Once your meat has thawed out completely, or at least enough that it's "doughy," you can begin packing your sanitized jars with raw meat. Just meat.
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After you've PACKED (mashed that raw meat in as tight as you could, leaving a headspace about equal to the neck of your regular mouth jar) your jars, it's time to add "about" a spoonful of fresh minced onion.
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After you've added your onion, the last ingredient is some canning salt. There is no measurement for this. Maybe a half tablespoon, give or take depending on preference. I'm a fan, so I go a tad heavy.
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I skipped a few steps in here as far as pictures go, but here's the notes after I added the salt:

*wipe your jar rims clean
*warm your lids in hot/not boiling water
*fix your lids and bands onto your jars. This is a subjective step. You want them snug enough they don't blow out all their juice, but not so tight that your lids buckle because they cannot allow the air to escape during canning. My best description is a good snug. It's all about compression of the rubber ring on the lid.
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Time to load them into the pressure cooker (or pressure canner, same thing). Because I had 9 pints, 6 are on the lower level in about 2 inches of water, then what you see below is the second tier with the other three jars. The middle jar is actually an end of a rib roast. That one got set aside for Becky's first jar of canned meat.
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Seal up your canner and get it roaring. For pints, you have to process them for 75 minutes at 15lbs of pressure. It takes my canner about a half hour to get to pressure, and about a half hour to come down after the 75 minutes.
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****Meat must be pressure canned. You CANNOT safely water-bath can meat. The pressure allows you to get the temps up high enough to kill all bacteria in your meat. This is the temp needed to make it shelf stable.

Once you've met your processing time, turned off your heat, and your pressure has equalized with the outside pressure, you can open your canner and remove your jars. They are going to be very hot and still boiling. Be very careful as you take them out because if you drop one, you'll never be allowed to sunburn your feet again.
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Set your jars on a towel and space them apart as much as you can to enable cooling. It doesn't have to be huge, but let em breathe from one another.
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You're done. Take a peak at the remaining chemistry as it happens and sit back and relax and wait to hear your jars start popping indicating you've succeeded!
 
I'm missing two ingredients. No fresh venison for now.

And as for the other ingredient, at age 60, should I just have two drinks??;)

Thanks for posting. I need to try it!
 
Thats cool to see! Down here in the south I have never heard of anyone doing this.Actually, I have never even heard of it except a few times on this forum.
 
After you run it through the pressure cooker, it's shelf stable and ready to eat. All you have to do is warm it up (optional) and eat. I like canning stuff like this precisely for this reason. I can get home after a 10-12hr day at work, pop open a jar of something like this and be eating as soon as the rest of the meal is good to go. Typically, I will make a huge kettle of mashed potatoes on a sunday and keep it in the fridge for a few days and eat that over the course of the week.

You can do anything with it.
-Put it in a sausepan and whip up some corn starch and water and make gravy out of it. Pour over mashed potatoes.
-Use as meat in your omelet
-Make beef stew
-Taco meat
-Add to alfredo and noodles
-Stroganof
-Add to any hotdish
-Let your imagination run wild.

What comes out of that jar is simply the most moist and tender tasting beef roast you'll ever have. This method is meant to leave you with a blank slate of how to use at the time of consumption. When you cook under pressure, you pulverize the connective tissues in the meat that make it "tough." No amount of care, prep, and ingredients can match the power of pressure cooking when it comes to tenderness.
 
Great thread SD! We(my mom mostly) sub 50/50 canning salt and beef bullion powder and go heavy on them as you said. We also do half of the jars with 2 or 3 garlic cloves in each jar and half without(plain). For anyone who has not tried this stuff, get on the stick! What are you waiting for? Looks bad, tastes great. And it's easy too!
 
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I'm missing two ingredients. No fresh venison for now.

And as for the other ingredient, at age 60, should I just have two drinks??;)

Thanks for posting. I need to try it!
I don't have any venison either, and it's not looking good that I will this year as well. I just used a couple larger beef chuck roasts for this project. The beauty of canning is that you can use lesser quality cuts of meat and elevate them to highly desired end products when they hit the table.

Yes, you can substitute a second drink. But you'll have to do more of the canning work yourself.
 
My mother used to do this all the time. The only difference was that she would add about 4 peppercorns and a clove of garlic to the seasoning. I have not done it or had any canned venison in many years. Maybe it's time to do it again.
 
Thanks for posting this SD. I hope to have to find this thread after firearm season :D

I've never made canned venison before, but I've eaten it....and it is some awfully doggone good stuff.

huntall...give it a try, I don't think you'll be disappointed. Warm it up and pour it over some buttered biscuits for breakfast....damn...now I'm hungry
I was happy to do it. This is one of my recent causes. I know too many people that don't know how to use their venison. They'll have it made into something they think they'll enjoy, and it ends up sitting in the freezer until next season and eventually getting tossed. My hope is that I can help folks raise the value of their venison and use it. May no meat ever be thrown away again.
 
My mother used to do this all the time. The only difference was that she would add about 4 peppercorns and a clove of garlic to the seasoning. I have not done it or had any canned venison in many years. Maybe it's time to do it again.
That sounds delicious! I kept the ingredients simple for this post for that reason. There are endless tangents you can take when canning when it comes to how you season and what else you put in. I've started making my own soups and stews as well. It's great to be able to come home, pop a lid, and get a whole meal outta one jar in the time it takes to warm it up, vs picking up fast food.
 
Absolutely. Venison takes me a little longer because I really go over the meat to get rid of fat, silver skin, tendons and what not. If you can get it down to just meat, it should work out well.
 
Thanks for sharing! I watched my cousins canning venison for a little while last year. They did 3 deer fairly quickly.
 
If you want to get fancy, take a packet of dry Lipton onion soup break it into four servings and add one to each quart. Makes the best venison over buttered noodles I have ever eaten. Add your salt and onion the same as before.
 
Thanks for sharing! I watched my cousins canning venison for a little while last year. They did 3 deer fairly quickly.
That's another big reason I like preparing mine this way. It's fast, cheap, and easy. Once you have your jars and canner, all you need is a lid that is about 25 cents, about 2 cents worth of salt, and any other desired seasoning. If you've never done it, you'd be blown away at how much meat fits in a pint jar. When I did chicken, I had 12 boneless breasts. I got nearly all 12 into 2 quart jars. I had about an extra third of a jar left, so I made two jars of chicken soup.

When you compare to making anything where you add another meat and a pre-fab spice blend, it can add $2-$6/lb to the cost of processing your venison. This way is less than 30 cents/lb. You can get about one pound per pint.
 
Great thread SD. Thanks for sharing the info. I miss eating the canned sausages that my grandmother made when I was a kid. Guess I will have to try it myself someday since I still have the old cooker.
 
Thanks for posting, at 55+ I'll have to sub the HOT CHICK for a HOT WIFE. All I need now is the meat.
 
I wonder if a guy doesn't can those pieces whole? Then you could pull them apart after the fact?
 
When I was in my teens & early 20's, my mother & I would can venison that my Dad or I shot. We just put salt in the jars - no other seasoning. Open the jar & brown the chunks in a little shortening in a cast iron pan. Excellent, tender eating. Good way to use the " non-prime " cuts if not made into burger or sausage. Not hard either.
 
Great thread. Thanks for taking the time to post.

Can I ask what is the shelf life of the meat once canned?
 
Our venison never made it a year !!! Cast iron pan of browned ( canned ) venison, 2nd iron skillet of home fried spuds & onions, some good baked beans, home-made applesauce and a fresh apple pie......... many a good supper from canned venison! It never got much of a " shelf life " at our place. ;) :)
 
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