Canning qustions

[Sawyer Rob]

Stuff roll in a pint jar. We get 4 servings per pint.

I use to spend a LOT of time in the Alaskan bush, I ALWAYS took cans of bacon with me, most grocery stores carried it.

It was just plain GREAT to have around to add flavor to what ever I was cooking and left me some brease to cook with.

Open the can, and pull out the bacon rolled up in parchment paper...

SR

 

[dirt ditch]

Guys, this is a great thread. Love seeing how other folks do it. In our family I'm just the gofer while My wife is the canner. About 30 years ago she learned the art of canning vegetables from my grandmother but she had never canned meat. A couple years ago, in a nearby town, the community collage put on a Saturday "hands on" canning class where she learned how to can meat safely using a pressure cooker. My wife says it was well worth the cost of the class. Now she has two pressure cookers, her fathers Presto pressure canner and a 921 All American pressure canner.

Bird, your jackrabbit sausage story reminds me of my grandfather who's family did not have much when he was growing up. To survive, grandpa would shoot rabbits with his single shot .22, clean and skin the rabbits giving his mother the meat for meals and tan the hides to sell for more .22 shells. He said they ate a lot of rabbit but it got them through some really tough times.

 

[Gunny]

I don't know about jackrabbit sausage, but our family canned a lot of pork sausage when I was growing up. The ladies cooked up the sausage patties outside over kerosene stoves, then packed the patties pretty tightly into quart jars, then filled the jars with the grease from the sausages. Since we slaughtered six hogs every year, there was plenty of lard on hand to make up any shortages from the sausage cooking. They canned the sausage to save on freezer space and back then we didn't really like the sausage as much when it was frozen.

Good stuff to have on hand, just warmed it up to make a quick meal or an after school snack, since we always had plenty of biscuits left over from breakfast and there were plenty of times where I was so hungry I just scraped the lard off and ate them cold. We didn't have microwaves back then and I thought it took too long for the electric range to warm them up in a cast iron skillet

 

[teejk]

I use to spend a LOT of time in the Alaskan bush, I ALWAYS took cans of bacon with me, most grocery stores carried it.

It was just plain GREAT to have around to add flavor to what ever I was cooking and left me some brease to cook with.

Open the can, and pull out the bacon rolled up in parchment paper...

SR

Years ago we fished a big lake (about 30mi x 30 mi) in northern Sask. The sweet spot was a large bay all away across the lake and we really had no idea how the big lake was behaving until we left. On one of the return trips we encountered waves too big for the 28' boat and had to break-into a trapper's cabin where we found enough canned food to eat with our boiled northern pike (our host knew the guy and made it right and even got a key for the padlock so we didn't have to break anything to get in the next time). All that was before anybody started putting "expiration" or "use by" dates on anything and I'm sure some of that stuff was old. A friend of mine uses those dates as a rule to toss stuff. I laugh at him...I inspect the container for rust or other signs of possible air leakage...if I find none I open it and then use that thing in the middle of my face above my mouth.