Cold Pack

Well, I'm not quite done with the beef yet; I brought home a tub of meat to can.  Canned meat is what we call "cold pack."  When we were cutting up the meat for hamburger we saved out the better pieces, which are cut into chunks, and canned in glass jars.  You use the pressure cooker to can the jars--each batch takes a couple of hours.  When it is finished, you have meat that you can store on a shelf and is pre-cooked, rather than taking up space in the freezer.  We can deer meat in this way too.  When I butchered my chickens in November, I canned all the meat from them in this way as well.  It is so handy to be able to just grab a jar and dump it in a pot and just heat it up since it has already been cooked.  It is perfect for things like noodles and soup.  It makes the meat so tender.  When I did the deer meat, I added garlic to each jar to give it a nice flavor.  This time, with the beef, I put a slice of onion in the bottom of each jar then added a dash of salt and pepper.  It is going to be so tasty!

We like to pack our meat in wide mouth pint jars.  (Jill I'm using some of the lids and rings you gave me--thanks!)

Eight pints will fit in one load.  During the summer I do most of my canning on an outdoor propane stove so I can get more than one pressure cooker going at once.  I wish I could do that now since meat takes so long to cook, but it's way too cold out for that!  Since I can only fit one pressure cooker on our stovetop at once, I just have to do one batch at a time.

First batch is cooking.  Looks like the stove says 6:19 (PM).

Two batches finished.  Last one is in the canner.  It's going to be finished about 12:30 (am).  I definitely inherited my father's "night owl" gene; I'm constantly starting projects in the evening that keep me up very late.  It would be fine if I didn't have to get up so early everyday! (and tomorrow is a 6am yoga day. . .)