GRANNY'S KITCHEN: Home Canned Tomatoes

First of all, I want you to notice my new canning pot!  I was at a kitchen outlet store in Branson, and bought this 30qt Hamilton Beach stainless steel pot.  It holds 11 quart jars!!  I only have ten here, because that's all the tomatoes I had. How wonderful to get my ten jars done at once instead of in two batches!!  I used to have 2 old porcelain water bath canners, but I wore both of them out -- they sprung leaks in them.
Anyway, this should last quite a while!  It is nice and thick.  For the inside, I put one of my cookie cooling racks. It works fine, although now I will have to buy a new one for my cookies!  I always pour a bit of vinegar in my canner so that the lime doesn't build up on my jars (we have very hard water here, and if you don't do that, the jars come out WHITE because of the lime -- whoever said it takes millions of years for those limestone formations to form in caves has never been to Missouri!!). Anyway, the vinegar was hard on my cooling rack, and rusted it out.  Wonder if I could find some stainless cooling racks??

One gal at the shop where I bought my new pot said that she just puts a towel in the bottom of the pan! I may have to try this. It is just boiling the towel, which won't hurt a thing. And the towel will keep the jars off the bottom of the pan. I should have done that rather than ruin my cooling rack!

Also notice that I DID can on my electric glass stove. It did work. It just seems to take a while to get the water boiling. I know they say not to use pots that much bigger than the burner, but what's a gal supposed to do when there's tomatoes to be put up??!!

I was short on time, so I did not cook my tomatoes down like I normally do.  I blanched them in order to slip the skins off, then put them in my electric dutch oven to heat up.  I washed up my jars and filled them with the hot tomatoes and added 1/2 tsp canning salt to each quart jar. I then put in my new canner and boiled for 35 minutes.  That's all there was to canning tomatoes.  They are prettier if you cook them down first. If I have enough tomatoes to do another batch, I'll make a post on that method.

GRANNY'S KITCHEN: Strawberry Jam

I tell you, it is amazing that strawberries are so affordable when everything else is almost not!
Aldi's has been fluctuating between .89 - .99 /box (quart) of strawberries, depending on the week.

I bought a flat and made jam. YUMMY.  It is almost gone already.. but I have another flat of berries waiting for me to put up into more jam.



The recipe I used is simple:
1. Mash strawberries with a 'tater smasher' until you have 5 cups mashed berries.
2. Put in cooking pot and add a box of pectin.
3. Bring to a boil.
4. Let it boil steadily for a minute then pour in 7 cups sugar.
5. Bring back to a boil and skim the foam off the top. (I put this in a bowl for those who want to sample it).
6. Jar it up and process for 5 minutes in Boiling Water Bath.

I have no idea when or why I started doing this, as I used to never BWB my jellies (or pickles for that matter).  But I did sterilize my jars by boiling them before using them for canning. Now I just make sure they are clean by rinsing in hot water (cold jars break if you pour hot jelly into them), then put my hot lids on and drop in the boiling water bath.  I figure it doesn't matter if I boil my jars before or after I put the jam in them -- and it doesn't seem to hurt the quality of the jam by putting in the BWB.  *A bonus is that it is a bit easier on the fingers to fill a jar that has just been rinsed off rather than get the jar out of the boiling water to use.

GRANNY'S KITCHEN: Corned Beef and Cabbage

 Every year for St. Patrick's Day, I make a huge pot of Corned Beef and Cabbage, then can up a pressure load to have for easy meals through out the year.
This year, I worked on St. Patrick's day, so I did this on the day after.  Also, I decided I didn't want to can the meat at night, when I was full of food and tired, SO, I put the briskets in my roasting oven the night before!  Here are the 7 briskets cooked up in the roaster -- it takes about 1 brisket per quart jar. Cover with water to cook.







I pulled out one brisket at a time and laid the fat side down on a plate. Then cubed the meat down to the fat.  Then I used tongs to pick up the meat and put in the hot, clean jars.  The fat, for the most part, stayed on the plate unless I cut too far.

 I put the fat pieces into another bowl to make a yummy snackie for the pups. :o)









Here you can see my canner on the stove. I usually use regular sized lids for corned beef, although last year I filled a couple wide mouth jars with larger pieces of corned beef. That was good, too, but this easier, I think. Fill the jars with meat, then add the cooking water to 1/2 inch from the top.
Look at the cool silicon funnel my mother bought me!  It 'collapses' down flat for easy storage in a drawer.
Put hot lids and rings on the jars, then pressure for an hour and a half.

And here are the completed jars. YUMMY!  I love to open a jar of corned beef and eat it.  It tastes just as good then as it does on St. Patrick's Day!!

After I canned up my 7 briskets for a pressure load, I added a couple briskets, cabbage, potatoes, onions, and carrots to cook the rest of the day for dinner.  My canning was done BEFORE midnight!  I like doing it this way.

GRANNY'S KITCHEN: Canning Bacon

 I could not believe my luck when I found bacon on sale at Ramey's. They had a 10# box of bacon on sale for $15! 

Our family LOVES Yoder's Bacon, so I thought I'd give it a try. 

 The Yoder's Bacon comes in a regular sized can and seems to contain the equivalent of 3 # of bacon per little can.  You slide out the parchment paper, unfold it and have about 3 layers of yummy bacon to heat and serve. 

Shooting for that scenario, I laid my bacon out on full sized parchment sheets to fold in half and roll up.  I was thinking large mouth pints (equivalent to Yoder's can), but ended up with large mouth quarts.  Wish I had enough large mouth 1 1/2 pint jars: that would be PERFECT for this project.

 Folded and half and squeezed down into the jar, my parchment paper stuck up a bit, so I just pushed it all down into the jar.

I have no idea how Yoder's gets all that bacon in their cans!!  I was able to get approximately 1# of bacon per quart jar (as opposed to their seemingly 3# per pint jar!! -- I tell you, well worth the price, especially if you love camping!!).

Anyway, this will be so much more worth it because of the great sale price I found!  When this box is complete, I hope they still have some more, so I can do it again!!  This will be soo handy to have camping -- no need to have bacon taking up cooler space! Maybe I'll take my egg powder to make scrambled eggs instead of fresh eggs, too -- save cooler space PLUS, Nicolas only eats scrambled eggs anyway.. maybe he won't notice the difference. LOL

 I decided that I didn't like squishing the parchment paper down into the jars, so for the next jar, I cut the parchment to fit.  The parchment pieces I used were about 6x38.. and that seemed to work just fine!

Rather than folding the bacon, I decided to cut it, too.  Yes, I used scissors!  Worked just fine.

Here are my cuts bacon pieces ready to roll up.  So I just rolled up and put in the jars.  There is space around the bacon in the jars because I couldn't get more in than the size of the lid opening. If I could find more 1 1/2 pints, they are tapered -- the jar is the same size as the wide mouth opening. I'll see what I can come up with.  

 I put a little extra water in the canner because I almost ran dry when I made my liver the other day.  My jars floated -- probably because of all the air space.  If I didn't let my weight on the canner giggle so much, I wouldn't lose as much water.  I do NOT recommend having floating jars -- it could cause them to break.

Cook at 10# pressure for 90 minutes.

 Here are the jars fresh from the canner.  Luckily, I had no broken jars.  They have all sealed and look wonderful!  There is a layer of fat which congeals when cooled.  There is also some 'bacon broth' under the layer of fat, which I think will make a yummy breakfast gravy!

GRANNY'S KITCHEN: Home Canned Liver

With all that liver that Mark brought home (a little bonus from the man he's working for) I had to think of something to do with it. I made a BIG batch of liver and onions and still have over half the liver left.
SO, I decided to can it for easy meals later when I don't have time to cook.
I cubed the liver and did a quick stir fried in oil until the pieces were brown, but not completely cooked. I did not add any seasoning while cooking because I added salt to the jars.
I put the liver in pint jars, added 1/2 teaspoon un-iodized (canning) and a scant 1/4 cup boiling water.  After wiping the rims of the jars, I put hot flats and rings on and put in the canner. I pressure canned my jars for 1 hour 15 minutes at 10# pressure.
I ended up with 9 pints of canned liver.

I floured the liver before frying and putting in the last jar.  The recipe just said to fry a bit before canning and I wasn't sure if you rolled in flour (which I always do before frying) or not.  So I only did one jar with flour. It looks good, but is the only jar that seeped out.  And it looks more mushy rather than the cubes in the other jars.  I guess I'll see how it tastes one of these days if it doesn't go bad. But I am glad to have some more 'food storage'.