PORK UNDER PRESSURE
18 years of serving in the Young Women’s organization, twice as ward president, helping all four of my older girls achieve their goals, and I never HAD TIME to complete my own Personal Progress. D*U*M*B, D*U*M*B, DUMB DUMB DUMB! (Card family cheer)
But I’m working on it now, with my 13 year old, and it’s a great experience. My 10 hour project for Knowledge has been to learn how to pressure can meat.
!!!
Last Saturday I bought about 30 pounds of boneless pork spare ribs, from Costco. (Side note: DO NOT GO TO COSTCO THE SATURDAY BEFORE MOTHER’S DAY. EVER.)
My plan is to have all the lovely bottles of precooked pork ready and waiting on the shelf when it’s time to serve my version of Cafe Rio sweet pork to the masses.
I also bought seven roasted chickens because they seemed to be even cheaper than than the fresh whole chickens, and needed much less cooking.
(So many things to do with canned chicken.)
The next step was to boil the pork. This took about an hour and a half because there was a ton meat.
I also decided to speed boil the roasted chickens. A dip in the bubbly made the meat fall off the bones, plus I needed the chicken broth. My dear friend, Linda taught me that it’s a super good idea to purchase a fresh pair of rubber gloves so that I could handle all this meat while it was still steaming hot. Linda also suggested that the meat be prepared ahead of time so that it could chill in the fridge, at least overnight, making it much easier to skim off the extra fat from the broth.
On Monday I went to Linda’s house for the actual processing. She’s such a great mentor and always a riot. After quickly reheating the meat and broth we added 1 teaspoon of salt to each jar and packed the meat into the bottles. Linda was amazed, even shocked, at how well I could pack in the food. Years of practise.
Then we slid a…skinny…spatula thing down the sides of each bottle setting free hidden air bubbles, topped it off with hot broth, added the lids, screwed on the rims, and loaded the pressure canner. Each batch of 7 quarts took about 90 minutes to process.
So now I finally know how to do what I’ve always considered to be an awesome trick! And believe me, I’m going to feel pretty dang tricky about 6 weeks from now when I’m hosting 50 friends and family for dinner prior to Rosie leaving on her mission to Arizona. It’s GREAT to know that all that shredded pork (oh my) for the Cafe Rio salads is ready to go and only needs to be heated with salsa and brown sugar added. I love having it preserved in bottles because the meat is not taking up all the space in my freezer. It means I still have room to store the 35 cups of black beans, and piles of cilantro rice, and whatever else I need to buy.
Work is work. But for me, and my crazy schedule, it just works better to do as much as I can ahead of time. Hey, can anyone direct me to some great instructions on pressure canning dried beans? With pictures? Please?
Thanks friends!
Tags: pressure canning, so worth the work, tender like no other
May 11th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Canning roasted chicken is brilliant! Do you have to add 1 tsp of salt to the quart size jars before processing or was the seasoning on the chicken enough?
May 12th, 2010 at 8:38 am
I wondered about that too Angela, but after the boiling, adding loads of water to the roasting spices, we went ahead and added the salt to each bottle. So happy you liked the idea!
May 12th, 2010 at 8:52 am
May I ask why you boiled/cooked the meat prior to bottling it? I know that it can be packed raw/uncooked so I’m just curious why the extra step of cooking it first? xoxo
May 12th, 2010 at 10:55 am
Liesa:
I sure would like to have your recipe for the Cafe Rio Sweet Pork. Also, what a great Idea for use roasted chicken. So Smart!
May 12th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Kristine, Linda told me to cook the meat first. (She thinks she’s the boss of me.) But I asked her the same question and she said that cooking the meat first means you won’t have so much shrinkage, which means lots more meat in each bottle, and oooooh sooooo tender.
May 12th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Hey Connie! The very best collection I’ve discovered for all the Cafe Rio salad recipes is easily found if you Google: Erica’s Complete Cafe Rio Sweet Pork Salad. I think the site is http//favfamilyrecipes.blogspot.com
I’ve tried all of Erica’s salad recipes and thought that she’s totally nailed each and every delightful detail, BUT I’m just not a Coke or Dr. Pepper fan…and I’m sort of lazy. There may be a connection. Anywho, Linda served me a sweet pork burrito while we were waiting for our bottles of pork to process, and her recipe was terrific. All she does is mix equal parts of any cheap jarred salsa or picante sauce with brown sugar and heats it with the drained pork chunks, which incidentally, are totally falling apart in the first few stirs. Give it a shot and see what you think.
May 12th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Here’s what I used for canning beans.
http://thebeginningfarmerswife.blogspot.com/2007/11/canning-pinto-beans_30.html
I recently canned chicken breast too, but I put it in the jars raw. It did shrink a lot, so that’s good to know for future reference. Also, a pint jar holds a pound of meat, so even though I felt like I bought a ton of chicken, I only got 9 pints…
May 12th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Thank you Brooke. The link you shared is great. I want to try her method for canning pinto beans.
Good to know that Linda wasn’t lieing to me about the shrinkage issue. I figured that I was able to pack each quart bottle with 2.7 pounds of meat. Not bad!
May 13th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Goggling the recipe title just gave me a bunch of garbage links. I found the direct link, though, on the favfamily Top 20 list: http://www.favfamilyrecipes.com/2007/11/jared-and-i-love-cafe-rio.html
I haven’t pressure canned meat myself yet, but every time I visit my parents I convince them to give me several jars of chicken, pork, venison, and beef. The beef and venison are so handy for last minute soup, and the chicken is good for everything! I got a pressure canner for my birthday a few years ago specifically because I wanted to can meat–I need to just do it!
P.S. I’m still going to try the bread recipe in the solar oven, but we’ve had really icky weather for the last few weeks and I’ve not had a chance.
May 13th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
You da bomb.com Elizabeth! Thanks for the link info. I just barely learned how to use the arrows on my keyboard. srsly
May 13th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
I love to can meats, stews, etc. It’s so nice to have all that ready-to-go stuff on a busy day. One year I found a post St.Patrick’s deal on corned beef and canned up a bunch. It was super tender (of course!) and it make the traditional corned beef/cabbage/potatoes meal something we could make in half an hour.
With pre-cooked meats like that roasted chicken, y’all make sure you’re not adding any flour or other starches. (Like, don’t try to can fried chicken, and read the label to make sure there is no flour in the ’seasoning’.) The wrong starches in the jar can prevent the heat from penetrating the contents of the jar adequately. That can allow botulism to grow, and that can kill you. Srsly.
May 14th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Good to know Laura! Thanks as always for your expert advice.
May 19th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Liesa, you inspired me and now I have 10 pints of chicken all cooked and ready to eat and enough to do 10 more! Thank you
May 20th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
I can all types of meat all the time. Yes the meat does shrink when done raw but has a much better flavor and texture of the meat, especially chicken. Precooking the meat and then canning in jars changes the flavor some how and is not as good.
Doing chicken raw packed tastes more like chicken from a can that you buy at a store, plus the liquid it produces is chicken broth that can be used in a recipe.
I don’t can any other way except for raw pack, just for the flavor alone. Unless we are killing chicken and I cook them first just to debone, but I don’t care for the texture and flavor.
May 21st, 2010 at 9:41 am
Congratulations on the ten pints of chicken, Kris! We need to experiment with canning beef next. Always somethin’
May 21st, 2010 at 9:43 am
Really interesting perspective Chris. Thanks for sharing your experience. I want to try the raw packed method like you’ve suggested. Do you have instructions for us?
May 26th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Liesa….
I AM the boss of you (in my mind). Let’s just leave it that way, ok?
It was so fun having you up, and you for sure get the blue ribbon for shoving that much meat into one bottle!! You rock, and I love you a ton.
Thanks for inspiring me!
May 26th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!
But can you take me and my friends to the mall?