Canning Turkey Stock

If you're like we are, you have a turkey carcass left over from yesterday's feast.   Yum!   We've got ours boiling in a big pot and later today I'll can the stock for later use in our favorite soups.

Here's the page from the National Center for Home Preservation:  http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_05/stock_broth.html

This is how it works:  Make your stock with the bones [bone broth is very good for you - hence the tradition of feeding chicken soup to the ill.]  Boil it all well, with seasonings or without.   Skim the fat if you like, then put it into jars and can with a pressure canner.  20 minutes at 10 lbs for pints, 25 minutes for quarts at 0-1000 ft altitude.   Go to the link for info on other altitudes.

Canned Carrots

I've been reading Hickery Holler Farm's blog and she cans *everything*.  She said to watch the sales and fill up those emptying jars with cheap winter produce.   Carrots are super cheap this time of year.   We've been getting 5 lb bags of carrots for a couple of dollars at Sam's.

I thought it would be a good idea to can some up to see if we'd use them that way through the year.    You know, to dump in soups, or for glazed carrots [instead of sweet potatoes], and in carrot cake.

Since carrots are a low acid food, I used the pressure canner to can them.    As you know, I'm just getting to know my canner.  Slowly.   Only a couple of things each year, mostly tomasqua and pumpkin.  Last year I used it for green beans, too.  I am happy to say that I'm slowly getting the hang of it. 

My goal this year is to do a few jars of new things so I can get really comfortable with the pressure canner. 

Basically the process is this:

• Fill up the jars and put them in the canner.
• Add a couple of inches of water to the bottom of the canner.
• Close the lid tightly and heat to boil [9 on my stove]
•  Let vent for 10 minutes then put jiggler on. [10 lbs for carrots]
• When the jiggler makes noise start the timer [25 minutes for pints of carrots] and you can drop the temp down to medium/high [6.5-7].  It should jiggle once a minute or more.
• When the processing is done, turn the temp off and leave everything alone until completely cool.   Don't touch the jiggler. 
• When completely cool, open the canner, wash the jars and you're done. 

It sounds complicated but it's not bad.   I keep a little list of instructions close by and the more often I do it, the more natural it seems.  It's worth it to be able to can squash and carrots and beans.

Note:   Pressure canning is not something I can do in very large quantities.   I get the best results [no siphoning] when I do enough for only one canner load a day.   Things siphon when I try to move things along too fast or take the jiggler off right away, etc.    If I just do one load and leave it to cool overnight, then I have very little siphoning, and that makes for happy food and a happy canner. 

Putting Up Squash

I canned my squash harvest this year against FDA recommendations.   Here's the FDA page if you want to look at it.  They don't even want you to can it with a pressure canner.

Note:  The FDA has recommendations for canning meat here.  

So, just to be clear, the FDA does think it's safe to pressure can meat, but not pumpkin.

[Eyebrow raised.]

I pressure canned my squash anyway.    I roasted it, did not puree it, packed it in quart jars, and filled it up with water leaving an inch headspace.   Then I processed it at 10 pounds of pressure for 80 minutes - just what the book for my canner recommended.  It's an old book that came with my canner, lo those many years ago when my mom bought it.

Note:   The processing called for on the FDA meat page link above, for raw chicken with bones is 10 pounds of pressure for 75 minutes.   Raw.  Chicken. 

I think I'm safe.

If I had an extra freezer, I'd freeze it but freezer space is at a premium.

Also,  things get lost in the freezer.  They go in and are never seen again, like agents going into the Escher Vault in Warehouse 13.    Mysterious dark forces are at work in there.   I just know it.  

Also, freezers are vulnerable to power outages.  It's a bad feeling knowing that the contents of your freezer are slowly thawing out and that every time you open it to try to use some up before it goes bad you're just hastening the inevitable.

So,  I'm trying to can more and freeze less.   Or at least freeze only things that I can easily and safely bottle up in a water bath canner over an open fire if I had to --- like fruit.  

UPDATE:  All of that pumpkin was delicious.   A current search [3/25/14] shows that the USDA now says it's perfectly fine to pressure can pumpkin in cubes now: http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_04/pumpkin_winter_squash.html
After you process them, they often fall apart and look just like puree.

Pumpkin Harvest

It's time to bring the pumpkins in and process them for cooking.  Yay!    Pumpkin!

We managed to grow a few small ones this year that the squash bugs didn't get.    I got another, larger one from a market, too so I could play around with pumpkin/squash soup recipes and so we could put some up.

There are a couple of ways to process pumpkin for use in pies and soups.   You can bake it, or you can steam it.  I like to steam it because it's faster.  

First cut it in half.    This was an excellent, meaty pumpkin.  Not many seeds, but a lot of flesh.   Perfect for pies and soup.  

Scrape out the seeds.   Don't worry about getting all the stringy things out.  Just get the seeds out.

Cut the pumpkin into wedges or strips.  Then peel each strip with a vegetable peeler. 

Cut each peeled strip into chunks.   They can be big chunks, but not huge ones. 

Steam the chunks until they are soft.   You should be able to put a fork in them easily.   They might begin to fall apart - that's OK. 

I use a little steamer basket that opens up to fit across the entire bottom of this big pot.  Then I load the pot to the top with pumpkin chunks. They'll cook down a bit as they steam.

Turn the heat on high enough to get a hard boil.  Once it's boiling well, you can cover the pot and turn the heat down.    It only took me about 20 minutes to steam a big pot full.    [I had two pots worth of pumpkin chunks.]


Once the pumpkin is good and cooked, I put it in a bowl and mash it up a bit with a potato masher before it goes in the blender.   

My blender is happier that way.  


I filled it to the tippy top.   Then I turned on puree to get...

....this lovely pumpkin puree. 


Now it's ready to use in pie or soup or pumpkin butter or whatever else your heart desires.  

We used ours in soup and in pumpkin pancakes.   Yum.

Long term storage:   Pumpkin is dense and low acid.   If you want to bottle it up keep in your cupboard, then make sure you use your pressure canner.     If you don't want to mess with the pressure canner, then you can freeze the puree until you're ready to use it.  

Big Blue

Yeah, OK.   It's not blue.

It is big.  Big and scary.

Meet my 22 quart Mirro pressure canner.   It's a miracle. 

It's been sitting on my dining room floor for months.    Waiting for me to have the courage to figure out how to use it.  I have wanted one for ages and then inherited this one from someone who was moving.   [Thank you!!]   I got a new gasket and jiggler for it.  Now I just have to figure out how to can with it.

I've done boiling water bath [BWB] canning before.     I've done steamer canning before.

I've never done pressure canning before.   Rumor has it that they can explode.

We're not thrilled about that.

But the thing is that if I learn how to use this, we can actually can chicken stock safely.    This is a big deal.   If we have an extended power outage and our freezer goes, we'll lose all of the food that we can't bottle safely, namely Meat.

It would be good if I could put up meat.  So, I'm motivated to learn how to use this.    Maybe this week....

Or next week....