Canning Chicken for Cost Savings

Canning Meat is a Money Saver

Wild venison is delicious canned!

Courtesy of Southern Foodways Alliance

Canning Chicken

One of the problems with chicken is that you get the best deals when you buy a lot of it. I personally don’t eat chicken by the ten-pack, and I don't appreciate the texture of chicken that’s been frozen for awhile.

Canning chicken is an excellent solution to this problem from both an economic and gastronomic perspective. Canning is better than freezing because there’s no frostbite, it doesn’t require electricity (which can be considered a cost), and it lasts even longer than frozen chicken. All these factors make canning chicken a great way to keep the costs of eating low.

Canning chicken is not difficult if you follow a few simple rules. First, make sure all your utensils and cutting surfaces are very clean. Second, make sure you follow your own pressure canners' directions.

Third, have a sense of humor about it! Sometimes your first few tries at canning meats end up with some unsealed jars and some weird problems. A little practice is all you need to get those kinks out.

Once you’ve prepared your canner and sterilized your jars and lids, you’re ready to start canning meat! Chicken is canned pre-cooked, which you can accomplish by boiling cut up chunks of chicken either in water or a concentrated broth to give it some more flavor.

Once the chicken chunks are cooked to the point where the centers of the chunks are no longer pink, pack them loosely into your hot, clean jars, leaving about 1¼ inches of space at the top.

Pour boiling broth slowly into the jars, letting it fill the spaces in the chicken chunks, until the chicken is barely covered. You should still have about 1¼ inches of headspace.

That was the hard part of canning chicken! Now just follow your canners' directions and cooking times for perfect canned chicken! A typical canner might suggest 10 pounds pressure, with 60-75 minutes of cooking time for chicken without the bone, but the time and psi may change depending on your altitude.

roland

Canning Venison

If you’ve got a friend who hunts or some other way to access deer meat, canning venison is an excellent way to preserve what can be an overwhelming quantity of meat. You want very lean meat when you’re canning, and you of course need to remove the bones and fat.

Put cut up chunks of deer meat in a pan and add enough water to boil. You may make this broth with the bones, removing them before you add the meat to the jars. Cook until all pink is gone.

Put a teaspoon of salt into each clean warm jar to season and help remove any gamey taste. Add the chunks and cover with the broth the meat was cooked in.

You should leave about one inch of space in the top of the jars either way. Venison is canned at 10 pounds pressure, (240 degrees F) typically for 90 minutes if you use a quart jar.

Courtesy of Debs

Canning Meat

Canning meats is a great way to take advantage of a sale at your grocery store, or to deal with a large hunted animal. When you’re thinking about canning venison, remember that the meat that you can will be very tender no matter the age of the deer, so this is a good solution for tough meat.

Fresh chicken tastes much better from the chicken you buy at the store, and it’s something that most people have never experienced. When you plan your meat canning endeavors, consider whether the meat you’re planning to can would be served well by the canning process.

Courtesy of roland

Besides chicken and venison, there are a few other meats you should consider canning if you ever run into them. For example, most of the game meats you might encounter, including moose, caribou, elk, buffalo and even reindeer, can be canned for preservation, since you certainly can’t eat one of these animals in its entirety.

At the grocery store, if you ever see beef or pork in large quantities on sale, these make great snack meats when canned. The process is basically the same for all these meats, with only variations in the filler liquid if you’re not packing raw, so you’re already on your way to great canned meat!

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Canning Chicken to Frugal Living

Canning Chicken to Canning Food