Bottling food

[Tengu]

I was given a tenner, and went shopping for food to take on holiday with me.

Asda do a lot of tinned stuff, chicken supreme, spagbolog, beef stew, sort of thing.

I can heat these up and cook some quick cook rice or pasta, this is what I eat normally.

But of course I dont use convenience food, I make my own dishes in bulk, and freeze them in microwavable pans.

I keep very few tins (aside from baked beans and a few luxuries in store I dont buy tinned food.)

You will appreciate I have a lot of freezer space for just one person, in fact I have two freezers!

Electricity isnt cheap, realisticaly I need to cut out one freezer...you need space for bargains you may find, but a lot of my space is taken up, lets face it, by my home made ready meals.

Is it possible to store these dishes by bottling? I have a book on home bottling, and have been given a few kilner jars (now used to store dry goods!) but to be truthful, have little delight in creating home made versions of tinned veg (aside from baked beans, a product I have a distaste for) I suppose its fine in a glut, but I use the freezer.

if I could bottle ready meals I could get rid of the auxillary freezer, (an old thing that no doubt uses more energy than a new) you can get jars from B&Q (kilner clone, real kilner jars are not cheap, though they last years)

 

[British Red]

Depends what you mean by Kilner jars there Tengu - if you mean the sprung loaded glass jobs with a rubber seal, I wouldn't try it. Definitely not for meat (although they are fine for some veg, pickles chutneys etc.).

Meat can be preserved by bottling, but not that way - you need a pressure canner. The basic reason is that in high acid foods, the acid prevents the growth of botulism, in low acid foods, you need to kill it. Sadly botulism can survive 100C so no amount of boiling will kill it - it needs to be heated over that temperature in a pressure cooker and then not exposed to air - so pressure canning is the way to go. Not cheap to set up but very possible at home

Red

 

[Paddywacker]

Speaking of pressure canning, isn't that what the people used in the show ALASKA - The Final Frontier (Discovery Channel). They canned their caught Salmon.

 

[Tengu]

so how do i begin canning?

 

[Toddy]

It's not common here, but in parts of America it's a big part of the seasonal round. Why not have a look for some American home maker cooking sites and see what sort of recipes they recommend.

I have to confess to preserving jam and pickles and syrups, sometimes whole fruits, but that's it.
I dry lots of stuff and keep a well filled (read jammed packed full) pantry, but to can meaty dishes wouldn't even occur to me. British Red's right on about the botulism problems.

Just had another thought, Eric Methven is / was into the survivalism stuff, did he not post a while back about canning links? Maybe the survivilism sites might know more too.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[British Red]

so how do i begin canning?

Get hold of a copy of the "Balls Blue Book" which is the canning bible

Wares of Knutsford sell the jars etc. Not cheap to get going sadly but virtually free when you are set up

Red

 

[spamel]

Why not jerk meat, or salt cure it? Maybe get some salami on the go. Smoke some food by making a home made smoker. Just a few more ideas for you to consider.

 

[Tengu]

Thats good but it wont make ready meals

I fond this

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html

 

[spamel]

Oooh, I dunno. Sliced salami with a hunk of crusty buttered bread, some cheese and a nice glass of port is a pretty decent meal!

 

[Eric_Methven]

That's a good link. However, you do need Kilner jars with the two part metal lids. DON'T use te glass lidded ones with the rubber sealing disk. They are fine for fruit and tomato sauces but NEVER for meats.

You'll need a pressure cooker that has a 12lb weight. Most modern ones have a 5lb weight, and that just won't take the heat up high enough to kill the botulism spores.

Also you can't really mix meat and veg and tatties in a single jar like you would to make a true ready meal. All the separate ingredients have different cooking times, so they would have to be canned separately. Opening 3 jars just to get a meal for one will be wasteful.

I'd suggest canning (bottling) meat only and cooking up your veg and tatties fresh. The convenience ready meals (defrost and microwave then eat) is a fairly modern concept only available since the deep freezer and microwave oven became commonplace. No other method lends itself readily to such quick convenience.

Eric

 

[fishy1]

I have a question about pressure cooking: Do you seal the cans than heat them to over 100C in a pressure canner?

If this is the case, surely you could avoid the need for a pressure canner by simply using something like glycerol or veg oil to heat up the cans with? Or do botulism spores need high pressures to kill them? If so, then the high pressure would be generated inside the can anyways. And is thier not a possibility of exploding the cans? As if heating the cans up, the liquid inside would boil?

 

[thesalvager]

I have a cajun friend in South Louisiana that got caught up in Hurricane Katrina. She told me that apart from actual human and animal bodies and sewage from cess pits contaminating any available water,thawed and decaying meat from freezers and fridges was adding to their problems. The only available food was either bottled or canned food that could be washed off. As a result she and others have gone back to preserving food in this more traditional way as have I . Last year ,I bottled close on 3 or 4 hundred jars last year of the standards such as green beans,beets,soups etcas well as fruits in syrup and eau de vie. i also have dozens of jars of dill pickles which are great for livening up boring food. the french here bottle a lot of meats such as pate and rillettes and i never met anyone that got sick from it. These same products are sold commercially in the same jars as are classics such as Duck a l'orange etc. Before storage but after sterilisation they unclamp the cooled jar and test the lid for good seal . if it comes open it gets eaten straight away if not it gets reclamped and stored somewhere cool. If you are in france on holiday and want a cheap stock of these jars ,look up a Depot Vente in ther local phone book . These nearly always have hundreds of second hand jars for 30 to 50 cents apiece. new rubber seals can be bought in bulk packs in most french supermarkets. the old country women pride themselves on their preserved foodstuffs which look great in a big old larder. I just ate a jar of two year old beans and the were crisp and tasty.