Potatoes - Batch 1

These will be fantastic for potato salad, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, and stew!

Did about a 10 lb bag of potatoes last night, it was kind of a pain in the butt. I parboiled them, which, after some research, I think is unnecessary. The potatoes in my beef stew came out fine without being parboiled, but of course, they processed for 90 mins. I followed the directions at Pick Your Own and the 10 lb bag yielded 7 quarts and 3 pints. I had my first broken jar, which made me a little sad. I did not peel them, since I love potato peels and peeling is just more work. I also didn't add any salt, I figure I can season them when I use them.

Cubed, I processed for 40 mins at 11 lbs (gauged) quarts, and 35 mins at 10 lbs (weighted pints)

Plan for batch 2 - no parboiling.

The big canner came, finally!

But, sadly, I'm not super impressed. I'm a little too particular about the pressure gauge being precise so I hover around it. I think I'll be getting the weighted ones from now on. It's less stressful having the sleepy sound of the pressure weight. :) Perhaps my opinion will change once I get used to it, and once I'm canning 16 pints at a time, heh.

So, we packed up 5 quarts of cooked turkey, 4 quarts, 1 pint of turkey broth - that was one batch using both of the canners :D Then while those were going, we cut up another 7 lbs of chuck roast and packed it away... seems like we should have gotten more than 2 quarts and 1 pint out of it, but oh well.

We had some of the beef I did the other night, and OMG, it was yummy! 2 pints of beef, 2 cups of stock into gravy just served over mashed potatoes. Some leftovers, but probably not enough for a whole meal for everyone, probably just "after work" munching.

My broth is out of the small canner, the beef is in. Still waiting on the quarts of turkey meat.

Raw Pack Beef

Because the meat in my stew was a tad skimpy, I thought I might as well have some pints of plain beef on hand as well. 7 pints of beef! :)

1 lb cubed beef (we cut it pretty small and got just a bit under a pound in each pint jar.)
1/2 tbsp montreal steak seasoning (could use boullion, too)

Processing at 10 lbs for 75 mins.

Reactions to first batch: I think we packed them a little full again, I had a bit of juice escape. There are some references online that say it wasn't the packing, but the cooling...will make sure to be patient before I pull the weight off! All seems solid and sealed, though.

2nd batch: Yup, it seems that it was my impatience that was causing the loss of broth, and probably not the lack of headspace. This will all go much quicker when I have more than one canner going!

Beef Stew

Made 12 quarts of Beef Stew!!

Per Quart:

1/2 lb stew meat
1/4 cup cut up baby carrots
3/4 cup potatoes
1/6 (ish) onion
1 clove garlic
1/2 tsp beef bullion
1 peppercorn

10 lbs pressure for 90 minutes.

To make dinner for my family of 7, thinking add another pint of canned beef, and use a quart of stock to cook some barley in to add. Thicken with cornstarch.

Edit: I wasn't fond of the way the carrots infused *everything* so heavily. Add them frozen, or pre-cooked later, and the amount of meat was kind of skimpy. There also was only a smidge of liquid in the jars, I'm thinking that a half cup of meat doesn't make that much broth, lol!

I used 2 quarts of the mixture, a cup of barley cooked in a quart of broth, a can of corn, about 1 1/2 cups each frozen peas and beans, and a can of diced tomatoes. Sprinkled with dried basil. It was tasty, but not the best.

Plan for next time:

1 cup beef
1 tbsp bullion (or montreal steak seasoning)
fill rest of quart jar with potatoes (likely about 1 1/2 cups)