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.

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)