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.