Canning

Last night I boiled the turkey carcass, with celery, onion, garlic, herbs, and everything else. Strained and put the liquid in the fridge. Well, it's gelatinous when cold. Okay for canning? I made turkey noodle soup tonight with some of the gelatin at a ratio of 1:1 with water.

I am sure it will can very well.  Ask Plantoid, he cans stock.

I generally freeze my stock as I seldom keep it long enough to justify the labour of canning.  Anyway, I have run out of cans for now until I begin eating what I have canned this year.

I have the second carcass on the stove now. Yes, I can freeze, but the freezer is pretty full now, what between what we eat, the worms eat and will go into a compost pile.

sanderson wrote:Last night I boiled the turkey carcass, with celery, onion, garlic, herbs, and everything else.  Strained and put the liquid in the fridge.  Well, it's gelatinous when cold.  Okay for canning?  I made turkey noodle soup tonight with some of the gelatin at a ratio of 1:1 with water.

Yes OK for canning  so long as you get the fat off it .  Re-boil it to get it hot & liquid and then pour it hot in the jars , wipe the edges etc and pressure can as normal .

 Ours does not revert to jelly  after canning ..it might be the coolness of your refrigerator .


Herbs in canned products soon lose their flavour and aroma. The celery , onion , garlic ( carrots are good , I'd say  essential to make the stock ).

Celery, onion and carrot are often referred to as the holy trinity in cooking up stocks .

 We have purchased a roll of mutton cloth and are making up a small bag of herbs  as needed ,then slipping it in the stock in the pan and then gently simmering for six minutes  it once its boiled .

I'd made a big batch of delicious Po  beef soup stock .. you fair floated in to the kitchen on the mouthwatering smell and drooled  down your front after the first taste , before you managed to get the next spoonful to your lips . .
 Sadly that state of affairs only lasted a couple of months then the flavour and scents declined .. that's when I did a bit of reading about not putting herbs or too much salt  in the product being canned but to add them as bouquet -garni when you boil it back up .

 We had the last PO beef soup a few days ago , again using the bouquet garni /spice booster .. pleased to report all bowls were licked clean and put back in the cupboard in short order .

I took up home pressure canning to give us a food path to follow  for when we get prolonged power cuts that may destroy the freezer contents .

Plantoid, what happens to the fat when canning if it is not discarded?  I know that some of the stock I put in the freezer has some fat in it and it does not seem to hurt.

Kelejan, the fat in canned broth can (eventually) turn rancid, especially since it's not in the freezer.  So it's definitely best to get out as much as possible.

After canning, ours does not jell again either.

Thanks for all the comments. After refrigerating the first batch, it was jello and I couldn't find the top layer of fat I normally find when I don't cook it down so much. My daughter makes beef broth and cooks it for many hours until it is gelatinous when refrigerated. Part of a health diet.

AtlantaMarie wrote:Kelejan, the fat in canned broth can (eventually) turn rancid, especially since it's not in the freezer.  So it's definitely best to get out as much as possible.

After canning, ours does not jell again either.

Thank you, Marie. Learn something new every day on this site. Doesn't mean to say I remember though. But I try.

I bought myself a 16 quart presto canner for Christmas.  I already have a 23 quart canner but have never used it because it is just too big for my operation.  Once I get the hang of the canning, and make sure it works for us, I may then start caning alot.  I plan to try canning carrots tonight or tomorrow.  There is a recipe in the Ball Blue Book that is for Glazed Carrots.  I would like to try cooking that tonight to see what it tastes like before canning a lot of jars.  

Question - The recipe calls for Brown Sugar, Water and orange juice.  But it does not say whether dark or light brown sugar.  What do you suggest ????  If a recipe calls for Brown Sugar, do they normally mean dark brown or light brown.  I have both dark brown and light brown on hand.  They are both about 8 years old.  Can you tell I don't do much fancy cooking.

Yolos, I would use the lighty brown if the recipe doesn't specify. And sometimes old brown sugar will get hard dark brown pieces/balls in it. Matters more for baking, but you might want to get fresh! lol

I had to buy new baking soda this Christmas, it was gross! I bake infrequently, and when I do I want it to be really good and trouble free!

The carrots sound wonderful! I plan to take a canning class this year.

I have a piece of unglazed terra cotta that's meant to get soaked in water until it's absorbed however much water it will retain and then placed into your bag of dark or light brown sugar in order to keep it from getting clumpy. Works like a charm. i only have one of those doohikies so I just sprinkle some water into the bags that don't have one every so often. Works like a charm. No need to throw the "old" sugar away; it's not bad, just dried out.

Oh, and I'd use the light but maybe your taste buds would prefer the dark. Take a few grains of each and taste them separately and see which is best for you.

Thanks for your help ladies.  I made a small test batch for dinner and it was pretty good.  I used my old light brown sugar.  It was not even hard.  I guess it is our humid climate.  Hopefully I will try my hand at canning carrots tomorrow.  I already cut up the carrots and washed the jars and lids and made a small amount of glaze to put in one jar.

Kelejan wrote:Plantoid, what happens to the fat when canning if it is not discarded?  I know that some of the stock I put in the freezer has some fat in it and it does not seem to hurt.

 All the liquids that go in our canning jars are put through a fat separator jug, there is very very little fat in the cleaned liquid .
 Sometimes I pour off all the liquid through a sieve to get the veg & meat off the liquid , pour over some more boiling water  to rinse off a bit more fat then when the stock is cold put it in the freezer in big open plastic bowls.
It's not long before the fat is solid and easily strained off through a fine kitchen sieve.
  I've taken to boiling up all the cleaned stock before putting it in newly hot water dish washing machine cleaned  then pressure canning it as it helps keep th canning times down.

Like others have said  any tiny globs of fat start to take on a rancid taste after six months orr so .

Taking the time to clean the stock like I do  stretches this time period to a year for Turkey stock , a year for chicken or beef stock , 6 months for pork /gammon or mutton based .

Christmas Eve saw us having fresh made stew type  veg soup using the last jar of our turkey stock that was made 4 Jan 2015 there was no trace of the smell of rancid turkey fsat nor any  tide mark rings of fat around the jar top ends.

We had the delight of having a seven pound goose for our Christmas day lunch ( the first time ever we have had it as well )    , followed the recipe & method to the letter .. carved it to perfection with my Sabattier chef's carving knife following a chef's carving instruction.


Hmmmm ......... it was like cutting an old car tyre with a cricket/ baseball bat . YUK! , tasting of a nothing in particular  vulcanised chewing gum .BLEK! never again .

 I think it died of old age , very very old age rather than a dose of 1/4 inch lead shot , " Ttough & tasteless " are just some of the words that come to mind to describe it..

Anyway , not wanting to confess to having spent £ 30 ( $ 45 .00 USD ) on it for it to end up deep in a compost heap I decided to make goose stock in the"  AAPC "  .
So it ended up being surrounded by carrots , onions , celery & a teaspoon of seasoning salt then pressure cooked it for 45 min at 15 psi in 8 pints of water.
 I spent most of yesterday popping in & out the kitchen  stripping & straining everything ending up with a pound of usable tasteless meat & seven pints of stock . Over night the stock had jellied in the 3 oC fridge temperature .
 Any remaining fat was scraped off with ease using a serving spoon . After giving it a quick whisk up with the egg whisk the stock returned to an easy pour-able liquid ,

 Later to day the stock will get reboiled for six min , poured into  Weck jars and pressure caned @ 15 psi .for 20 min or so ( I guess I'll need to have a quick read again for a timing .)
 

My only problem is that I can't find any sensible goose stock based soups or other uses for the stock on the Internet other than a Po Soup  recipe that uses raw goose meat .

 Have any of you  souped your goose ? If so can you let me have the recipe please before I try and make a sweet chilli goose stock soup  etc. etc. for I've found over time that some ideas for soups are just " Oh so wrong on many counts "  .

Thanks for that explanation, Plantoid, about the fat in stock.  I am assuming that I have  not had any rancidity due to the fact that so far my stock has been used to make soup with a fairly short time period.

In future I will remember to clean the fat from stock if I can any for longer term storage.

I actually pour mine thru paper towels a couple of times.  That really seems to get everything out, including grease.  But I also chill it to make sure and scrape if necessary.

Okay, just need a little more help.  I tested pressure canning one jar of carrots.  Everything worked just fine EXCEPT I forgot to remove the air bubbles.  But it did not look like I lost any fluid in the jar so I think it is okay.  I can't find out why you have to remove the air bubbles before putting on the lids.  I will definitely remember it next time.  I highlighted that step in my notes.

It appears there was no siphoning, the jar lid just popped down, there is plenty of liquid in the jar, so I guess I did not hurt anything this time by accidentally skipping that step.

Yolos ,
 I too pondered the air bubble thing..

I came up with the idea that reasons are that the bubble of air ( being an insulator )  will not necessarily be as high a temperature as the liquid in the jar because it does not conduct heat exactly the same so in theory the bit by the bubble could be not properly canned at the right temperature thus rendering the jar contents unsafe as we do not add all the chemicals used in commercial canning to combat  air bubbles in the contents ..

 Second thought I had is  ,
We are nearly always told to have a liquid up to a set head space, m I suspect that this is to ensure that all the contents are actually below the water line .
So that there are no air pockets directly against the main product being canned . I'm guessing that any such air pockets could contain enough sterile  oxygen gas in them which  might also lead to off flavours .  For  as the jar cools and the contents go under vacuum the bubble will expand/stretch thus bringing more of the product in contact with the air bubble

 Despite reading many pressure  canning books , none of the above  is in them  there and like you say  " There appears to be no reason for removing the air space but all the books say remove them " .

 M final thought was could it just be done for cosmetic appearances of the end product .. Possible but not as likely ?.

Thanks for your response Plantoid.  I just canned the rest of my pint jars of carrots and this time I remembered to get the air bubbles out.  I can now join the pressure canning community.

Don't forget to use a Sarpie permanent marker pen to write the date  & batch number & perhaps a recipe book page number on the throw away lid . ( I use super sticky self stick labels on my reusable glass lids )

 There is nothing more annoying to find you have made a great batch of stuff , only to realise you don't know how old it is nor do you remember where you got that fantastic recipe from .

 We have started to  keep all our canning recipes pressure or HWB'd  (  copied , printed or typed up)  and put them in heat sealed envelopes. Then  keeping them in page number order as we get them  in a big clip file at least I have a chance of repeating a good  batch ..   Same with our homemade  sausages etc.etc.

I've just put something like , " Why do we have to remove air bubbles from the jar when pressure canning ? "  into Google

Here's what the National Center for Home Food Preservation says:

Do I really need to leave a certain amount of head space in the jar?
Yes, leaving the specified amount of head space in a jar is important to assure a vacuum seal.
If too little head space is allowed the food may expand and bubble out when air is being forced out from under the lid during processing.
The bubbling food may leave a deposit on the rim of the jar or the seal of the lid and prevent the jar from sealing properly. If too much head space is allowed, the food at the top is likely to discolor. Also, the jar may not seal properly because there will not be enough processing time to drive all the air out of the jar.

 I must confess I'd not thought of there being a big enough bubble that it would  prevent a sufficient vacuum being formed inside the cold jar ... Though I kind of knew it in the back of my mind when it is related to the correct head space  , I just didn't add in the extra bubbles volume  bit .

 I can now see that for some foods the total air space in the jar is super critical for a sound healthy vacuum seal , especially those with a small head space .

It really is soooo important to try to get the air bubbles out.  This may sound strange, but even when doing broth there may be air bubbles attached to the inside of the glass you don't see.  I try to run something around the jar with anything pressure canned.

yolos wrote: I can now join the pressure canning community.

Congratulations!

Plantoid.  Here are 2 recipes from "Nourishing Broth."  I'm sorry the photos are side ways.

The Nat'l Home Food Preservation group are the go-to folks!  They keep up w/ all the latest & greatest info.  Thankfully, they're based only about 35 miles from me.

Congratulations, Yolos!!!  Proud of you!!!  And they look terrific...!