Canning references are like medical references; no single book covers everything, so it's nice to have a few sources to check. The Ball Blue Book has been the canning bible for years, and for good reason. It is chock-full of really good information. Another great reference is The Complete Guide to Home Canning issued by the USDA and National Center for Home Preservation. The most recent edition was issued in December 2015.
The Complete Guide to Home Canning contains everything one would expect to find in a canning resource--chapters on fruits, tomatoes, vegetables, jams and jellies, meats, and pickles, and loads of recipes for each. There is a very nice explanation of various canners and usage instructions and safety issues. Also discussed are the importance of cleanliness and sterilization of jars and equipment--what is necessary and what is over-kill. And there is even a bit on the safe disposal of foods suspected to be toxic, including the safety protocol for dealing with botulism.
The instructions are simple, clear, and concise without any fluff to confuse. Where there are options in how a certain food is canned, the Guide provides a clear explanation of why one method is preferred over another. With 197 pages, there are numerous illustrations and charts for easy reference.
The greatest drawback of this book is that it lacks any discussion of why cured ham and bacon, butter, or cheese should not be canned. In an era of returning to a simpler life, homesteads, preparedness, and DIY everything, with the internet where people can post their personal experiences and make unsafe recommendations based on anecdotes, I feel this is a serious shortcoming. However, the information it does contain is excellent and valuable. And best of all, it's free! Well, it's your tax dollars at work, so I guess in that respect it was pretty expensive.
Sadly, it's a little bit of a hassle to print because it is in eight sections. It would be really nice if they combined it all into one. However, if money's not an object, you can go directly to the Purdue Cooperative Extension site and order a copy for $19 plus $5.85 shipping.
The Complete Guide to Home Canning (free download)
The Complete Guide to Home Canning (purchase from Purdue Cooperative Extension Office)
Links to related posts:
Canning Butter and Cheese
Canning Bacon
Canning Ham
© 2019, PrepSchoolDaily.blogspot.com
Showing posts with label ham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ham. Show all posts
Saturday, April 25, 2026
Saturday, April 6, 2019
Easter Dinner--Canning Your Own Ham
I like holiday meals. I love the smell of a roast, the anticipation of some super tasty mashed potatoes and gravy, the obligatory Jell-O salad, and a fresh green salad or vegetables. Some of these dishes might be a little difficult to pull off post-collapse, but I'm hoping and planning to be able to make Easter and Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve dinners as close to normal as possible.
Our Easter menu dinner usually includes the traditional stuff, you know, ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, ginger glazed carrots, green salad or frozen veggies, and carrot cake for dessert.
Each year that I grow potatoes, I try to make them last into spring. I had better luck when we lived in Missouri and I could grow bushels of potatoes and store them in the storm shelter. Living in a desert with only grow boxes for the garden and no root cellar for storage has its challenges. Litters of Great Pyrenees puppies who break into the garden beds don't help, either. So while I store a good supply of instant potato flakes for soups, they'll also do double duty for making mashed potatoes at Easter. Thankfully, with fresh potatoes recently harvested, we don't have to do that for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The gravy will come from the Magic Mix recipe posted yesterday.
Garden carrots usually survive the winter in our refrigerator; post-collapse they will have been over-wintered in the garden and harvested when needed.
Whether we have a green salad or frozen vegetables pretty much depends on when Easter falls and the weather. In Missouri I was able to grow beautiful lettuce under a hoop house. I haven't been so successful with keeping a hoop house up here (thanks, dogs!). And even though Easter falls just about as late as it can this year, as of this writing (20 February 2019) things aren't looking very promising to being able to start a garden anytime soon. We've got six inches of snow covering the boxed beds right now and another six inches of snow in the forecast for the next two days. So this year it will probably be frozen broccoli; post-collapse I would use the freeze-dried broccoli, perhaps with some Magic Mix cheese sauce if the broccoli didn't reconstitute as well as I would like.
Carrot cake made with dehydrated carrots will be covered next week.
Which brings us to the ham. There are the cute little ham-shaped tins of ham sold in the grocery store, and I guess that's what most people would go with. But I don't really like pressed ham. And my dad gives the family a pig for the freezer every Christmas, so we have an abundance of ham here. We eat what we can, and can what we can't. :)
Canning ham is definitely not recommended by the nice folks at the Cooperative Extension offices. This is not because it has been shown to be unsafe. It is because it has not been shown to be safe. The safety of canning ham has never been tested. They just don't know whether it's safe, so they have to advise against it. Which is totally understandable. However, the problem is with ham that has been smoked and/or cured. The researchers just don't know if smoking or curing will alter the chemical or acid/base composition such that bacteria would grow more readily, or whether it would be more difficult to achieve the requisite temperatures, or anything else that could go wrong.
So what if you use a fresh ham, one that has not been smoked or cured? Well, then, it's just another cut of pork. And it can most definitely be canned. Most of the time when I can ham, it is diced or cut into larger chunks for soups and casseroles. But those don't look so festive when served as Easter dinner. Instead, I can slices of ham in a wide mouth jar. Using the inside edge of the band for a wide-mouth jar as a template, I cut slices of ham into circles and place them in the jar, leaving one inch of head space. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt per pint, 1 teaspoon per quart, and then pour in boiling water, again leaving one inch of head space. Place lids and bands on finger tight, and process according to directions for your canner, altitude, and jar size, generally 15 pounds of pressure and 75 minutes for pints, 90 minutes for quarts.
When it's time for dinner, make a brown sugar or apricot glaze and warm in the oven or in a skillet on the stove. Enjoy!
Links to related posts:
Magic Mix Gravy
Carrot Cake
Pressure Canning Pork
Pressure Canners
© 2019, PrepSchoolDaily.blogspot.com
Our Easter menu dinner usually includes the traditional stuff, you know, ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, ginger glazed carrots, green salad or frozen veggies, and carrot cake for dessert.
Each year that I grow potatoes, I try to make them last into spring. I had better luck when we lived in Missouri and I could grow bushels of potatoes and store them in the storm shelter. Living in a desert with only grow boxes for the garden and no root cellar for storage has its challenges. Litters of Great Pyrenees puppies who break into the garden beds don't help, either. So while I store a good supply of instant potato flakes for soups, they'll also do double duty for making mashed potatoes at Easter. Thankfully, with fresh potatoes recently harvested, we don't have to do that for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The gravy will come from the Magic Mix recipe posted yesterday.
Garden carrots usually survive the winter in our refrigerator; post-collapse they will have been over-wintered in the garden and harvested when needed.
Whether we have a green salad or frozen vegetables pretty much depends on when Easter falls and the weather. In Missouri I was able to grow beautiful lettuce under a hoop house. I haven't been so successful with keeping a hoop house up here (thanks, dogs!). And even though Easter falls just about as late as it can this year, as of this writing (20 February 2019) things aren't looking very promising to being able to start a garden anytime soon. We've got six inches of snow covering the boxed beds right now and another six inches of snow in the forecast for the next two days. So this year it will probably be frozen broccoli; post-collapse I would use the freeze-dried broccoli, perhaps with some Magic Mix cheese sauce if the broccoli didn't reconstitute as well as I would like.
Carrot cake made with dehydrated carrots will be covered next week.
Which brings us to the ham. There are the cute little ham-shaped tins of ham sold in the grocery store, and I guess that's what most people would go with. But I don't really like pressed ham. And my dad gives the family a pig for the freezer every Christmas, so we have an abundance of ham here. We eat what we can, and can what we can't. :)
Canning ham is definitely not recommended by the nice folks at the Cooperative Extension offices. This is not because it has been shown to be unsafe. It is because it has not been shown to be safe. The safety of canning ham has never been tested. They just don't know whether it's safe, so they have to advise against it. Which is totally understandable. However, the problem is with ham that has been smoked and/or cured. The researchers just don't know if smoking or curing will alter the chemical or acid/base composition such that bacteria would grow more readily, or whether it would be more difficult to achieve the requisite temperatures, or anything else that could go wrong.
So what if you use a fresh ham, one that has not been smoked or cured? Well, then, it's just another cut of pork. And it can most definitely be canned. Most of the time when I can ham, it is diced or cut into larger chunks for soups and casseroles. But those don't look so festive when served as Easter dinner. Instead, I can slices of ham in a wide mouth jar. Using the inside edge of the band for a wide-mouth jar as a template, I cut slices of ham into circles and place them in the jar, leaving one inch of head space. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt per pint, 1 teaspoon per quart, and then pour in boiling water, again leaving one inch of head space. Place lids and bands on finger tight, and process according to directions for your canner, altitude, and jar size, generally 15 pounds of pressure and 75 minutes for pints, 90 minutes for quarts.
When it's time for dinner, make a brown sugar or apricot glaze and warm in the oven or in a skillet on the stove. Enjoy!
Links to related posts:
Magic Mix Gravy
Carrot Cake
Pressure Canning Pork
Pressure Canners
© 2019, PrepSchoolDaily.blogspot.com
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