Get these on your shelf NOW for EASY fall comfort meals (Pressure Canning MEAL)

I know it's not very pretty but believe me this is going to become your best friend in the kitchen and you're going to want to get these on your shelf right away when you find out what they can do this is chicken and gravy dinner in a jar this is an amazing meal base you can turn it into chicken noodle soup chicken and dumplings chicken stew over rice or just chicken and gravy dinner check it out we're gonna make chicken and gravy dinner in a jar today and it's probably a lot easier than you think [Music] this is one of my favorite meals in a jar and this is the chicken and gravy dinner in a jar now when you're canning you can't safely can a gravy because you don't want to thickener in there when you're pressure canning but you can make a base that's super easy to thicken on the other side I think you're going to be amazed how quick this is to make up into one of many amazing dinners so let's go out to the Garden let's go grab some ingredients as I was going up to the Garden I was coming through the Cottage Garden and you guys have got to see what I just found check out this pumpkin that is growing into the feds isn't he huge for this recipe we're going to need a handful of carrots look at these don't they look so good and we're gonna need some potatoes so we haven't harvested them yet but they are ready and they're dyed back [Music] you're a good Garden helper thank you okay now we're gonna need to go get some celery [Music] here's the celery and it is definitely ready to be harvested [Music] and last but not least we're going to need an onion those have already been harvested from the garden and they are already curing in our curing spot in the barn okay I think three onions should be plenty I live in the goats want some onions okay we're ready to go into the house get this all cleaned up and get into the kitchen I've brought my vegetables in and I've gotten them all washed up and trimmed up and for any of the root vegetables I've gotten them peeled so the carrots are peeled the potatoes are peeled obviously the onions are peeled we've got to do that anyways but anything that's down in the ground it's really important to peel them when you're canning that way you reduce the possible bacterial load that's in there botulism spores live in the ground they live in the dirt so when we bring food out of the dirt we just want to make sure to get them really really clean so that we're not accidentally putting anything in our jars to begin with it just really helps to keep everything nice and safe first of all before we prep these ingredients any further I have my canner filled with two inches of water and I have my clean ready jars in there today I'm using six to seven quart sized jars but you could also use pint-sized jars if you don't want as high of a quantity or as much food in each jar okay let's talk about the ingredients that we need now this recipe is coming out of the all new ball book of canning and preserving it is a great book and it has a lot of really good options for meals like this this is a raw Pack meal which means we don't need to cook these ingredients before we put them in the jar and get them into the canner that makes this really really fast and really easy to get your food into the canner and running so I love these raw pack meals and they have a really nice selection of them in here we are making one allowable difference in that recipe and you'll see when I go along that we're going to add the carrots in which is absolutely fine we're keeping all the ratios the same we're just going to reduce the amount of onions and celery just a little bit and add some carrots in we will need a final amount of six pounds of chopped chicken now it can be chicken breast it can be chicken thighs but you do want boneless skinless and you do want to cut into nice chunk sized pieces we want about three cups total of potatoes so this is more than I'm gonna need but we'll just use it for dinner we'll use it for something else we'll want about two cups of chopped onions two cups of chopped carrots and two cups of chopped celery for the seasoning we're going to use six teaspoons of a good quality salt it does not have to be a canning salt it can be whatever your favorite salt is that you use for food in your house we need three teaspoons of a freshly ground Cracked Pepper go with freshly ground it tastes so much better and then six teaspoons of a poultry seasoning or any other seasoning that you would like to put in this dish for a little bit of added acid and some great flavor we're going to use three quarters cups of a dry white wine now don't worry if you're not excited about having the wine in there the alcohol itself is going to be pretty much non-existent by the time that this is all done this is an absolutely fine meal for kids to eat we're just going to cook that alcohol right out if you choose not to use the wine however you do need to use something that has some acid to it so you're going to want to use vinegar or something of that sort it's going to drastically change the flavor so I recommend just going ahead and using the white wine for this we do need some chicken broth it's really hard for me to tell you how much chicken broth you are going to need for this recipe because that really depends on how well you pack your jars ideally you're going to use less than a cup of chicken broth but sometimes it can be a little bit more so just make sure you have some chicken broth on hand a quart would be fine this is a half gallon jar that I had fresh in the refrigerator if you want to learn how to can your own chicken broth check out this video right here and I'll take you every step of the way through the process let's prep our ingredients while our canner is warming just gently I have my secret weapon in the kitchen when it comes to preserving and that is my food processor this one's a Breville I love this one it's huge it holds 16 cups and has this dicer blend so I love this and you guys are going to see why but certainly you can just hand chop it that's a great way to go too [Music] isn't that amazing I absolutely love that it goes so fast I have a bowl here that I'm just going to put all my ingredients in as I get them all prepped I'm gonna go just shy of two cups here and I'll save all the extras in a bowl off to the side for dinner tonight the reason I went just shy is because I'm going to get just a few more carrots through as the next vegetable goes through [Music] I promise I'm a not crying because I don't like canning these are Tears of Joy from meals being on my shelf or just from the onions foreign [Music] that made really quick work of all of the vegetables so now we're ready to move on to the meat I have six pounds of boneless skinless chicken breast here and I'm ready to chop up the rest of it I have most of it cut into nice small chunks when you're thinking about cutting things for meat for canning think about what you know what size you'd like to put in your mouth or what your finished product is going to be I'm going to get all six pounds of chicken right into this bowl if you've defrosted your chicken it has some juice left over you don't need to add that juice now I'm going to add in all of the spices here goes the salt I'm going to kind of sprinkle it throughout because I'm going to have to mix it all in the pepper poultry seasoning and the white wine I'm just going to pour it all right into the bowl and we're going to stir it really really well so that it is Thoroughly mixed up we want a little bit of all the ingredients on everything especially all those seasonings first stir stir stir now if the thought of canning something makes you nervous especially the pressure canner you may want to check out the free training that I have on how to can we go over all of the safety aspects of canning so that you really get a firm grasp on the scientific principles behind canning and we actually work together in the kitchen to can an entire meal in your water bath canner and then we introduce you to the concepts of pressure canning just go ahead and check the description for the link to that free video training The Next Step since we already have our jars heating up in here is to go ahead and heat up our chicken broth we want it up to the simmer when we're packing our jars so let's go ahead and get that into the pot on the stove right now let's talk about the other supplies that you might need first of all you're going to need brand new canning lids you're going to need your jars without any Nicks or chips make sure they're in really good condition make sure they're clean and washed in hot soapy water immediately before you start mine are in the canner already for a meal like this I really like to use wide mouth the wide mouth just allows you to pack in this kind of food into the jar a lot easier than the narrow mouth you're going to need bands these do not need to be brand new they just need to not be completely covered in Rust so that they work a good funnel is always helpful in Canning some tongs whatever you want to use to get this food into a jar a ladle for ladling in your hot broth and I love this tool it's kind of a silly little tool you don't actually need a specific tool for it but it is a bubble popper and headspace measure if you need to measure how much headspace you have inside your jar that's means the level that your food comes up two inside your jar that's handy but this side also acts as a really great bubble popper to make sure you don't have big spaces in your jar in between your food you're going to need a pressure canner and it needs to have a rack in it you cannot use your instant pot you cannot use a electric pressure cooker you can't use a manual pressure cooker you need to use an actual pressure canner and you need to make sure that if you're using the dial gauge with this part right here that you've had this tested at your County Extension University extension office make sure that it's reading correctly if you don't want to go through that hassle then you can use a weighted gauge on this side make sure you use one that's actually made for your canner and that will make sure that you're handing at the correct pressure and safely canning all the time whereas the dial gauge can go wrong so you want to make sure to either have this tested or be using one of these instead and don't forget that you need to have good jar lifters this is really important when you're canning always make sure you have a jar lifter and backup jar lifters just in case these break I've had it happen and it's a great way to learn a lot of creative ways to break jars the jars are nice and warm so I'm ready to go ahead and pull them out of the canner foreign now I want to just pack my jars filled with this mixture now ideally you'll get enough in here packed in here so well that you won't be able to fit more than just a couple tablespoons of broth in here we don't want to fill it anymore than about one inch below the rim so we only want to get to right about here you can see I'm kind of pressing down as I go just making sure I'm filling any little gaps that could possibly get in there while this chicken is going in raw into these jars because it's going to be in the pressure canner for about 90 minutes of processing time it is going to just cook and it's going to simmer in its own juices and in that broth and in these seasonings and it just makes the most tender delicious juicy food coming out of it on the other end just that cooking in its own broth in that sealed container it's just an amazing way to go now our next step is to Ladle over the hot broth foreign [Music] you may only use like one or two tablespoons of broth and that's fine you always want to maintain that one inch headspace I'm going to take my bubble popping tool or you could use a chopstick or a plastic knife or anything like that and I'm going to just scrape it down the sides of the jars the reason I want to do this is to make sure there's no big gaps down at the bottom which you can see my liquid level is changing on this jar while I'm doing that the liquid is settling into little holes little bubbles down in the bottom of the jar throughout the jar and that's great that's exactly what we're looking for we want to get that dealt with so that we can come back through and re-top that jar off with a little more broth to make sure we maintain that one inch headspace that headspace is really important for getting a good seal on your jars I'm just going to come back through and top it off a little bit more so that everything is to that one inch now we want to take a clean very clean dish rag it's damp and we're just going to wipe the rim make sure that there is not any broth on there or any chunks of food that would get in the way of your seal Lids on Hands-On make sure you don't put your bands on too tight just finger tight and we're ready to put the jars into the canner [Music] [Music] the jars are in the canner the canner is on and we've got to wait for it to start steaming before we can take the next step so that's going to take a few minutes the important thing to know is that you want to bring your canner up to temperature slowly like don't go more than about medium medium high you don't want to just crank it on all the way to high so nothing more than about medium high on your canner and bring it up fairly slowly once your canner comes up to a Full Steam then you can go ahead and start a timer and let it steam at Full Steam for 10 minutes after you've let it full steam for Full Steam you're going to want to put your weight or your regulator onto your steam vent make sure if you're using it as a weighted gauge that you have it dropped onto the correct amount of pressure for your elevation yes you have to do it differently per your elevation you can check out the blog post in the link below so that you can see the chart for what pressure you should be canning at at your specific elevation once you have that gauge on and in place then you are ready to go ahead and bring your canner all the way up to the full temperature my canners just come up to full pressure for me that's 15 pounds of pressure because of where I live elevation wise but you can tell that it's come up to pressure because of the Jiggles when it starts jiggling with a canner like this one to four times every minute then I'll know that I'm at full pressure as soon as you get to full pressure then it's time to go ahead and start your timer if you're canning in quartz you're going to set your timer for one hour and 30 minutes if you're canning pints then you can set it for one hour and 15 minutes as soon as your timer goes off go ahead and turn off your heat and then let your canner sit and cool all the way down to zero without doing anything to it don't remove the weighted gauge don't do anything let it cool all the way down until it comes to zero pressure on your dial gauge or until there's no pressure when you very lightly touch your weighted gate my timer just went off and the canner has been going for 90 minutes so we're letting it go ahead and cool all the way down but in the meantime I wanted to show you guys what you could do with the jars of food so here are some that I had canned the other day these didn't have the carrots in it but they had everything else so let's jump into what to do with your jars of food once you have a can the first thing that you can make with this is just super easy this is just the chicken and gravy dinner you can see there's a little bit more broth in here now than what we started with that's because the liquid actually pulls out of the chicken and it creates its own amazing juice oh this smells so good you could literally just dump this into a pot heat it up and eat it just like that but we're going to take this a step further we're going to go ahead and dump this into a pot and then while it's still cold I'm going to stir in two tablespoons of flour I'm gonna have to really work with this to get it stirred in all the way but you really want it completely wet you don't want any lumps don't turn your heat on until you have this all the way stirred in now turn your heat on and bring this up to a simmer and it's going to thicken up into an amazing gravy really quickly this has just taken a few minutes to heat up and it is already nice and thick I mean this is chicken and gravy dinner in a dry five minutes you guys this is just amazing and it smells so good and go ahead and turn it off I you could eat this just as is you could put it over rice you could put it over just some egg noodles here this is just some egg noodles that I had on hand cooked it up really fast and you can see you can just pour it right oh I wish you could smell this this just smells like the most amazing comfort food right here five minutes to dinner oh my goodness and that's just only one of the things you can do let's look at something else once you get this nicely thickened up you can go ahead and add in some more chicken broth now you can use canned chicken broth this is just chicken broth from the refrigerator and I'm just going to put that right on over it just add it as much as you want give it a good stir and I'm going to add some more egg noodles right to here and you have a chicken noodle soup ready to go this is oh so delicious again it just smells so good if you wanted to you could put some fresh Greens in here that's how I usually like a chicken noodle soup just toss in some fresh spinach or something right at the end and let it Wilt down and you have a ready to go chicken noodle soup in just a few minutes but there's one more thing actually you could probably make a ton of different things with this but I want to show you another family favorite right here now this is going to quickly become a family favorite in your house it is in mine so this is comfort food like a quick easy and absolutely amazing I'm going to actually put in two quarts of chicken and gravy dinner in a jar into my pot here and I'm going to thicken it which means I'm going to need four tablespoons of flour for this particular dish again we're going to want to mix the flour in while it is still cold if you wanted to make this just a little bit easier and you had broth on the Shelf you could mix the flour into cold broth and then pour it over it if you don't mind it being just a little bit brothier than this okay I'm going to go ahead and turn this on but because I want this to be really nice and brothy I'm going to go ahead and add in a little bit of that extra broth an extra cup or so is just fine now while this is heating up I'm going to really quickly make some herbed dumplings this is going to be really fast and really easy we're going to start with two cups of flour we're gonna mix in one tablespoon plus one teaspoon of baking powder a teaspoon of salt that was pepper a teaspoon of pepper a teaspoon of salt and either a tablespoon of fresh thyme or a teaspoon of dried thyme oh I love the way thyme smells so good we're just going to whisk that up create a little well in the center okay now to that we're going to add three quarters cup of milk right in the center there and four tablespoons or a quarter of a cup of melted butter and using a fork I'm just going to combine [Music] all right this is thickened up really nicely you can see it's nicely gravy like it's not super thick which is just what we want right now I'm going to turn the temperature up just a little I want to have a nice little bit of a simmer going here and then I'm going to use a tablespoon and I'm going to drop these into the pot right there just right across the surface [Music] now if you want you can crowd all the rest of this dough into the pot I don't like crowded dumplings so I am going to go ahead and save these and just make some biscuits out of them really quickly that I cook in the oven and I'm going to put the lid onto the pot I'm going to let it cook on for just a couple minutes and then I'm going to turn it off and let it sit and steam for several minutes so about five minutes on and then about 10 minutes with the lid on all right while we're letting our dumplings cook the pressure canner has finished its processing and it's cooled all the way down I've removed the pressure regulator over here and then it sat for 10 minutes to cool all the rest of the way down totally release the pressure so we're ready to open up the pressure canner and remove the jars now I've got a towel sat out on the counter all ready to go [Music] let five amazing jars of food all ready to go this is just needs to sit overnight cool all the way down and then you'll be ready to go ahead and wipe them down test your Lids to make sure that there's no movement that they're well sealed label them and get them onto your Pantry Shelf so that they're ready to grab okay let's go check on those dumplings oh these look so good they smell even better [Music] look at that you guys chicken and dumplings in just a few minutes and that is an amazing super hearty wonderful comfort food it's gonna be so good hey make sure you check out that free training if you want to learn how to can but you're not sure exactly how to do it I take you through every single step step by step and if you're interested in Canning another meal check out this video right here enjoys [Music]

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 129,711

Keywords: Homesteading Family, pressure canning, food preservation, home canning, pressure canner, shelf stable meals, pressure canning soup, home canning basics, home canning meat, home canning recipes, how to can, preserving food, canning for beginners, pressure canning for beginners, meal in a jar, shelf stable pantry meals, ready to eat pantry meals, pantry meals, food pantry meals, meals in a jar, meal in a jar recipes, canning convenience meals, homesteading family canning

Id: FqZnRidHrqQ

Length: 25min 29sec (1529 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 07 2023