Pressure Canning Basics: Chicken Meal Mix

good morning and welcome to rose red homestead we absolutely love our community our focus is on food security self-reliance and emergency preparedness and we just have wonderful folks who have subscribed and who leave comments for us and uh some of those comments are requests for videos this is a very important video and this was requested by lexi lu so thank you lexi liu she is a fairly new canner and commented that i always start our pressure canning videos by putting food in the jar and wants to know what how do you get the jars ready and so we are going to do this video today on basic pressure canning and um from start to finish and so you see i have a pretty bare counter here you don't see any food you don't see anything except a brand new case of jars so we're going to start with this and i will be giving all kinds of hints as we go forward in just a moment [Music] my favorite jars are wide mouth jars they're getting a little hard to find and pretty expensive but you know what when it cost me 17 for one package of 12 lids which is absolutely ridiculous and i can get a case of white mouth jars with the lids and rings on them already for not a whole lot more than that this is what i'm going to opt to do when we can find them and jim found some of these so i'm going to start with a brand new case of jars to show you how we do this we live in an earthquake zone and so our pantry is fitted with some things that will help prevent damage of our jarred food in the event of an earthquake and we are going to show that to you just not today so when i start with a brand new case of jars i keep the box and not only do i keep the box i like the plastic that is around the box because it makes it sturdier so i will just poke my scissors in right here and then run them along the edge of the box and that way the box is covered with plastic that helps hold it together and helps it last just a little bit longer it's always important to wash your jars now these are brand new from the factory i treat them the very same way as i would if i were getting empty canning jars off our food storage shelves as well so um our empty canning jars out there um don't have new rings and lids that's the difference so i'm going to put these i have a sink of hot water ready to go and that little explosion was the um lid popping loose from the jar sometimes it does explode just a little bit and i'm only going to need seven of these jars we're going to be doing seven quarts of food today and um our video today is on um lexi also requested that we do more meals in jars and so i'm kind of combining these two things together we are going to put up today a recipe that is a chicken mix that can be used for several meals and so most of the meal is right in this jar this is a very versatile recipe and we'll share with you some of the things that it can be used for okay so i'm just going to take i have a nice bottle brush and this water is very hot usda says that we no longer need to sanitize jars if they're going to be processed for 10 minutes or more so this is my process i'm going to put seven jars out here now the order that i do things is important um at all costs i want to preserve the safety of the food so i'm not dealing with the food right now when i have other things that i have to do first so we'll come back when i have all these jars lids and rings washed and out here to drain jim suggested that i show how to do the lids and rings too so i just toss them in the soapy water as well and scrub the lid off with the brush and the inside of the ring and so we'll be right back when these are done the alternative to doing what i just did would be to put those jars in your dishwasher and have the dishwasher clean them as well that is a very fine alternative either way you want to do it the jars need to be clean it does not matter we are doing raw pack today the jars do not have to be hot they can be room temperature and no problems with having the jars room temperature with what we're going to do i want to show you my canner this is my canner it is the only canner that i recommend it is not the only pressure counter that i use it is the only one that i recommend and i'm not an official recommender by any stretch of the imagination i do use others but this one is my go-to canner i know that it is very safe i know that i can count on it this is a pressure canner i just want to talk to you about a couple of things mine is a dial canner which means that as the pressure rises it shows what the pressure is on the inside of the canner now what we want is with pressure canning the processing time is constant regardless of your elevation if it says 30 minutes you do 30 minutes whether you are at sea level or at where at 5 000 feet or even higher the processing time is the same what changes what the variable is in pressure canning is the amount of pressure that it takes to get the temperature on the inside of the canner up high enough to get the food in the jars into the kill zone to uh for long enough in order to kill any botulism spores if any happen to be present the probability of that is very low but we don't take any chances we pretend we think about boy if there's even one in there i don't want it left so that it can produce the toxin so we want to do safe canning all the way around pressure canning is very safe it is very easy in this kind of a pressure canner we just need to be sure that for the processing time and our processing time today is an hour and a half once it gets up to at our elevation it takes 13 psi pounds per square inch above us 7 000 feet um it takes a full 15 pounds of pressure or maybe it's 8 000 anyway up above us it takes 15 pounds of pressure if you are at sea level it takes about 10 11 psi now some pressure counters don't have this instead they have a weight it is a gauged weight and the weight will stay on it either 10 or 15. when i first started canning you could get weights that said 5 10 or 15 but i think pretty much now it is 10 or 15 and so because it requires 13 pounds of pressure where we are i can't use the 10 instead i would bump it up to the 15. and so when we are canning we like that needle to be between 13 and 15. if it goes below 13 you're going to want to start your time over again because it's very important that in the kill zone the duration is sustained and not dip below and then come back up it has to be sustained and once you learn your canner and learn your stove and how the two interact with each other um you can pretty much tune your ear to be sure that everything is going okay this dead weight does not it's not a 10 it's not a 15 it's a dead weight so it goes over this little vent hole and we'll show you what that's for just a little bit so during processing this holds the pressure in now this is a safety as well because if you forget your pressure counter is your counter is going and the pressure gets way too high in here two things are going to happen this little thing is going to blow and let the pressure out there and this can shoot off and let the pressure out there it saves it from exploding so all you'll have is steam coming out and maybe a mess on your ceiling if you cook inside we cook outdoors my stovetop is an induction top this is aluminum aluminum does not work on induction so jim has a set up for us a really nice canning station outside with a propane stove and um the weight stays on here if it starts to go when um we're canning that means that the pressure has reached 15 and i can listen to that and i know oh i need to go check the flame maybe turn it down a little bit because pressure is starting to escape this is a safety release at about 15 psi it won't explode off not explode wrong word it won't shoot off unless it gets much much much higher than that as a as a safety this will blow first okay so what's the next step um inside the camera i have i have two [Music] racks um you always have a rack in the bottom of your counter you never ever ever put jars on the floor of the canner without separating them from the floor with a little rack the reason that i have two is that i can pack one layer of pints and then i can put this down on that layer of pints halfway down and then i can stack another layer of pines for quartz i don't need it so i'm going to set it aside my canner you can probably see the water ring around the edge calls for about three inches of water every canner must have water in it whether you do water bath or whether do you do pressure canning for pressure canning you don't need to bring it up way way high cover the jars you only need three or four inches in the bottom and that is because you want to produce the steam the steam under pressure is what raises that temperature up to get the food into the kill zone so be sure that you put water in the bottom of your canner all right now we're going to set this aside what i try to do when i'm getting ready to can for the day is i think about how long is it going to take me to process the food and get it ready to put in the jars if it is going to take a long time an hour then i do everything i can that doesn't work with food to get ready so that when i'm working with food i can finish the processing and then get it right in the jars and get it canned so the food doesn't set out for a long time while i wash the jars or get the canner ready so once the jars are ready and i have the canner on stand by here then i'm ready to start working with the food i do not put water in the canner and put it out on the stove to start heating up to a simmer until i'm ready to fill the jars so we're just going to set the counter aside and then we're starting to work with the food um i am not going to put you through watching me prepare all of these because i'm going to assume that you know how to chop carrots potatoes celery onions and chicken pieces these have been waiting for us in the refrigerator but it would be at this point that i would do all of that to prepare for what we're going to do next so i have carrots i have potatoes in water i have celery and i have onions and these onions we grew these onions i'm so pleased to say and i have chicken and then in addition to that i have the spices that we're going to use to put in the jars and i have the chicken broth ready to heat up so that it will be ready when we're ready to put it in the jars now because we're now ready to begin putting food in the jars i am going to go ahead and start the broth on the stove this is my home canned chicken broth so i'm i have three quarts ready i just have going to start with two quarts i never know i never know for sure how much it's going to take so i always give it the smell test to be sure it is still okay and it is it smells just fine this this was only bottled i'm i'm now about out of chicken broth i'm going to need to do some more this was put up in july of this year so that's only been a couple of months ago all good okay and it will be all ready for us when we are ready for it so this recipe is like a chicken stew base when you pour it out of the jar you can use the liquid and make gravy and then you'll have this beautiful chicken and gravy that you can put over potatoes or rice that would be one thing that you could do with it the other thing the two things that i'm going to demonstrate after our canning is over and we will open up one of the jars we're going to make chicken pot pies with the chicken mix and also we're going to do um chicken and dumplings and so those are the two meals that we will show at the very end of the video so here is what we do i'm going to drain these potatoes the reason the potatoes are in water is to keep them from turning brown so i'm just going to drain them now okay when i when i chopped up these vegetables because i'm going to be putting a half a cup of each one of these i chopped them up and measured them one half cup proportion at a time so that i would cut up about the right amount instead of just trying to guess for the meat and this is a tested recipe in the ball blue book it calls for about a pound of meat and so i have almost 15 ounces of meat per jar that's not quite a pound but it's enough for us and the rest will be made up with some other things with a tested recipe you like to follow it as close as possible particularly the ratio of solids to the liquid so we'll pay attention to that so here's what i'm going to do i have um i have my kitchen scale here because i only have so much meat and i want it to go into all seven jars so knowing that i'm going to want to have about 15 ounces of meat i'm going to start with the meat in the bottom okay so it's about this much meat tamp it down just a little bit and then very quickly i'm going to do a half a cup of each of these vegetables okay now if i were doing this not on camera i would put meat into every jar and then i would fill every jar with celery and each one of the things so that it would be a little bit more efficient i'm not going to do that in front of the video today because i'm not going to put you through that whole long thing and so then on top of this i will put one teaspoon of poultry seasoning which you can substitute other things for if you wish and then i'm going to put just a little bit of pepper maybe about a a fourth of a teaspoon too much and some salt probably about a half a teaspoon and this jar is now ready for the broth we're not ready to put the broth in it but it's ready for the broth so i'm going to set it aside well we were off camera right as i started putting the rest of the food in the jars jim put the canner out and started it on a low heat so it will be just simmering when we get out there we'll show that to you when we get out there everything is filled the great thing about this recipe is that the jars are clear and you can double check to be sure you put all your ingredients in jim found one that i had forgotten to put salt in so that was a good thing now we are now ready to fill these jars with the broth so i use my little silicone measuring cup for that it works just perfect and i leave headspace up to that first ring which isn't quite an inch but it's close enough seems to work well for me and then we will de-bubble and see where we are okay let's de-bubble now i just use a little plastic implement actually i'll use the handle side that does not have the serrations on it important to get the air out if we possibly can especially down there where that chicken is we want broth to get in there and push all the air out the broth is now a little bit below where it was before and that is what we want to see we'll put more in when i get everything all de-bubbled so the reason that we d bubble the broth is now here when it was right here so there was a lot of air down in that chicken so that's exactly what we want to do now i am just refilling um bringing the broth back up to that one lip okay now because we are using broth which probably has some fat in it and because there's chicken in the bottom we're going to wet our wiping paper towel with a little vinegar vinegar really cuts the grease in the oil and in order to give the the lid every chance of sealing we want to just really do a good job of wiping off these rims okay now the next step then is to put the lids on and then the rings finger tight and finger tight is just that don't use your wrist just your fingers because the steam still has to get out of that jar this is the canning station that jim has put together for me with this nice wind break because we're using a flame and we want to keep that flame steady so if you'll come over here and take a look in the counter you'll see that we have um three inches of watery that water that is just barely simmering it's steaming you can see the bubbles coming up from the bottom a little bit so this is the perfect temperature of the water the jars are not super hot even though that broth was boiling when we put it in the food was raw pack and so it was not heated and so we don't want to put the jars in a super boiling canner all right now this will hold seven quarts so we're going to put all seven quarts in come look in the counter and see about how high the water is if your water comes up higher than that take some jars out and then empty a little bit of water out it does not need to come up to the lid level at all all we want to do is just to make some steam okay now i'm going to be turning the um flame up a little bit to medium and then we're going to put the lid on and we'll tell you what comes next all right a couple of things to note on the counter the pressure is at zero no steam is coming out of that vent the airlock which is right over here will rise up when there's pressure in the bottom of the canner none of that has happened yet so it is now on medium it's going to start heating up faster and when it starts to boil and shoot steam out this vent we want it to vent for 10 full minutes with steam shooting out of here and we'll show you that because what we want to have happen is the air inside the canner needs to be replaced by that steam it is the steam in connection with the pressure that gets the temperature up high enough to get the food into the kill zone so when we get to that point we'll be back it'll be just a few minutes here the counter is venting you can see it you can hear it we have timed it it has now vented for 10 minutes so there is no air left in the counter it is now completely filled with steam so i'm going to take the dead weight and put it right over the vent and so notice also that this little button is now pressurized and pushing up and the air lock is also up so we know it's pressurized and the dial says we're already up to almost five pounds of pressure so we're going to wait until it gets over to 13 pounds of pressure which is right here and as soon as it does we will start our timing the timing has to go these are quartz has low acid foods including chicken which is meat so it goes for 90 minutes and so it should get up there in just the next few minutes and we will start that timing and then once the timing is completely done the hour and a half is finished we turn the heat off under the canner and we let it cool down normally and that takes another about 45 minutes for this canner and so we're going to come back then when we're finished with everything and ready to take them out of the counter it's about three minutes since we just left the last segment and we're letting it go up to 15 so that you can see what happens below 15 this does not jiggle so this is telling us come and check come and check it's already up to 15 it might go higher and so we're going to come out and adjusting the flame here or adjusting your electric burner is really important and being at 15 is not going to hurt anything it's not going to explode it's still fog we still have plenty of safety notice how the rocking is slowing down now that we've turned the heat down the needle is starting to drop just a little bit and we want to find that sweet spot on the stove where it is holding between 13 and 15. it's really hard to hold it at a single level you can go higher so if you think about holding it within a range that works just fine so now it's almost completely stopped it's at 14 now and we're okay to let it sit for the rest of the time right there we come out and check it all the time because things change but um i probably come out about every five or ten minutes once we get it stabilized which it almost is right now all right we'll come back when it's all finished it has taken a little over an hour for it to get completely cool well it's still not cool but the pressure's all the way down and i know that because this is not puffed up because the airlock is all the way down and i can test it by tilting this and no pressure is coming out so it is now safe to open the lid you always open the lid away from your face so we tilt it this way so the steam goes the opposite direction so let's see what we have okay that's fine it's gunky on the inside chicken sometimes does that but it looks really really good we did not get siphoning there and no siphoning there so that's good we have had a little siphoning i can tell by looking at the water so when these cool down some we can take a look at the jars and see if dramatic siphoning has occurred sometimes happens so come take a look at the water and you can see that siphoning has occurred so it's not perfectly clean the way it should be it's a little bit greasy on the top so that means that one or more of these jars has leaked out a little bit um and don't be concerned when that happens sometimes it happens and nobody knows why um maybe it would have been better had we left them in another five minutes i don't know they're going to be fine if if the water siphons out more than halfway down that's when you should open it and use it right then so we are going to let these cool for several hours and then we'll be back to show you a couple of meals that you can use with them so we'll be back it is the next day candy is done we had a very successful batch we have seven sealed jars of product and so there was indeed just a little bit of siphoning um if you get a real close look up if that this is our worst one we lost maybe a half an inch of liquid right here we could tell that from the water and you know what it just happens sometimes and i really do not even get concerned about it at all and there's our oven unless the siphoning has dropped the liquid down to below the halfway mark and then the usda says that it is a problem so what's next with these meals well these can stay on your shelf for a good year maybe more and any time you want to you can just take one down and you have a number of um of choices that you can do with it we're going to open one right now and before i put these outside on the shelf i leave my bands on but i loosen them um and so i loosen them so that they're very loose i just don't have a place to store 600 bands and so i leave them on the jars but i loosen them so the same thing can happen if it needs to break seal which is what the usda is concerned about now when i open a jar of um low acid canned food there are some things that i do first of all i listen to see that it goes and so the air is being sucked right back in and then i smell it and then if possible i cook it for 10 minutes just in case there might be any toxin in here which probability is just almost zero but i like to boil it for about 10 minutes which takes care of the toxin and the toxin is not the same as the spores um toxin can be destroyed at boiling temperature okay so let's see yes that was the right sound and now the smell test and it smells fabulous so what i want to do is to thicken this up this is going to be a stew-like meal and so i'm just going to pour the liquid right in this pot and remember the liquid that we used was broth and i'll bring this over in a second so you can see it we had a couple of loose carrots but that is the chicken broth mixed with the juices from the cooking vegetables and the chicken now what i want to do and i do the solids separately i like to thicken the liquid part before i add in the rest and i just have a flower and water slurry right here so i'm going to put a little bit in what what i think is about the right amount and stir it around and then we're going to take this over to the stove heat it up and see what we get so i'll meet you over there right jim didn't realize that he had not turned the camera on but the liquid thickened up just fine and i put the solids in and they're now heating i've broken up the chicken just a little bit and i explained that once this heats up it is a meal just like this you can put it in a bowl and have it for chicken stew if you would like to do that you can serve it over noodles or rice or mashed potatoes if you would prefer to do that the two things that i'm going to show you today with this mix are chicken and dumplings and i've got a couple of pie crusts over there ready to make chicken pot pie so this is now warm enough that i can put that into the pie shells and so let's meet back over there and do that the oven is at 375 it dinged just a minute ago so the oven is completely ready and so i'm just gonna go ahead and take a scoop and put it in each of these little pot pies these pot pies are smaller than what i would normally do just because we're doing it for illustrative purposes and so i have bigger individual pots that i would use so that leaves this much for our um chicken and dumplings but right now what i'm going to do is take these top crusts and just put them in place like this and just run around the edge so we have that finished i'm just going to do the little fork tine mashing and these are ready to go in the oven i'll finish that one in a minute and so here on top of the rest of this um chicken stew i'm going to put some this is just a quick little biscuit mix that i made up just a little while ago and there are different ways that you can do chicken and dumplings this way is like with a little dumpling on the top you can make this dough up into what looks like noodles and just incorporate it down into the rest of the pot so it's just like part of the stew but i grew up on dumplings like this where they sat on the top and um so these will put this back over there on the stove and let this gently simmer for probably 15 or 20 minutes until the biscuit dough is completely done and when everything is all done we will come back and we'll show you the results so we will see you in just a little while i wish you could be here to smell this house it just smells wonderful with the chicken pot pies baked in the oven i just took them out and they're beautiful and then take a look at our chicken and dumplings those dumplings are perfect they're all the way done nice and fluffy and i just made a chopped salad so we are ready to eat so thank you for being with us with this video hope you've enjoyed this hope it will help you have a lot more confidence in your pressure canning and we're going to do some more just like this so we will see you next time [Music]

Channel: RoseRed Homestead

Views: 298,094

Keywords:

Id: rrrmb8j6E5g

Length: 33min 28sec (2008 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021