You can substitute elk or bear meat for venison in this post.
Canning is, first of all, a great way to preserve game meat. It lasts for a long time in a cool place. I can the meat many people use for ground meat. The canning process makes even the most cantankerous piece of 50 year old buck meat (yeah, a little exaggeration) into a tender morsel that doesn’t take three breaks to finally finish chewing.
Canning is a great option to consider for the trim meat on your game animal. You have to make sure you are thorough about processing the meat when canning. If you use canning jars, new lids, make sure everything is good an clean, cook the meat thoroughly, and make sure the lids sealed properly after cooking. You should use a recipe for canning meat and follow the directions that come with your canner.
Canning meat takes about as long to process as any food you would want to can.
Standard procedures should be followed for cleaning and otherwise preparing the jars and the lids. I can’t stress enough the importance of being diligent in this process.
It can be done with cooked or raw meat. Raw meat will not need any water or other liquid added to the jar. This is a matter of your experience. If the meat is quite lean a little water added over the meat may be in order. Hot pack or precooked meat does need some liquid added over the meat.
The meat should be cut into chunks no larger than 3/4 of an inch in size. It is recommended that a pint jar have 1/2 a teaspoon of salt added and that a quart have 1 teaspoon of salt added.
The meat should be packed in the jars with about an inch of headspace.
Pints should be cooked at pressure for 75 minutes and Quarts for 90 minutes. For raw pack meat I go a little longer than this, mostly for my own piece of mind. The pressure is suggested to be 11 pounds at 1000 feet of elevation or less on dial gauge canner. If you have a weighted gauge canner, 15 pounds will do fine. According to the Prestowebsite that will be good up to 8000 feet at the above times. The extra pressure doesn’t hurt anything but you do want to make sure you don’t overpressurize the canner, as they can be damaged. You don’t want to go too much over the times listed as the fluid made by the cooking meat in the jars will be boiled out if you go too long.
The directions and procedures in the directions of your canner or on the website of the manufacturer are worth following. With these directions you can have the best meals and all the confidence that your food is as safe as it can be.
I like canned meat better than anything else I get out of the animal, except tenderloins. Backstrap is a close second. Backwards, I know.
Here’s to the pursuit,
Enjoy yours
Brutus
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