Putting Food By - Janet Greene [76]
Audrey Alley Gorton’s The Venison Book, How to Dress, Cut up and Cook Your Deer is a helpful guide to field-dressing and butchering large game.
This book is out of print but easily obtainable online. A more recent treatment of the subject is John Weiss’s Butchering Deer: The Complete Manual of Field Dressing, Skinning, Aging, and Butchering Deer at Home.
Canning Large Pieces of Meat
Pressure Canning only. PFB is leery of Raw pack for any meat, and therefore offers no processing times for it. Nevertheless, if you insist on Raw pack for meat, exhaust each open jar (and cans as a matter of course) to 170 F/ 77 C before continuing with the capping procedure and processing.
Prime cuts of beef, pork, lamb, veal, and large game are best canned in large pieces. The less choice parts are good for stews and ground meats.
Major Cuts of Beef (or Elk or Moose)
Major Cuts of Pork
Major Cuts of Lamb (or Goat)
To cut up lamb or goat, the carcass is handled whole, not split lengthwise like the larger beef, pork, elk, etc.
(Drawing by Norman Rogers)
Packing and Processing Large Cuts
HOT PACK (PRECOOKED)
Wipe raw meat with a clean damp cloth. Remove bones and all surface fat (fat in canned meat is likely to shorten its storage life, and fat is a No. 1 seal-spoiler).
Put large cut-to-measure pieces of boned, de-fatted meat in a large, shallow pan. Add just enough water to keep meat from sticking; cover, and cook slowly on top of the stove or in a 350 F/177 C oven until the meat is Medium done, turning it now and then so it precooks evenly.
In straight-sided jars. Pack hot meat loosely, leaving 1 inch of headroom. (Optional: add ½ teaspoon salt to pints, 1 teaspoon salt to quarts.) Add boiling meat juice (extended with boiling water if necessary), leaving 1 inch of headroom. Wipe jar rims carefully to remove any fat. Adjust lids. Pressure-process at 10 pounds (240 F/116 C)—pints for 75 minutes, quarts for 90 minutes. Remove jars; complete seals if using bailed jars.
• Adjustment for my altitude_________________.
In plain cans. Pack hot meat loosely, leaving ½ inch of headroom. (Optional: add ½ teaspoon salt to No. 303 cans, ¾ teaspoon salt to No. 401 cans.) Fill cans to the top with boiling meat juice (extended with boiling water if necessary), leaving no headroom. Wipe can rims carefully to remove any fat; seal (no exhausting is necessary, because long precooking has driven air from the meat). Pressure-process at 10 pounds (240 F/116 C)—No. 303 cans for 75 minutes, No. 401 cans for 90 minutes. Remove cans; cool quickly.
• Adjustment for my altitude_________________.
Note: you may also roast large pieces of meat as for the table until it is Medium done; pack as above (extending pan juices with boiling broth or water if necessary), and Pressure-process at 10 pounds (240 F/116 C) for the full time required above.
Canning Small Pieces of Meat
Use the less choice parts of the animal for future use in stews, main-dish pies.
Pressure Canning only, Hot (precooked) pack. Use straight-sided jars or plain cans.
PREPARE AND PACK HOT
Remove all surface fat from clean meat. Cut the meat off any bones. As you cut in stewing-size pieces, remove any interior bits of fat; cut away any tough muscle-sheath.
Put meat in a large, shallow pan, with just enough water to keep it from sticking; cover. Precook until Medium done. Stewing-size pieces need less tending if you do them in a 350 F/77 C oven; but you can also precook them to Medium on top of the stove, turning or stirring them from time to time.
If you want to brown the meat before canning it, do not dredge in flour first—just put it under a hot broiler long enough to brown it on all sides. Slosh a little water around the pan to pick up any juice, and save the water to use in precooking the meat, as above.
In straight-sided jars. Pack hot meat loosely, leaving 1 inch of headroom. (Optional: