Putting Food By - Janet Greene [80]
PREPARE AND HOT PACK (PRECOOKED) ONLY
Cut clean gizzards in half, trimming off the gristle; cut smaller if necessary. Remove tops of hearts where the blood vessels come in; halve hearts if they’re very large. Cover gizzards and hearts with hot water or hot unseasoned broth and cook until Medium done.
Remove all fat from the livers; cut away gall sac and connecting tissue between the lobes. Cover livers with hot water or hot unseasoned broth and cook gently until firm and Medium done; stir occasionally to prevent sticking.
Pack gizzards and hearts together, pack livers separately.
In straight-sided pint jars. Fill with hot gizzards and hearts, or hot livers, leaving 1 inch of headroom. (Optional: add ½ teaspoon salt.) Add boiling cooking liquid, leaving 1 inch of headroom. Wipe jar rims carefully. Adjust lids. Pressure-process at 10 pounds (240 F/116 C)—pint jars of either livers, or gizzards and hearts for 75 minutes. Remove jars; complete seals if using bailed jars.
• Adjustment for my altitude_________________.
In No. 303 plain cans. Fill with hot gizzards and hearts, or hot livers, leaving ½ inch of headroom. (Optional: add ½ teaspoon salt.) Add boiling cooking liquid to the top of the cans, leaving no headroom. Wipe can rims carefully. Seal. Pressure-process at 10 pounds (240 F/116 C)—No. 303 cans of either gizzards and hearts, or livers for 75 minutes. Remove cans; cool quickly.
• Adjustment for my altitude_________________.
Canning Frozen Poultry, Etc.
In case your freezer conks out, or you have a windfall of frozen poultry, domestic rabbits, or small game, you may can it—if:
(1) It is good quality and was properly frozen (see the table Freezer Storage Life of Various Foods in Chapter 13), and (2) it is thawed slowly in the refrigerator below 40 F/4 C.
Then treat it as if it were fresh, using Pressure Canning only, Hot pack only, straight-sided jars or plain cans. Follow preparation and processing under Bone In/Boned, above.
11
Canning Seafood
Finned or shell-bearing creatures taken from salt or fresh water are right up among the front-runners in the botulism sweepstakes. Add to this that in general they are the most perishable of all fresh foods and have great density of texture, and you see why fish and shellfish require faultless handling and longer Pressure-processing than do other foods that are canned at home.
So why can them? Why indeed, when proper freezing is an all-round better, and safer, means of putting them by?—or when even salt-curing followed by drying and cold storage is, in the regions that practice this twofold method, less of a hazard?
But maybe you’re faced with a surfeit of fresh seafood, and either freezing or curing-and-drying the excess is impossible. If such a bonanza is a repeated occurrence, you could plan ahead and organize a community kitchen, complete with good equipment and a skilled director in charge, as described in Chapter 3. If it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event, though, and comes without warning (like a beach full of lobsters cast up by a hurricane)—well, go ahead and can what you and your neighbors aren’t able to eat, or swap for staples, or give to a public-service group near by.
The following procedures are for canning, without frills, some representative varieties of fresh fish and shellfish.
CONVERSIONS FOR CANNING SEAFOOD
Do look at the conversions for metrics, with workable roundings-off, and for altitude—both in Chapter 3—and apply them.
Equipment for Canning Seafood
You cannot can fish or shellfish at home without an honest-to-goodness Pressure Canner. Not a pressure cooker: the leading manufacturers do not recommend use of these small utensils for the extra-long processing required for such low-acid food as fish.
And, just as for canning meats and poultry, you’ll need a pencil-shaped glass thermometer or other accurate thermometer because you’ll be exhausting your jars here too.
In addition to the standard kitchen furnishings and the sharp good knives and cutting boards