Putting Food By - Janet Greene [86]
In a large enameled or stainless steel kettle make enough cold brine to cover the meat, in the proportion of 2 cups of pure pickling salt dissolved in each 1 gallon of water. Hold the meat in the brine 20 to 30 minutes depending on the size of the shrimp, stirring from time to time to make this first brining uniform. Remove the meat and drain thoroughly.
Meanwhile prepare an acid-blanch of 1 cup lemon juice and 1 cup pure pickling salt for each 1 gallon of fresh water (the same as for Crab and Lobster, above). Make enough to deal with all the shrimp you’re working with, because you must use a fresh lot of the solution for each blanching-basket’s worth of shrimp meat; otherwise the liquid will become ropy from diffused blood, etc. Bring to boiling enough of the acid-blanch to cover a household deep-frying basket half-filled with shrimp. Boil the meat 6 to 8 minutes (again depending on size of the shrimp) after the liquid returns to a boil. Lift out the shrimp, spread them on wire racks to air-dry and cool. An electric fan blowing across the shrimp will hurry the process: shrimp must be cool and surface-dry when packed.
Fill ½-pint jars with shrimp, fitting them in carefully to get a solid pack—but don’t crush them down; leave ½ inch of headroom. Add boiling water just to cover the shrimp, leaving ½ inch of headroom. Half-close and exhaust as for Salmon, Crab, and Lobster. Finish screwing down bands firmly tight.
Pressure-process ½-pint jars at 10 pounds (240 F/116 C) for 35 minutes. Remove jars; air-cool naturally.
• Adjustment for my altitude_________________.
Hard-Shell Clams Whole or Minced (Littleneck, Butter, Razor, Quahogs)
Pressure Canning only. Blanch, pack, and exhaust. Use only ½-pint jars with two-piece screwband lids.
To fill twelve ½-pint jars with whole clam meats (including their juice), you’ll need about 6 quarts of raw shucked meats; about 12 quarts of raw shucked meats will fill twelve ½-pint jars with minced clams.
The early steps for preparing clams for canning are the same for whole or minced meats. We’ll describe the complete procedure for canning whole clams, and give the variations for minced clams separately later.
Pick over the clams, choosing only those with tightly closed shells or ones that quickly retract their siphons (necks) when touched; discard any with broken or open shells. Scrub them with a stiff brush and rinse thoroughly.
Open the clams by steaming, or by shucking the live clams with a blunt knife as described in Freezing Oysters, Clams, etc. in Chapter 16. If you open them live, work over a bowl to catch the juice (which you save, strain through cheesecloth, boil down to ⅔ its original volume, and use for canning liquid in the jars). To steam open: take clams from their holding brine, spray-rinse, and pile them wet on a rack in the bottom of a big steel or enameled kettle with a tight lid adding a cup water to the kettle. Work with about ½ peck (4 quarts) at a time, because their volume increases as they open. Cover the kettle, put it on High heat; reduce the heat to Medium when the liquid from the clams starts to boil, and let them steam until their shells are part way open. Strain and save the steaming liquid as above; there is no need to reduce it.
From each opened clam, remove the dark gasket-like membrane that runs around the inside edge of the shell and encloses the siphon/neck; snip off the dark tip of the neck. Keep the dark stomach mass if you like: it’s nutritious, but it also could give the canned product an unappetizing color or odor. Wash the dressed meats thoroughly in a fresh brine made in the proportion of 3 tablespoons pickling salt to each 1 gallon of water; make enough so you can change the washing-brine often.
Acid-blanch the meats in a boiling solution of 2 teaspoons pure citric acid powder