Gardening and canning

[rimfiredude43]

So my wife and i are gardeners and we do a lot of canning and vaccum sealing for the freezer .i wuz just wanting to know wut other methods people on here use and wut ur gardens and food reserves look like.right now i just store mine in the house but in the case of no electricity i think it would get way to hot to store canned stuff in the house.when I was growing up my mom had a great Root cellar and we always stored all our canned stuff in there. I might look into that as a option but it would have to be strictly diy.but here is a pic of my garden and some canned goods. i have more in a shelf in closet.we have already put up over a hundred quarts of green beans .we canned a lot of potatoes and tomatoes and have made pickles and salsa .our garden is about 32 ×75 and we feed 6 people plus friends out of it .we have already vaccum sealed about 30 dozen ears of sweet corn.the next thing i want to try to pressure can is meat as i have never tried this.

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[Brent S]

There's lots of info on canning here. Danilgrl is our resident expert! I just started canning about four years ago and love it. What else are you going to do with 2000 ripe tomatoes! My favorite reference was is the ball book of canning. Every Walmart has it and it will give you all the basics to be safe. I posted a thread of a thread of my diy root cellar here with pictures of the build. Even here in summertime Georgia it stays really cool. It's not as good as a fridge but will store most things pretty well. There's some info on dehydrating as well. I did a bunch of red potato slices for storage recently. Also tried sweet carrot chips that were a minimal success, as in I don't really like them but they store well. I also freeze things in mason jars like sauces etc., but the vacuum sealer is awesome. I have a smoker but mostly use it for flavor than preservation. One guy here recently got a small freeze dryer, which is the holy grail of preservation. I'm eager to hear more from him on it's abilities.

 

[Dani]

Dehydrating is another good option. Canning meat is easy. Depending on what it is and how to prep it will be your biggest challenge. When I do hamburger, I like to cook it first, almost all the way,then fill jars without adding broth or water. But if filling with a tomatoes base sauce is good and can be used in a variety of recipes. For roast, just chunk up and again no added liquid added. Sometime mes I'll take smoked meat, chunk it and add a little BBQ sauce with a little water. Once canned, the meat easily shreds. You can to carnitas this way too. Do a little experimenting and see what you and your family like. I just would not attempt the boiling hamburger meat method. . .texture turned out like dogfood. The one I used said to can with the liquid. . . I had read where some suggested dropping in boiling water for just a couple minutes, then drain and can with no liquid. The texture was supposed to be better, but I have not tried that one. I ended up having to feed the boiled to the pups, which they loved. Chicken I'll fill my jars with raw chicken and can. Or if I boil and debone, I'll add liquid to those jars and can up the leftover broth. Canning meats opens up a whole new wold

 

[rimfiredude43]

Wow thanks for all the suggestions.i am really going to try the canning meat thing.ive canned some vegetable soup and some other stuff that i really like. Brent s i looked at your root cellar i really liked that .might have to try it out.looks like a lot of. Labor though but thats part of the fun for me and the wife we like doing projects together checkout our chicken tractor in the off topics section under woodworking projects that i posted .

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