There is lots of cooking and preserving that I do in order to use up as much of our wonderful fresh meat and vegetables and fruit as possible. We are working to keep a large majority of a food local, so that means that sometime you get a TON of something and need to figure out how to use it and/or save it for future uses. I decided that I should start sharing some of these ideas/recipes in case you decide to try the same!
The past two weekends have been very busy as I have been making and canning fresh pork stock so that I could get the bones out of the freezer to make way for our 252 pounds of fresh beef that we ordered from a local farmer (can you say YUUUMMM! We have used this farmer for the last five years or so and his meat is certainly a nice treat and well worth the investment!) If you are interested in more information about the fresh beef, please send me an email. I would be happy to share, sales@dragonfly-farm.org
Okay, well onto making and canning broth/stock. This recipe works with any kind of meat. I use the same method for pork, beef and chicken, and the result is always the same - DELICIOUS, flavorful stock that can be used in a variety of fashions!
Tools:
-Pressure Canner (I used a dial gauge canner)
-Mason jars with lids
-Colander
-Cheese Cloth
-Large Pot
Ingredients:
-5lbs of bones/animal parts (you can use the parts of the animal that you might not prefer to eat, but are edible, for example, when doing chicken broth, I use the cleaned feet, heart, liver etc. they add to the richness of the stock and it means that those parts do not go to waste!)
-6 qts of water
-4 carrots
-4 celery stocks
-1 or 2 onions
-3 or 4 cloves of garlic
-salt
-peppercorns
-parsley or other herbs
Directions On Making the Stock:
-place all ingredients into the pressure cooker (leave out the bottom shelf)
-turn burner on high and bring to a boil and place lid with the weight off
-once steam is venting from the lid, place weight on and allow it to reach 15 pounds of pressure.
-cook at 15lbs of pressure for 20 minutes
-once done cooking, turn off heat and allow to depressurize on its own
-once depressurized and cool enough to work with the pot, scoop out the large bones and vegetables.
-once most of the bones and vegetables are scooped out, strain the remaining liquid through the colander that is lined with a cheese cloth and is over the other large pot, so that it catches all of the smaller particles from the broth.
-From here, you can take the larger vegetables and stock and make a GREAT soup or stew by adding some additional ingredients. If you would prefer to skip that and just can your stock, please see the next set of directions.
Directors On Canning The Stock
-start placing the strained broth into your mason jars, I do a mixture of quart and pint jars.
*For a double batch of stock I usually get 9 quarts and 5-7 pints.
-When packing leave about 1" head space in the jars
-be sure to wipe the rims and seal the jars up tight.
-place the bottom shelf in your pressure canner and add about 2" of water and then place the jars inside. For a double batch I have to do this process twice since all of the jars will not fit in one processing.
-Place the lid on the canner with the weight off and allow the canner to boil.
-Once steam is steadily streaming from the lid, place the weight on and allow the pressure to build to 10 pounds.
-Process quart jars at 10 pounds for 25 minutes and pint jars at 10 pounds for 20 minutes (if there is a mixture of both sizes, just go with the longer time)
-once done cooking, turn off heat and allow to depressurize on its own
-once cool enough to work with, remove jars from canner and place out to cool. Be sure to remove the ring from the lid to prevent rust from forming.
-once the jars have cooled off and dry, replace the rings and label the lid with a sharpie with the contents and the month/year of creation.
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