Winter Small Batch Canning Projects

 

This winter has been a cold and rather gloomy one this year.  What better time to spend in my lovely little kitchen doing some canning projects I've been wanting to get done?  In my chest freezer out in the garage was a huge vacuum sealed pork roast that had been waiting for me for quite some time.  That was my starting point.  I set the roast to thaw, dragged in my canning jars and the pressure canner from the garage and pulled out my largest slow cooker and I got down to business.

 

Getting that pork roasted cooked up and into pint jars spurned me on to tackle the large packages of pork sausage and Italian sausages that I'd purchased on sale and found on markdown and tucked away in the chest freezer for "later".  Later had arrived!

 

My canner holds nine pint jars so if I had was short a jar or two and had some extra space I tucked in some dry beans and canned those.  It is very nice and convenient to have home canned beans on the shelf to add to recipes.  Plus, as with all of my home canning, I know what I have inside those jars so no odd ingredients, fillers or preservatives and I'm saving money over purchasing these items at the store.

 

I had squirreled away several pounds of butter in the freezer in my kitchen wanting to try something new and canned up a dozen half pint jars of butter.  I also melted down some coconut oil and transferred that into canning jars and allowed the lids to seal on their own as the fat cooled.  I can now use it in more manageable containers rather than having it in that giant plastic tub I purchased it in.  I did the same with what was left in the shortening container and once that gets used up I have no plans to buy that particular product again.

 

Six pounds of ground beef was cooked up, half of it canned plain while the other half was made into sloppy joes and canned.  I made split pea soup and a batch of taco soup too and canned that as well.  Readymade meals and homemade soups are again, nice and convenient to have on the shelf plus a lot healthier too, not to mention much less expensive to make over purchasing them at the store.

 

I've steadily been able over the winter to increase my inventory of shelf stable foods, save a lot of items in my freezer from becoming freezer burnt over time and managed in the process to alleviate my dependence on that chest freezer out in my garage.  I now no longer have the worry if the power goes out of losing hundreds of dollars of food in the freezer.  In fact it is currently unplugged and I am not even using it at the moment (update: it has been sold!).  The bonus is I've got a lot of really good food that will be really easy to prepare meals from.

For those who have been asking, stay tuned for some upcoming canning posts. 😁