WHAT ARE YOU CANNING TODAY?

[baymule]

I'm fixing the smaller of our two roosters tonight. Mainly to have some room in the freezer again. It's surprising how much room even a small whole chicken takes.

Spatchcock them, they store better and who needs the backbone anyway.

 

[Hinotori]

8 half pints of Pacific crabapple jelly all done. Mom gets one but the rest are ours.

It's made the old fashioned way after straining. Just sugar added then boiled 20 minutes. Hubby does complain that it sets up a bit thick.

 

[Beekissed]

Canning ground sheep today.

 

[BarredBuff]

Interesting! Do you use it in place of beef?

 

[wyoDreamer]

It's made the old fashioned way after straining. Just sugar added then boiled 20 minutes. Hubby does complain that it sets up a bit thick.

I wonder if you could thin it out with apple juice or something? Crab apples have so much pectin in them, I can see why it may set too thick.

A friend of our is getting into making Apple Cider. He came and picked apples from us this fall. He asked if he could pick some carb apples too. Unfortunately, our crab apple tree did not have any apples this year. Not a single apple.
He had been doing research on apple cider making and read that in the past, they would add crab apples to the mix to add a flavor depth and some sourness. He says that since our apple trees are most likely a type of cider apple, it makes sense that there is a crab apple tree planted in the front yard for when they make cider.

 

[Hinotori]

I added some more water and simmered the leftover pulp for a bit before straining again. That part still was very tart so I'll always do that in the future. It still set up thick. Apple juice changes the taste. I added some one year. Hubby was upset because it's a unique flavor.

 

[Beekissed]

Interesting! Do you use it in place of beef?

Yep! Just like we use deer meat. Usually we cut the loin/backstraps into butterfly steaks and those are floured and fried. The rest of the deer is ground for burger, which I can into jars...renders it incredibly moist and flavorful as it seals in all the flavor and what little fat the deer meat possesses. Sometimes the deer is turned into jerky but that's usually only when the harvest has been plentiful and jars are all already filled.

 

[wyoDreamer]

I canned 4 quarts of beef stew.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

7 qts of chicken soup

 

[tortoise]

I made jelly for the first time! I made the juice a week or two ago and put it in the fridge. Had a good day yesterday and made two batches. Apple jelly and apple-mint jelly. No pectin for either. The mint flavor really dissipates with the boiling, so definitely use a pectin recipe for mint jellies! Yield was 4 half-pints apple jelly and 3 half-pints apple-mint jelly. I am a little more confident in knowing when it's done. The last similar recipe I made was marmalade, several years ago. I cooked it too long and it set up so hard we couldn't spread it at all.