Canning chicken, stock and venison tomorrow...cooking down the stock today. Found the feeding of fermented feeds to these old birds removed any smell or taste of gamey flavor one would normally get a hint of in an old stewing hen. Just about the best flavored chicken I've ever eaten and that's saying a lot....have eaten quite a few home grown old birds and also young CX in my lifetime.
I have the best results doing the same thing. I also have canned cold filled jars in the cold water canner, then heated both up, BUT sometimes they have leaked even though I use those rubber grips and really turn them closed. When I go hot filling into hot jars into boiling water, and sometimes heat the lid in boiling water and put it on THAT way, I never have a leak.
Agreed about cold to hot or hot to cold and the jars cannot handle the stress of expansion and contraction, so they crack.
I will be canning my third turkey today. I bought three turkeys on sale over the 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. With each one, I cut off the wings and drumsticks for dinner (Buffalo wings on steroids!), skinned the rest and boiled it. Shredded and canned the meat and stock. Each turkey has yielded about 7 quarts of meat, and a similar amount of stock. I also canned 11 pints of whole cranberry sauce when cranberries went on sale. I keep hoping that sweet potatoes will go on sale for less than $1 a pound, but no luck there.
A nice side effect of canning in winter- the house is warmer
Canning more chicken and stock today and tomorrow. The last chicken processing of the year is finally done. I'll never do winter processing again if I can help it...those hides and connective tissues were like they were stapled onto the bird.
Canned 15 pints of Pozole stew, 3 pints of spicy beans for refry, 6 quarts of ground pork (mostly used for homemade dog food) and a quart of chili beans yesterday. I bought 50 lbs of culled tomatoes at 50 cents/lb on Friday- today I will be canning salsa, marinara, and maybe tomato sauce (if I don't run out of tomatoes).