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What’s For Dinner?- Part 4, by J.R.
Meats
While meat should probably be viewed as a nicety rather than an essential, we have made it an essential in this house. My husband is a type-1 diabetic, and as such his insulin will last a whole lot longer if he goes to a no-carbohydrate diet. We could purchase commercially-canned meats, but we really prefer not to for both economic and safety reasons. We buy pigs and sides of beef from a local family and generally use our meat straight from the freezer. However, we always keep a sufficient number of empty mason jars and new lids on hand for canning up all the meat, if the freezer dies or the power goes off indefinitely.
We also always have a good quantity of home-canned meats available. They are so convenient to use in making last-minute meals.
Beef, pork, and chicken are among the easiest items to can. Basically, you pack the raw meat into the jar, add salt, and process according to instructions. See your Ball Blue Book for the step-by-step instructions.
There is, however, more to life than the basic three. Bacon is an essential in this house. I remember one autumn, after harvesting an abundant crop of potatoes, we were having baked potatoes very frequently for dinner. The kids were getting a little tired of them. So I fried up a jar of bacon to use as an additional topping. They were so grateful! And I was more than a little amazed at what a difference it made in them. It was another lesson learned about flavor fatigue.
I can both bacon ends and pieces and bacon strips. Bacon ends and pieces are sold in three- to five-pound packages, usually right next to the regular bacon strips. The packages will contain a lot of pieces of straight meat, a lot of straight fat, and a little that is a mixture of both. I usually can the meat in jars separate from jars of fat. While this fat is not what you would normally want to use for rendering into lard for baking, it is still very valuable. I fry it up and pour off the grease to use later in making tortillas and pan frying a variety of foods. The cracklins are a pretty tasty topping for salads and baked potatoes. The meat is great for adding to soups and beans and for making bacon bits.
Canning Bacon
Bacon strips take more work to can, but having those bacon strips once in a while for breakfast or for some BLTs will be greatly appreciated. You will need wide mouth pint jars and a roll of parchment paper. To prepare bacon strips for canning, first cut them to fit the height of the jar, minus one inch. Cut the parchment paper to the height of the jar plus one inch. Lay the bacon strips side by side down the middle of the parchment paper so that there is one inch of space on either side. Fold both sides of parchment paper over the ends of the bacon.
Source: https://survivalblog.com/whats-for-dinner-part-4-by-j-r/
