No pictures today. Just an update.
As I mentioned yesterday, I was disappointed that two (of eight) jars did not seal on my last canning attempt. I have now used the Canner five times and always had at least one jar that didn't seal.
Upon inspection, it seemed that the two jars that failed to seal were very full. The instructions say that there should be 1 inch of empty 'headroom' in the jar before you seal and place in the Canner.
This rule is annoying... a pint jar should hold 16 ounces which would be about 1 lb of meat. However, with an inch of headroom the jar only holds about 14 ounces... and I'm stuck with leftover product. Sometimes (often) I overfill the jars.... as an engineer I expect that a 16 ounce jar should hold 16 ounces.... dammit!
Anyway, Tuesday afternoon I went to Kroger and they had bulk Italian sausage on sale. I thought 'hmmm, I don't have to cut this up or weigh it, I can just pack it into the jar with the correct headspace and no liquid'. Honest, a little cartoon bubble appeared over my head with those exact words.
I had four empty jars left from the case of 12 so I did two jars of Italian sausage and two jars of ground beef (with a few sweet peppers thrown in). As expected I had about three ounces of sausage and three ounces of beef left over, but the jars had the proper headspace.
When I checked the jars this morning they were all properly sealed. YAY!
Of course, an experiment with just four jars doesn't prove much... but it is encouraging. From now on I will 'under-fill' the pint jars.
As an aside, regular canned-goods (beans, carrots, potatoes, etc) are in 14.5 ounce cans. I always thought that was just deceptive... but maybe a canned pint has always been about 14.5 ounces. This could be a long standing, and well concealed, deception by the Matriarchy... to short the men by 10% on every pint!!
In conclusion, what to do with six ounces of leftover pork and beef?? Maybe a mini meatloaf for tonight's dinner.... and a real, 16 ounce pint of beer.
As I mentioned yesterday, I was disappointed that two (of eight) jars did not seal on my last canning attempt. I have now used the Canner five times and always had at least one jar that didn't seal.
Upon inspection, it seemed that the two jars that failed to seal were very full. The instructions say that there should be 1 inch of empty 'headroom' in the jar before you seal and place in the Canner.
This rule is annoying... a pint jar should hold 16 ounces which would be about 1 lb of meat. However, with an inch of headroom the jar only holds about 14 ounces... and I'm stuck with leftover product. Sometimes (often) I overfill the jars.... as an engineer I expect that a 16 ounce jar should hold 16 ounces.... dammit!
Anyway, Tuesday afternoon I went to Kroger and they had bulk Italian sausage on sale. I thought 'hmmm, I don't have to cut this up or weigh it, I can just pack it into the jar with the correct headspace and no liquid'. Honest, a little cartoon bubble appeared over my head with those exact words.
I had four empty jars left from the case of 12 so I did two jars of Italian sausage and two jars of ground beef (with a few sweet peppers thrown in). As expected I had about three ounces of sausage and three ounces of beef left over, but the jars had the proper headspace.
When I checked the jars this morning they were all properly sealed. YAY!
Of course, an experiment with just four jars doesn't prove much... but it is encouraging. From now on I will 'under-fill' the pint jars.
As an aside, regular canned-goods (beans, carrots, potatoes, etc) are in 14.5 ounce cans. I always thought that was just deceptive... but maybe a canned pint has always been about 14.5 ounces. This could be a long standing, and well concealed, deception by the Matriarchy... to short the men by 10% on every pint!!
In conclusion, what to do with six ounces of leftover pork and beef?? Maybe a mini meatloaf for tonight's dinner.... and a real, 16 ounce pint of beer.
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