I haven’t done any canning for a while. I haven’t had the energy or desire, and I haven’t needed to. But yesterday I went down to my basement to take something out of the freezer- the freezer that dh told me needs to be replaced because it’s not working properly – and found everything on the door half defrosted and everything in the main section encased in a thick layer of ice.
What to do? First of all, I took out three frozen turkeys to make room for some of the items from the door that could be refrozen without a problem. I also took out a 9 x 13 pan of shredded potatoes, and was able to chip out a couple of containers of cottage cheese and butter. After moving some things from the door into that space, I was shocked that I couldn’t even tell I had taken anything out. How in the world is it possible for there not to be noticeably more space after taking out three turkeys??
(This raised the question in my mind if it’s possible that maybe I buy a little too much food? But I quickly banished that thought.)
Anyway, now I needed to find something to do with the turkeys. One was already roasted so I put that in the fridge to defrost for Shabbos dinner. The other two I decided I’d have to can. I used the pressure canner as a pressure cooker, cooking them one at a time, and couldn’t believe how fast they were done. You know that cooking two solidly frozen turkeys would take hours, right? I’d usually have to put one in the oven and the other in our electric turkey roaster, both of which would have added lots of heat to the house in the hours of cooking. I just love the efficiency and versatility of my pressure canner – it’s been a much more valuable purchase than I expected.
Well, since I was going to can them I didn’t need them to be fully cooked, so once the pressure was up to 15 pounds I cooked them for just 10 minutes, the same as for a defrosted whole chicken. That was enough to cook the turkeys almost totally! If I had left them in another 2 minutes, they’d have been done all the way throught – as it was, they were just a little pink in the very center. When one was done, I put the other one in. Within about 2 hours both turkeys were done. They were finished cooking early enough in the day that I was able to debone and then can them today, too, and they were finished before it was even late in the evening. They’re now cooling on the counter, and all of them sealed except for one. That one will go in the fridge. All of that turkey amounted to 6 quarts (we ate some of it or it would have been 7 quarts) and I canned a quart of broth; the other broth was used to cook the rice for tonight’s dinner.
Six quart sized jars on a shelf will take a lot less room than two turkeys in the freezer! Now I’m going to have to put some effort into using the frozen veggies in the freezer before going out shopping for fresh vegetables. And hopefully we’ll soon find a good used freezer at a good price.
Avivah
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