Well, every November, here in the USA, we have what I call "Turkey Wars." The grocery stores sell turkeys for ridiculously low prices and it seems to me that they try to outdo each other. I bought a nice frozen turkey for 78 cents a pound last week! I can ordinarily buy whole chickens for about 99 cents a pound and so the turkey was 21 cents a pound lower even than that. A turkey has more meat per bone, by weight, so 78 cents a pound may as well be free. I put that one in the freezer to save for later.
We will be eating our Thanksgiving feast at our daughter's home, and she is fixing the turkey for the meal. I saw another grocery advertisement offering frozen turkeys for 99 cents a pound this week. We went and bought two of them Monday evening. I left one hanging in the cold garage to thaw partially (we hung it so no critters could get to it) and today I canned the meat.
First, I cooked the turkey, whole, on a rack, in my pressure canner/cooker for 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure. (I thoroughly washed the pot first!). After the pressure came down and I opened the pot, here is what the turkey looked like. It is about 14 pounds. I added 1 gallon of water, half an onion, roughly chopped, some chopped celery and a few halved garlic cloves so the broth would be flavorful.
After letting it cool, I de-boned it, cut the meat into bite - sized pieces, strained the broth and then packed the meat into pint sized canning jars. I filled them up with broth to within 1 inch of the rim, cleaned the rims, simmered the lids and proceeded as usual. I ended up with 7 pints of meat, and 10 pints of extra broth.
If you are unfamiliar with canning, be sure to consult a reliable canning book, such as the Ball Blue Book, or this book: So Easy to Preserve
It will be very nice to have this on the shelf. I can make turkey and noodles or dumplings, soup, pot pie... Yummy.
After reading this post I am going to buy another turkey and can it. Never thought of using my pressure caner to cook it in. I have canned beef before and love it. So many uses for the canned turkey.
ReplyDeleteHappy Thanksgiving
Wonderful! Canned meats are very good and very convenient and so easy to can!
DeleteI think .99 was the cheapest I saw here this past Thanksgiving. There were times in the past they would give it away if you bought such and such a ham, or depending on grocery store points the price would go down and down.
ReplyDeleteI will buy one or so to put in the freezer for mid winter when we might feel like a change of pace. But I buy my Thanksgiving and New Year turkey from relatives...my husband has 2 uncles that raise them and I have an aunt. They are none of these fancy heritage breeds I have seen for something like $100+ ...they just raise them for the season for extra money. (We have ham and goose at Christmas)