Canning ground beef is so easy to do and very convenient to keep on hand! I prefer to keep canned meat on hand rather then frozen for a few reasons. It is always ready to use, no waiting for frozen meat to thaw out. Yes, I know I could take it out of the freezer the day before but I always forget. Canned meat keeps longer then frozen, and it never gets freezer burned! Also more then once I’ve had someone unplug my freezer with disastrous results. However a long power outage would have the same results.
A few years ago, I changed the way I canned ground beef. Instead of pan frying it in small batches, then having to drain and rinse the fat off I started boiling it. I can place large amounts of ground beef in my stock pot, cover it with water and let it simmer until it’s cooked. This saves me time, I no longer have to cook in small batches. I can get it ready then go and attend to other jobs. I no longer have grease splatting around my stove. One of the best advantages is a nice large pot of soup stock! After boiling the ground beef, I strain the broth and set it in the fridge to cool over night. The next day skim the fat off the top. You can now season the broth however you like.
Ingredients
- Ground Beef
- Water
Instructions
- Place meat in a large pot, cover with water and bring to a boil. Simmer until cooked through.
- Drain off stock, reserving to use latter for soups.
- Spoon meat into jars and leave 1 inch of head space. Cover with boiling water or beef stock.
- Wipe rims and add lids. Tighten rings finger tight.
- Place into canner.
- Pressure can for 90 minutes.
- After canner depressurizes set on a towel to cool, let sit for 24 hour so the seal can harden.
- Take jar rings off, wipe the jars clean. Label and store in a cool dry place.
What a great idea! I’ve been canning it raw and have huge hard clumps. This will much nicer to work with not to mention the side benefit of the beef stock. Thanks for your tip!
This sounds great! I will have to try it. How long will it usually keep?
Does a pint jar hold about a pound (precooked weight)? That would be awesome! I was just brainstorming about cooking up some beef/onion/garlic to freeze for easy meals when Baby arrives, maybe teaching my oldest how to cook a few simple things. I have a feeling #5 might be a big adjustment for us, but I thought that with #4 and she just fit right in and hardly made any waves at all.
Maybe this pregnancy is the boost I need to get that canner out of its box for the first time :
Yes it does! I find a pint jar is the perfect size to can for our family to.
Mrs. Teasley wrote:
Guidelines normally say 1 year for canned goods. However myself and many canners have us goods much longer then that and they were fine.
Kim wrote:
Thanks!
I am about to try canning my meat for the first time and wanted to know if you think that boiling it makes it softer than pan-frying it…email me if you could, as I’m ready to do it asap!
Excited to hear from you!
@ poohnda:
I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to respond until now! Yes boiling the meat makes it a little softer then pan frying. But it is also easier to remove the grease from the meat if you boil it. If you pan fry it, make sure to drain and rinse the meat before canning.
How to can a smaler jar like a jelly jar
Have you ever canned deer meat? (venison) I was wondering how that would turn out. I am thinking of trying this with ground deer meat.
@ Ann:
No I haven’t canned deer meat before. But from what I’ve read you’d can it the same as beef.
I don’t own a pressure cooker, but use an old fashioned canner to can my vegetables. How long would I need to put the beef into a regular canner?
Thank you
Ann
@ Ann:
I am using a pressure canner not a pressure cooker. So it should be the same time I used.
Ann wrote:
You cannot can meats in a regular canner because it cannot heat up hot enough to kill the bacteria. You can look this up online but any foods that are not high in acid must be pressure canned for safety.
@ Annette:
Yes Annette your very right! I assumed that Ann was talking about an older style pressure canner, not a water bath canner.
In canning any meat, I try to get as much grease off the meat as possible but have small amount show up at the top. Does this hurt the length of the storage or quality of the meat.
I tried this and it worked great! I have two questions. I have a out three out of 18 jars that the top portion of the meat seems to be a little discolored. I am afraid they are a little short of liquid. Does that sound like a problem? Do you think they’d be safe to eat?
Also, one or more of the jars must have leaked during the pressure cooking because the water in the pressure cooker looks a little greasy. Is that normal?
Thanks for your website!
@ Ann:
yes, you can cook deer meat and can it. Here’s how I do it. I get a large cast iron skillet searing hot with butter in it. then, i take my stew meat size chunks of deer meat or deer steaks and sear fry in the skillet. after it’s fried, i pack the meat in jars and then add water to my skillet. stir the drippings up from the bottom of the pan and then pour that over the meat in jars, leaving a good half inch headspace. After processing, when you’re ready to use the meat it comes out with it’s own juice which is easily made into a gravy. and the meat is extremely tender.
I saw your video on canning ground beef about a month ago, and it helped to persuade me to buy a pressure canner to can some of the beef in our freezer. The idea of losing $1000 worth of meat if the electricity goes out didn’t appeal to me. In any case, I followed most of your steps on how to can ground beef. The jars sealed really well, but I realized when I watched your video again a few minutes ago, that I had neglected to strain the broth. Oh well, maybe next time! Also, I decided not to wait until the next day for the grease to harden on top of the broth, so I just scooped the majority of it off the top of the broth. But either I didn’t get as much as I thought I did, or I hadn’t boiled the ground beef long enough, because after the jars cooled down overnight, there was a lot of the grease/fat solidified on the top of meat in the jars. One had almost 1/2″ of it on top of the meat.
I have a few questions that have been asked previously by others above, but I didn’t see an answer to them: Is having that fat on top of the meat in the bottles a problem? Will it decrease the length of time I can store the meat safely. And finally, some of the broth went out of the jars, so in some jars, the broth isn’t covering all of the meat in the jars. There is about 1/2″ of meat below where the solidified fat is that isn’t under the broth. Is that a problem? Thanks for your website. You’ve got some great stuff that is helping us to become more self-sufficient! –Barry
Barry, I know that one problem you have…liquid oozing out can come from taking your jars out too quickly. I had the same thing happen with my tomatoes and I read that you should let the jars sit for a bit and cool down a little and then the juice won’t leak out.
This article was fascinating. How long do the cans last usually? do you refrigerate or freeze?