Hi preppers,
A month or so ago I bought a pressure canner and have canned a few pints of chicken breast, I did the 'raw pack' method and just added half a teaspoon of salt in with the chicken. It worked well and I have recently been using the canned chicken in my daily cooking, living the 'eat what you prep' philosophy.
But . . . I find the when I make something like a chicken fried rice dish the bottled chicken ends up being quite dry in the dish and also breaks apart in chicken fibres for lack of a better description. It's not terrible, but it's nowhere near fresh / defrosted chicken.
When I cook with the chicken I do drain off all the liquid that is around the chicken first, should I be adding this liquid to the dish ? I notice that the chicken in the bottles basically form into a chunk of solid chicken with the liquid around the outside, is this normal ?
Thanks for any advice
HeinB from New Zealand
What you describe is normal. When you pressure can, you are basically cooking/stewing food for a pretty long period of time; in the case of meat 90 minutes. Fresh chicken stays chunky because it is only fried for a few minutes and the process doesn't involve pressure or liquid. Its just one of those things you need to adapt to. Sometimes, if you are persistant and careful, you can cut the canned chicken breast into chunks and give it a quick fry, but its still tough to keep it from shredding. Not usually worth the trouble.
Hi, the reason you are having the issues you are talking about is because you are a) using breast meat only from the sounds of it, or b) the chicken was frozen, then thawed out and then canned.
Consider canning up some leg and thigh with bone in and you will be able to take good size peices pulled off, and then just add them to the end of the dish to heat up and they will keep in peices, add at the beginning and cook/stir and they will shed out as well. Same thing with the breast, raw pack two breasts with bone on and can and you will be able to control the meat in a different way, i can cut up and stuff a whole chicken per quart typically, the overall flavour with bone in is much better, and please, please don't drain off the chicken broth, use it in dishes, or soups or stews etc.
Now if you do decide to do the legs or any other bone in, the juice will tend to go very cloudy and will be either very thick or even a gel, because you are getting all the bonus geletin, minerals etc out of the bones themselves.
http://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/
Is it better to leave the skin on or remove it for pressure canning chicken?
The gel will melt out in the dish, i just meant it will be thick and gel like in the jar, unlike the watery broth that boneless cubed white breast will give, it will be quite different looking.
http://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/
Is it better to leave the skin on or remove it for pressure canning chicken?
You can leave the skin on if you want to do so but unless you are going to either deep fry it or crisp it in the oven, most folks don't like to eat it afterwards, but the hounds and cats love it, and you end up just popping it off or peeling it off afterwards, for me if i know that I am canning my chickens, i skin them, takes a fourth or so of the time it does to pluck them by hand (I don't have a power plucker) and so I tend to can them skinless but I have done both, my mom always did the skin on.. she had more hands then I do to help..
http://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/
Thanks farmgal. Mine will be store bought chicken on sale for the forseeable future.