Canned Meats

I've dabbled in hot water bath canning for the last couple years learning to can a few items. I've done strawberry jam, salsa, pickled dilly beans, beets, peppers, mushrooms and pickles, both hamburger dills and whole pickles. Typing this all out, I guess that is kind of a lot. Mushrooms, pickles and dilly beans I would say are my best tasting and most perfected at this point. I've only done jam once but it was fantastic. I look forward to perfecting the jam this summer and will be blogging about all of my canning adventures during summer/fall.

Most of the recipes I use are from the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving and when I look through the book I always quickly pass over the section on canned meat. Canned meat. I'm sure the first thing that pops into anyone's head it SPAM, so needless to say, it doesn't sound that appealing or glamorous. Well this winter I was looking through the Milwaukee Rec Department Adult Enrichment courses and I came across a class, 'Canned Meats'  and I figured maybe I should check it out. There's gotta be better canned meat out there than SPAM.

 

So I took the class. My first question was, what is going to be the meat? It was interesting that it was not specified. My second question was, what kind of people are going to be in a canned meat class? I was pleasantly surprised by the answers.

 

We learned about the world of pressure cooker canning which was uncharted territory for me. You can can (see what I did there?) a lot more food than I thought you could.

 

So the meat was...Corned Beef Hash! One of my faves.

 

I'm not going to go into the details of making the corned beef hash, since we prepped it in the class, but the instructor took care of the canning part afterward due the time it takes, but I will provide a link to the recipe. http://www.sbcanning.com/search?q=corned+beef

 

To answer the second question, it was a wide variety of people. I'd say ages 25-65, both female and male. It was a good group to work with.

 

Here is a picture prior to pressure canning.

 

 

And here is after.

 



 



 

This Saturday I prepared the corned beef hash. I was pretty excited for it since I already like the crappy grocery store canned corned beef hash, I was sure to enjoy this version. All you have to do is drain the water, chop it into smaller pieces, heat it up in a pan with olive oil and get it nice an crispy.

 

 

 

I served it with an over easy egg on the top, side of English muffin and Saturday breakfast is complete!

 



My canning meat experience was so good, I now really want to buy a $200 pressure cooker... Good thing I have Amazon Prime.

Sunday Hot Ham and Rolls

Sunday hot ham and rolls is a Milwaukee tradition and a tradition in my family ever since I was a little kid. It started for me with my grandparents, if we were visiting on a Sunday, my Grandpa would go to Roma Italian Bakery right here in Bay View and pick up shaved ham, provolone and rolls for the family. I like mine with just butter, real butter of course, but the occasional yellow mustard on the sandwich is good too.

This week I was surveying the cuts of meat we have from our pig and had the idea to cook one of the ham roasts in the slow cooker overnight and wake up to hot ham on Sunday. So I have the ham, now what about the rolls? Well what better way to try out my new bread maker then to make dough for fresh, hot rolls. I was looking forward to this all week.

The night before I prepped the ham using this recipe. The ham I had was about 5 lbs, bone in.

1 cup apple juice
1/4 brown sugar
1 tbsp. molasses
1 tbsp. grainy Dijon mustard
1 tsp ground pepper

Place the ham in a crockpot and pour the apple juice over it. In a bowl combine brown sugar, molasses, mustard and pepper until it forms a paste. Rub ham with mixture. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.

Mine was in for about 8.5 hours which was perfect. By the time I took it out it basically didn't even need to be cut but just pulled apart. I have to say, it was ham-tastic.

 

The dough for the rolls was made in the bread maker following the instructions in the booklet. I won't go into that since there's not much improv. there. I knew the dough had to rise in the bread maker, but I did not realize they had to rise once you divided them into balls. I had a time constraint so I had to use store bought rolls this morning, but I will get to enjoy the ham and rolls together this week for a lunch or two. Next time I know to set the timer on the bread maker and add the ingredients the night before so I'll have the dough ready in the morning along with the ham. And that's how you learn, by making mistakes.

 

 

So since I had the rolls ready today and I wanted to eat them while they were the freshest I decided to make mini buffalo chicken sandwiches for supper.

 

 

I cooked a frozen chicken breast in Frank's Red Hot, topped it with a hot buffalo cheese and the garlic aioli from my last post since I didn't have any blue cheese on hand. Served with sweet potato tater tots. Sweet potater tots? Even though they look a little burnt (I blame my brother for this for not setting a timer) you couldn't taste it when you dipped it in the aioli.

 

Sauce is boss

It's been a busy couple of weeks so I've been trying to fit in as much homemade, but quick, cooking as possible. I've only had time for a couple of new things and last week I tried my hand at homemade alfredo sauce and garlic aioli. Two separate meals of course.

Mushroom Alfredo Sauce

I was craving something warm and hearty one Thursday night and when I realized I had heavy whipping cream in my fridge and thought I could scrounge enough ingredients together to make fettuccini alfredo.

Ingredients

1/4 cup butter
1 cup heavy cream
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups freshly grated combination of parmesan cheese and mozzarella cheese
1 tsp parsley flakes
1 cup portabella mushrooms, chopped

Sauté the chopped mushrooms in garlic and olive oil to taste. Melt butter in a separate saucepan over medium heat. Add cream and simmer for 5 minutes then add garlic and cheese whisk together. Add mushrooms to sauce.

Butter, heavy cream, cheese...so rich and delicious, I smile just remembering it. Below is the finished product.

The second sauce of the week was a garlic aioli. My wonderful friends made me vegetarian crab cakes and had left overs they sent home with me. I do love real crab cakes but these were pretty awesome for not having any meat in them, only zucchini. So the original cakes were made and put into sushi so when I had the leftovers for lunch one day I whipped a garlic aioli to top them with.

Garlic Aioli

3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp. pre minced garlic
juice of 1/2 of a lemon
salt and pepper
seasonings of choice, I used the Spice House 'Fox Point Seasoning'

Mix all ingredients together and store in an airtight container in the fridge for at least 1 hour prior to serving to let the flavors sink in.

 

I could put this sauce on anything. Sandwiches, veggies, as a dip endless possibilities.