Pressure Canning Session #4

Pork Stew

8# Pork tenderloin - 15.80
5# whole carrots - 2.74
Onions - .75

$19.29 to fill my smaller stockpot which I think is 2 gallons Not sure about the cost per serving as some of it cooked down before I started canning. Plus, it was dinner for 6. I'll come back and edit the numbers when I'm done canning and get a better idea of what it produced.

Update: 21 pints plus I am guessing we consumed 2 quarts for dinner so that would have been 25 pt = approx .77 a pint (or 1.54 a qt.) Oh and I added a bag of frozen corn to the remaining stew in the pot so half of my jars will have corn...just to change things up a bit.

Like the beef roast, I cut the pork into 1-1.5" pieces. I'm trying to eat healthier so I cut off as much fat as possible. (Heck, I do this anyway. Cooking meat with big globs of fat just grosses me out.) This time I browned it on my big griddle to get the caramelized edges vs the oven method of quick browning that we did before. Into the stock pot went the pork alongwith 6 chopped onions and the 5 pounds of carrots that my children peeled & chopped for me last night. I really would have liked even more carrots! I covered everything in the pot with water, added salt & pepper + some chicken base for extra flavor. Oh and I put quite a bit of garlic in, too! I love onions and garlic.

I started making the stew around lunch time but I waited until the kids were home from school before I started the actual canning process. (I could have started the canning earlier but I didn't feel like I could leave it on the stove while I did school pick-ups just in case anything held me up.)

Came home, got my jars ready, heated up the water in the pressure canner and got a load started. I did pints instead of quarts because I specifically want to have easy lunch meals for me. So often when I head to pick the kids up, I realize that I haven't eaten lunch and I stop and pick up fast food or I eat some highly carby food that I don't even enjoy...like cheeze-its.

Not sure what I'm doing wrong but my canner says it can hold 10 pints but I was only able to get 8 in there. I tried stacking them but that didn't work either.

Gotta cut this one short or I'll be late to an appointment!

I had some of the stew for dinner and it was....fantastic. Very yummy. The pork just flaked apart. The kids, minus one picky 9 yo, all loved it as did the hubby.