Canning bacon bits

I've been canning a lot lately. Not only is it the season of abundance, but I feel a sense of urgency to get my pantry as full as it can possibly be. In fact, I've been canning so much that I'm getting dangerously low on jars. While I have a sufficient quantity of quart jars, I'm down to only three dozen pint jars.

Nonetheless when I came across three-pound packs of bacon ends for a good price, I cleaned out the store. We'd just finished using up our stash of bacon bits I'd canned last year, and bacon bits are excellent in so many dishes that having a nice supply is a bonus.

Besides, with the horrible drought plaguing the midwest, pork prices are on the rise. Best to can bacon bits while I can still afford it.

Cutting up the bacon ends.

I wished I'd stopped to count how many three-pound packages I started with, but I forgot to. I cup up and cooked the bacon ends over a period of days, so I lost track. But it was lots of bacon ends.

Two packages (six pounds) of bacon ends filled up my pot.

Then I cooked it down. This took a long time -- again, I did it over a period of days -- because I prefer to cook it slowly.

I drained it about half-way through, and of course drained it when it was completely cooked.

When all the bacon was cooked down, I started canning. I re-heated the bacon bits, then filled pint jars dry (meaning, I added no other liquid).

Scalding lids and rings.

I came away with a total of 18 pints of bacon bits.

All meat gets canned in a pressure canner, 75 minutes for pints or 90 minutes for quarts.

Because of our elevation, I keep the pressure between 12 and 13 lbs.

Because I like having lots of bacon bits in the pantry, I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for additional bacon ends on sale. The more the merrier!

Old-fashioned grinder

Last year at a local antique store, we purchased a weird-looking meat grinder thingy. It's made of cast iron and very heavy.



At the time we got it, it was rusty, and since we'd never used it, it stayed rusty. But during hunting season last year, a neighbor (who bagged his deer) called and asked if we had a grinder he could borrow. We warned him our antique was rusty and may not work well, but he took it anyway... and then wire-wheeled it and cleaned it up beautifully, ground up his meat, and returned it in far better condition than we got it. (That's a good neighbor.)



Anyway this week we ran out of the bacon bits I'd canned up earlier. So I purchased several packs of bacon ends to cut up, fry down, and can.

It's the cutting up part that's a pain. So -- why not try the grinder?



We quickly discovered a couple of things. One, if we're going to use this grinder on a regular basis, we'll have to mount it on something. Trying to crank it while holding it down was tough.

Two, the blades are dull. No surprise, considering its age. Make a note, sharpen the blades.

Three, don't overstuff. The more meat being processed through, the harder it is to crank. Feeding it at a moderate pace works better.



But it worked just great!



(Note Lydia's intense interest in this procedure.)




The meat was ground so fine I wasn't sure how it would fry up into bacon bits. So we ground just one package and tried frying it up first.




It fried up just beautifully...



...so we went ahead and ground up the rest of the meat. Here are some neighbor kids joining in the fun. Many hands make light work!



When all the meat was ground, I opened the grinder to remove the stuff still caught in the blades.



It wasn't hard, and only took a few minutes.



Ah, now cleaning it... that was a different story. What a hassle. Make another note, only use the grinder when there's a lot of meat to grind. Otherwise the cleanup procedure isn't worth the effort. Fortunately the blades can all be removed, but it still means that each part must be scrubbed separately.



Cleaned and ready to go for the next time...



Despite the hassle of cleaning (which, frankly, would be inescapable even with a new meat grinder), I'm more than pleased with how this antique performed.

I think it's a valuable thing to start collecting hand tools of assorted varieties, both shop tools and kitchen tools. This antique grinder now has an honored place in our pantry.

Canning bacon bits

I decided to can some more bacon bits to supplement some I already had canned up. So I bought 15 lbs. of bacon ends, in 3-lb. packages.

The girls helped cut it up.

We could only fit half the bacon -- 2 1/2 packages -- in the pot at one time.

Frying it down took awhile since I cook it slow so nothing burns.

In fact, it took so long to cook down both batches that it was too late to can it (or I'd be up past midnight). So I put the cooked bacon bits in the fridge overnight. The next day I re-heated the entire batch so I could hot-pack the bacon into jars.

Filling the jars. I packed them dry, meaning I didn't add any water to the bacon.

Scalding the Tattler lids and gaskets.

Out of 15 lbs of bacon ends, I got 10 pints of cooked bacon bits.

Some people have wondered why I make my own bacon bits rather than buying them. Homemade bacon bits are probably one of the few items I can which are more expensive than store-bought. But the fact is, they taste better.

Since the processing time is the same and since I had room in the canner, I also canned up a pint of leftover beef gravy.

Lids and gaskets out of the hot water.

Lids and rings on.

Into the canner.

Pressure building. These are canned at 12 lbs pressure (at our elevation) for 75 minutes.

Cooling.

We use bacon bits in baked potatoes, salads, and fried rice. Always a handy thing to keep in the pantry!