Canned Deer Meat

An Ode to canning. Our kids love canned deer meat, and best of all canning allows you to use the shanks and other tendon 'rich' parts of the deer without a lot of extra work. Canning is a bit of a misnomer because it actually involves putting meat meat into glass jars and not into tin cans. But like a can of tuna fish a jar of deer meat will keep indefinitely on the pantry shelf. We'll open a Jar and the kids will just dig in and eat it - what a great source of protein. I'm also convinced that the 'melted' tendons (collagen?) just has to be great for one's joints. Last night Mike Pfeffer and I canned up 33 pint jars of deer meat. And given that a 'pints a pound the world around' that translates into at least 33 pounds of product.

Anyhow - here is my recipe.

Things needed:
Pressure cooker (a big pressure cooker will hold 17 or 18 pint jars)
Cast iron skillet
Canning Jars and lids/rings
Deer shanks (calfs and other tendon rich cuts)
Thyme, Rosemary, Pepper and Salt (optional)
Carrots and Shallots optional
Vegetable or canola oil (I find olive oil and butter 'burn' and that peanut oil has too much taste)
Good Stock (I make my own chicken/turkey/vegetable stock) (@4 pints or 32 oz for 17 pint jars of meat)
Good sherry (This is key, I usually use either Maderia or Harvey Bristol Cream in the blue bottle) (@1/2 bottle for 17 pint jars of meat)

Process:
1) In a sauce pan I heat my stock - If i made my own stock with added garlic, beach lovage etc I just heat it up, but if I use store bought stuff I throw an onion, some carrots, garlic cloves, celery (or the free beach lovage that grows near the sea around here), and whatever else is handy and going bad in the fridge (even apples and oranges - all make for better stock).
2) Cut up all the meat into about 1' square cubes and brown them in a very hot cast iron skillet. Make sure the oil is very hot before adding any meat and do not add too much meat at a time. The point of browning is to sear the outside of the meat with a tasty crust and to not actually cook the meat. Add some thyme, fresh ground pepper and rosemary with every other batch. I add a good amount of oil and brown two batches of meat for each addition of oil. After the second batch I deglaze the pan with a LOT of sherry and then re oil the pan. After each batch is done I put it into a deep bowl - the deglazed sherry and other juices build up on the bottom of this bowl.
3) Put all the jars out onto the counter and evenly distribute the meat between the jars - leave about at least an inch free to each jar rim. Then spoon the 'good stuff' from the bottom of the bowl evenly between all the jars. This sherry and deglazed meat juices flavor is KEY and you want every jar to have some in it. (optional - on occasion if I do not have enough meat to fill all my jars I will add browned shallots, carrots and even garlic cloves to the jars - browning them in the same skillet you browned the meat helps with their eventual taste).
4) Add stock evenly between all the jars - try and get the stock level with just below the top of the meat. (Some people also add a tea spoon or so of salt to each jar, but i don't).
5) Wipe all the rims with a damp paper towel and put on the lids and rings (you should also read you canning/pressure cooker instructions at this point). The lids should have been boiled in another pot of water.
6) Load up the pressure cooker according to the instructions (check out out the Ball "canning blue bible") and once you hit 10 pounds of pressure wait for 1 hour and fifteen minutes before turning off the heat.
7) Once the pressure has dropped to zero carefully empty the pressure cooker and make sure that every pint jar is bubbling away merrily - if one isn't set it aside.
8) The next morning tap all the jar lids with a pen or anything else that is handy and check that the 'ting' is the same with each. The ones that were not bubbling merrily will probably make a 'thunk'. All jars that do not make a 'ting' should be set aside. Eat or refrigerate in the next couple of days all the jars you set aside . You generally get one or two a batch - but you want one to test for flavor anyhow - so why not test one with a bad seal?
9) Store and Enjoy! You got food for the winter.

As you can see my recipe is not exact - I believe that experimentation leads to better results. Try different spices when browning the meat, make your own stock with the deer bones, add different vegetables to the jars with the meat, try Marsala instead of Sherry. Variety is the spice of life. Patrick