Canned venison

When I lived back in Upstate New York we always harvested several deer a year. I bought a eleven quart preasue canner and always canned a bunch of venison. That was my favorite way of processing venison.
I live in Washington State and still do all my deer hunting back in New York. We cut all of the deer we harvest up and vacum seal it then freeze it. I bring back boned out frozrn meat back on the airline yo Washington State.
If it wasn't for the glass canning jars, I'd can it and bring that back instead of frozen meat.

I am very proud of mrs farmer. She cans and stores all of the surplus from oursummer garden. Tomatoes. Corn, green beans, sweet peppers , jalapeno, everything. We have never canned venison or any other meat.
We will have to try a batch, you make it sound really good!

I wish I had enough venison for canning, Haveing a store of meat that doesn’t require refrigeration is an important thing. We really enjoy canning pork shoulder. I purée cilantro jalapeños tomatillos garlic onion and a bit of cumin salt and pepper, I mix the purée with the raw pork and pressure can it. Pour it out in a pan to crisp up and right into a burrito. Carnitas in a can! I also cure whole back hams into prosciuttos, another wonderful way to store protein without a freezer.

Well I haven’t hunted in two decades, no longer have a garden or surplus vegetables but I do like sauerkraut so one can find a couple of cabbage filled wide mouth mason jars sitting on the back of the kitchen counter fermenting or stored in the fridge.

Lacto-Fermented foods are wonderful! Got a jar of garlic cloves and a jar of hot sauce in the fridge made that way.

Canned venison has always been a favorite, very similar to jerky and stick sausage. Like jerky and sausage, it was a method employed back when the freezer had more than one deer in it and the family number was more than two. Nowadays, I limit myself to one deer a year, and that generally is a good buck during bow season. As such, we butcher it ourselves, grind the burger and enjoy the deer in more traditional ways. Just ain't enough to justify the time and effort to can. But, our son's do for their families using our canning tools, and sometimes we help and come home with a jar.

Condor said:

My wife had eaten a lot of canned venison as a child. I’m not sure why, but she developed an interest in doing that this year. She went so far as to order a pressure canner before the start of the season, so there was a fair amount of “pressure” to be successful this year (sorry; i could not resist). The boys and I hunted hard this fall, without success. On the day before the season ended, after a long day in the woods, the boys headed in while the stubborn old man gave it 15 more minutes. I was rewarded with a good shot at a nice doe at 150 yards. The boys did come out and help with bringing it into the barn and later with processing it.

In an effort to ensure success I lugged the 13 lb heavy barrel .308, which is boringly accurate, although I did hit a bit high (shooting at 150 yards from a seated position).
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We canned the all but the choicest cuts. We had the first jar tonight, with homemade gravy and mashed potatoes. The boys devoured it. It was a good feeling...we had practiced shooting from field positions all summer (thank you THR for the guidance on that), developed the handload (150g Barnes TTSX over Varget; this was a very effective load in this case), and done some scouting. I was happy that my knowledge of food prep/canning was useful...that was the most tender and flavorful meat I’ve had in a long time, and I was thankful that the boys enjoyed it so much.

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Can you comment a little more on the bullet performance and your load? I hunted for years with a 165 gr TSX in .300WM and had enough cases of failure to expand that I gave up on it. Then my BIL had excellent expansion on both deer he shot with a 180 gr TTSX in .30-06, so now I'm going to work on a load with 150 gr TTSX in .300WM. What impact velocity would you guess? Any indication of how much expansion?

I've always had my best results by taking Barnes' advice and loading light for caliber bullets. They seem to expand better when driven faster IMO.

I had a nurse in the hospital who was from Newfoundland. She commented that she loved canned moose and, especially, jellied moose nose. I've never tried it and probably will never have the opportunity (Thank God).

I've been eating canned venison on and off since I was a kid, in fact I'm still canning in the same jars my mother used when I was a kid! lol

I've also canned moose, caribou and about everything else I've shot, it's all pretty good, fixed right.

DM

I love canned venison. Amazing how few folks know about it. And such an easy way to preserve the meat in your pantry for a year or more!

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/117537/easy-canned-venison/

Venison pot pie using canned venison has always been a hit in our family - as long as my wife makes the crust. I'm a pretty good cook myself, and my wife leaves operating the pressure cooker up to me. But pie crusts are her forte.

I will have to try this. Venison is one of ma favorite meals. Thanks.

Condor said:

Using the Hornady ballistics calculator with a muzzle velocity of 2800 fps, at 150 yards it would be 2481 fps. It was a pass through both lungs, with some good expansion based on what seemed like an exit hole of just under an inch (I am wishing now i had taken the time to measure). The deer went about 50 yards.

Earlier this year i got a coyote at 75 yards with the same load; it was a shot right through the sternum as it faced me. It dropped where it stood. (I had been deer hunting at the time, and the coyote appeared unexpectedly).

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Thanks for the info. It's very encouraging. My BIL's 180 gr. TTSX in .30-06 had a listed MV of 2,750 which was 300 fps slower than I was launching the 165 TSX from my .300wm. I was impressed by the expansion of those bullets. It really seems like the larger nose cavity of the TTSX makes a big difference on expansion. I can't wait to try the TTSX. The TSX was the most accurate bullet I found so far.

Barbaroja said:

I wish I had enough venison for canning, Haveing a store of meat that doesn’t require refrigeration is an important thing. We really enjoy canning pork shoulder. I purée cilantro jalapeños tomatillos garlic onion and a bit of cumin salt and pepper, I mix the purée with the raw pork and pressure can it. Pour it out in a pan to crisp up and right into a burrito. Carnitas in a can! I also cure whole back hams into prosciuttos, another wonderful way to store protein without a freezer.

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Nice, is that prosciutto from a wild hog?

Canning makes sense, I always dread what will happen if the power goes out on the deep freeze for a few days.

Paul7 said:

Canning makes sense, I always dread what will happen if the power goes out on the deep freeze for a few days.

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A few days? Not a big problem, just don't open the freezer, and pile blankets, opened sleeping bags and everything else on it, to keep it cold.

DM

Paul7 said:

Nice, is that prosciutto from a wild hog?

Canning makes sense, I always dread what will happen if the power goes out on the deep freeze for a few days.

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No that was from a hog I raised. It wouldn’t be wise to make it from a wild hog as prosciutto isn’t cooked it’s just salted for a prescribed amount of time and then hung to dry. I’m not sure the process would kill the tricanosis that is potentially present in wild pigs.

DM~ said:

A few days? Not a big problem, just don't open the freezer, and pile blankets, opened sleeping bags and everything else on it, to keep it cold.

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Yeppers, and keep it full. Every time there's room in your freezer, add a gallon milk jug 3/4ths full of water. Thanks to the "dependable" power company in this part of the state, we're no strangers to power outages.

So the "wise woman down the street a pace" when I was a teenager, canned a lot of..., everything...., before the pressure canner was the recommended method for meat, and she continued even after the FDA recommended otherwise. She never got sick and her venison "red sauce" for spagetti was quite good. She was the "wise woman" as our British neighbor called her, because that's what he called a similar woman in his English village when he was a kid (before WW2). My dad and I didn't see her very often, but we'd take her a Canada goose if we got a few (we were hunting small game, waterfowl, and upland birds..., no deer at that time). One day while dropping off a goose, I had a bad headache, and she asked if she could give me a cup of tea, and my dad said it was alright. It was black tea, but she added a bit of some bark to the brewing pot, and then had me add some sugar. The taste was different but not bad. Headache went away.... the "wise woman" knew her herbal remedies....

... years later I found out it was willow bark with the black tea, which is a natural source of stuff similar to acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), and the caffeine from the black tea..., so similar to an aspirin. That and it was cold out and kids don't drink much water when they are cold, so she also hydrated me...voila...cured.

OH and the venison red sauce I later found out was fully pre-cooked, plus had a good amount of vinegar in it and some sugar, which gave it a tangy flavor... and I later learned that the acidic pH was what probably protected the lady's boiled-canning method for meat from botulism, along with the full cooking. My dad remembered that the boiling method was the accepted method for about 30 years from the 1930's when he was a kid into the 1960's, when they found that every now and then the home canners across the country were having problems, and the FDA started a "pressure canner" recommendation and push.

LD

I haven't canned meat for a while, but used to do it a fair bit back when. Beef, pork, venison, chicken, whatever I had. Very satisfying knowing it was there on the shelf not needing electricity and can be eaten straight from the jar if you like because it's already fully cooked.

The toughest old buck is no match for a pressure canner. It'll tenderize him no matter what.

The USDA has been recommending pressure canning for non-acidic foods such at meats since the 1930's as I recall, but it has taken years, literally decades, to bring most canners on board. Every once in a while I still run into someone who boiling water bath cans their green beans or whatever. Fortunately for them botulism is pretty rare in occurrence because if it doesn't kill you (or someone else) outright you're looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills and possibly years trying to recover. The low pH of Loyalist Dave's "wise woman" probably did protect her, but it's not something anyone who knows what they were doing would take a chance on!

I think venison is well suited to being canned. Buy a pressure canner with a weighted rocker gauge and learn how to use it. I'm craving venison chili now. A quart of canned venison, a can of beans, and a lot of ancho chilies and cumin will make for a satisfying meal!

IF you are going to spend the money for a canner, I urge you to buy the best,



And here is why,



It can easily be passed down and live through several family members life times.

Canned venison,



DM

DM~ said:

A few days? Not a big problem, just don't open the freezer, and pile blankets, opened sleeping bags and everything else on it, to keep it cold.

DM

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Not sure how that would work on 99 degree NM summer days in my garage.

Paul7 said:

Not sure how that would work on 99 degree NM summer days in my garage.

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It get's hot here too, it works if you do as my last post said...

INSULATE it from the heat!

DM