Hi friends! First time pressure canning, and feeling nervous. I followed the Ball recipe for pressure canned stock, but I did a worse job of skimming the fat and straining the detritus than I thought.
I got good seals on all of my lids out of the pressure canner, but I worry about the rancid fat/general not following directions perfectly factors of it all.
Any guidance for a new canner?
by Vegetable_Ad_5410
6 Comments
And a follow-up: our house came with a jar rack along the stairs to the basement. There’s some windows along that way. Should I put it fully in a cupboard to be more safe?
I’m relatively new to pressure canning, myself, but I don’t think it’s feasible to completely avoid having any fat or particles in properly pressure-canned stock. I have not personally had issues with stock going rancid from a small amount of fat (i.e. from stock that was chilled and skimmed prior to reheating and canning). It may be prudent to plan on using it up relatively quickly rather than letting it sit on the shelf for years.
My recommendation is to make the stock, strain it, and set it in the fridge overnight. The fat solidifies at the top making it so much easier to remove. After removing the fat I strain the stock again and bring it to a boil and follow the canning directions from there.
It will be fine. For future I recommend putting stock in refrigerator to congeal fat. Then it is easy to scoop off.
That jar seems like it has too much headspace for stock. The headspace measurement is from the top of the jar, not from the bottom of the rings.
It’s perfectly fine.
Removing fat will reduce your failure rate of sealed jars, however you’ll never get all of the fat. There are some great recommendations of how to remove the fat in this thread.
I’m guessing you had some siphoning which is usually caused by a rapid change in pressure. Bring the jars to pressure slowly and let them sit a bit after the pressure releases to help prevent this.