Making corned beef

We are butchering our beef in a few weeks and I would like to make corned beef from the brisket using your recipe from the book Recession Proof Your Pantry. My question is, can I use a plastic bucket with an airtight lid instead of a crock? (I don’t have a crock.) And can you tell me what the purpose of the cloth over the top is?

Gayle Rush
Eugene, Missouri

A food-grade plastic bucket should work fine; I use one for kraut. And I DO have a crock. The bucket is lighter and easier to carry around! The cloth is to keep debris and insects out of the bucket and hold the dampness in the crock. Be sure to place a sterilized plate over the beef and a weight on top of that to keep the meat totally covered by the brine. You also might consider having the brisket or part of it smoked. Our friend, Andy Gunderson, smoked our last brisket and it was SO good! — Jackie

Preserving potatoes

We have an abundance of red potatoes and would like to freeze and can some of them for later use. We want to freeze things like french fries, sliced potatoes, and hash browns and then home can anything we can for long term.

Charlie
Bronson, Michigan

To freeze French fries, first fry them in hot grease, in a deep fryer, at 370 degrees until just light brown. Drain, cool and pack. It works well to spread them out first on a cookie sheet to freeze singly, then package them up for storage. This way they won’t clump together.

To freeze potato slices or other raw potato products, first blanch them for 5 minutes in boiling water, then chill in cold water, drain, and package.

Canning potatoes is a good use of smaller potatoes. I often just scrub and can my little baby potatoes whole with the skins on. Then, later if you want to take the skins off, you just need to squeeze and twist them and the skin slides right off. You can also can up potato chunks or dices. They can up quite nicely. Don’t over-boil them before canning them up or they’ll get mushy. You can either boil whole potatoes for 10 minutes before packing into hot jars or pack dices/slices raw in the jars, then add boiling water and process. Potatoes are processed at 10 pounds pressure for 35 minutes (pints) or 40 minutes (quarts). If you live at an altitude above 1,000 feet, consult your canning book for directions on increasing your pressure to suit your altitude, if necessary. Enjoy your bounty of potatoes! Great feeling, isn’t it? — Jackie

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Highbush cranberries

Have you ever experimented with ‘Highbush’ cranberries? I have several of these large shrubs in my yard and every autumn, they are loaded with gorgeous clusters of berries. Even though they don’t smell very nice, there must be some use for this fruit other than feeding the birds. If they are high in pectin, perhaps they could be used for thickening jams, etc.? Thank you in advance for any ideas you might have.

Also, Congratulations on the birth of your new granddaughter. She’s a lucky little girl to have you for her grandma.

Julie C.
Bay City, Michigan

We have highbush cranberries growing wild around here. YES! I make lots of great tasting, pretty red jelly from these berries. I know they don’t smell the best, but the jelly does not keep that smell. My grandmother dumped a big batch she’d picked because she said they smelled like cat pee! (Not THAT bad, though, in my opinion.) I just use the “berry” recipe for jelly: 3½ cups juice, 5 cups sugar, 1 pkg. powdered pectin. Highbush cranberries make a very tasty and pretty red jelly.

We’re really enjoying our new granddaughter! Such a pretty, tiny thing! And she’s SO good, too. — Jackie

Butchering a goat

When butchering a goat do you let it hang for while like you do a beef, for how long, and does it really make a difference in the taste?

Shawn and Karen Moore
Ada, Ohio

No, you don’t have to hang a goat to age after butchering. The taste is fine, as is, and you can get right to processing. Goat meat is very seldom tough, so it doesn’t have to age to become tender. — Jackie

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Canning ham

Can you “can” store bought hams? If so how much time should you process it

Connie Gann
Rogersville, Missouri

Yes, definitely. I have one in my fridge right now to can up! You will process pints and half pints for 75 minutes and quarts for 90 minutes at 10 pounds pressure. If you live at an altitude above 1,000 feet, consult your canning book for directions on increasing your pressure to suit your altitude, if necessary. (Or buy my canning book, Growing and Canning Your Own Food, it has directions on canning store ham and tons and tons of other recipes that are not found in other canning books!) — Jackie

Storing meat

Just wondering if you can your pig that was processed or where you keep it. You don’t have a freezer right? Next question, I want to raise chickens in the spring for the first time. Layers and fryers. From what I’ve been told the fryers are all ready in 6 weeks. Is that the process you go thru and then can them all up or do you just butcher as you need them. If so-what breed do you use, because they can get to big right? As always you are amazing, and I thank you so much

Jacqueline Wieser
Sidney, Nebraska

I will be canning some of our pork. But we DO have a freezer, just purchased two months ago in order to have space to store our beef through most of the winter so I can can up that a little at a time. It is a small, upright freezer with Energy Star ratings and we have it on our unheated enclosed back porch to further save energy. So far, it’s working out just fine.

As for the chickens, we have white rock, cuckoo marans, white laced red cornish, and cochins. We crossed white rock roosters with our cornish hens and got our own home-hatched meat birds. The cochins, we hope, will hatch this year’s batch for us so we don’t have to use the incubator, as they are setting fools. Our meat birds could have been butchered at 6 weeks, but we prefer to wait until the weather is cooler and do a few at a time. Now we have the freezer, we can do several at a time instead of the three that was my limit for cooling in the fridge overnight and canning up the next day. Our first generation crosses aren’t as fast growing or quite as wide in the breast as commercial crosses, but they are plenty good enough for us. Regular cornish rock broilers DO get big fast and need to be butchered between 6-9 weeks because they start having health issues (bad legs and heart attacks) after that age. Plain old dual-purpose breeds like buff orpington or white rock are good for both meat and eggs. They don’t get as big as fast or have as much breast meat as do the cornish rock broilers, but they are pretty good eating and live a long, productive life as layers. — Jackie

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And now we are waiting for the call to come pick up our pork at the processing plant. Of course, it’s going to be a little longer before the hams and bacon are smoked, but the wait will be worth it! I’m hoping that by next year we will be set up to smoke our own meat again. Both Will and I have done it before, but right now, we don’t have a smoker or facilities to set one up. (There’s always a next year project!)

We kept our two gilts and are bringing a friend’s boar over to breed them. We’re trading breeding services on our buck goat for their boar’s services, so it will work out great for both of us. We’d hoped to breed both to a red wattle boar, but their only red wattle boar weighs 800 pounds. He’d squash our gilts! So we’re using their Berkshire boar this time and have reserved a purebred red wattle boar from the same sow that we got our barrow from — unrelated to either gilt. We don’t want to raise lots of pigs. Grain prices are horrible and don’t look like they’ll ever come down again. But we’ll raise a couple of litters a year and sell the extra weaner pigs to help pay for the feed costs for the pigs we keep to raise to butcher. I really do love the red wattle pigs and our friends say there’s no better pork. I’ll let you know about tomorrow! Mmm.

Meanwhile, I’m working on an article for the magazine on off-grid living on a shoestring, getting ready for a second Christmas dinner with my son, Bill and his wife, while Will is out burning brush piles. As our land was cut-over Potlatch timber land, there were lots of slash piles up on our ridge. UGLY. They were too rotten to use as firewood, so they just sat there. As we’re having an open winter, Will decided to burn them as there’s 3-4 inches of snow on the ground for safety. Last night, he burned six piles up on the ridge and BOY does that look better! And today, he set off the three piles down in our horse pasture. Those were all that was left from clearing the horse pasture, all shoved into one huge pile and two small ones. They all burned nicely, and relatively completely. What a relief it is to have all that gone. Another job done.

On to the next! Will’s working on his bridge, down at the creek. It, too, is coming along nicely, with both ends now down and supported well, rip rap on the upstream side consisting of power poles, boulders, and rock. There’s even planking on top for temporary driving over with the four wheeler! Now he’s hauling gravel to raise the level of the lower ground beyond the bridge, with rip rap to keep it from washing away. This will be a huge improvement over our inaccessible acreage across the creek, except in the winter. Soon, we’ll be able to drive the four wheeler, dozer, or tractor over it year-round. — Jackie

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Rancid pecans

I was making some Christmas candy and found a 2# bag of pecans on the shelf that I bought last year this time. I opened them to use them up but they are slightly rancid. Do you know of any way to freshen them up or will I have to throw them out. Hate to because they are so expensive. What’s the best way to store nuts long term so this won’t happen again?

Adell Struble
Aledo, Illinois

I can up all my nutmeats. It works perfectly and they never get rancid. I’ve got some pecans my friend Juanita and I canned down in New Mexico, twelve years ago, and they’re still perfect. (Pressure canned dry, toasted at 5 pounds pressure for 10 minutes.)

Once the nuts get rancid, they can’t be restored. BUT they can be used for stronger tasting foods, such as chocolate (brownies, fudge, etc.). If they are barely rancid, they can also be used in cookies. I prefer to can ‘em and not worry about just how rancid a bag is! — Jackie

Raising meat

My husband and I just recently bought a 100 acre farm. We want to make it into a hobby farm but feed us also. We want to purchase one cow for the beef. My questions are: is it okay to raise just one cow? How long do we raise it for? What age should we buy it at? We will also be buying to pigs for eating also. We currently have 7 chickens and 1 rooster that have been laying eggs since they were 3 months of age. Someone told me I was doing something right with them so maybe I’ll have great luck with a cow and 2 pigs.

Joanne

Yes, you can raise one steer for beef. (Steer, not cow; cows are female and are usually used for breeding, raising calves and/or milking.) Most folks buy a calf between 3 days old and three months old to raise for beef. At two months old, calves are usually off the bottle and weaned…but cost more than when they were babies. But then, it costs about $70 a 50 pound bag for powdered milk replacer, too. It takes a bag of milk replacer to raise one calf to weaning, and baby calves are more tender and can become sick with diarrhea (scours) quite easily. If you can, I’d advise getting a weaned calf. It doesn’t matter much what breed. Most young calves are dairy breeds, usually black and white Holsteins, the most common dairy breed in the country. Jersey calves are cheap, but it does take awhile longer to get them up to butchering weight of about 1,000 pounds. The meat is just as good, regardless of breed. It usually takes about 18 months to raise a calf to butchering weight, again, depending on breed and care.

Pigs are a good investment for meat, as a spring weaned pig will be ready to butcher in the early winter, weighing about 250 pounds. And they eat a lot of waste garden produce, weeds, scraps, etc. too.

With larger animals, like steers and pigs, just make sure that you have adequate fencing. It is NO fun to chase down runaway critters! You’ll love your animals and the meat they provide. — Jackie

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We just had a snow storm mixed with freezing rain. Several deer came down the trail below the house, heading for the horse pasture and the round bales of hay we have out there. The horses sometimes share their hay with the deer. So far, our deer herd is fat and happy with the relatively open winter we’ve had so far. We’re several feet below normal snowfall for the year.

This fall the beaver were stockpiling tons of brush in the mud out in the beaver pond and I commented that I feared an open cold winter. And we’ve sure had an open winter so far. The cold usually comes right after Christmas. We have plenty of wood and food, so we’re not worrying.

Today I helped a friend can up a deer he’d shot with his bow and arrow. He wanted to learn to can meat, so I spent the day giving lessons. He went home with lots of meat and was real excited about the possibilities! And that’s exciting to me. — Jackie

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Canning meat

I’m getting brave enough to want to learn to start canning. When you talk of browning meat before canning, are you fully cooking the meat? And if you pour boiling water over it (such as hamburger)won’t it get all soggy and come apart?

Mary Janson
Aurora, Colorado

Good for you, Mary! You’ll really love canning your own food, I promise. Once you find out how simple it really is, you will be off and running. No, I don’t fully cook the meat, I just brown it enough that the meat heats thoroughly and shrinks down so more fits into a jar. I don’t use water in my browned ground meat, but I make a broth, using the pan drippings. By packing the meat gently into the jar, you use little liquid and no, it doesn’t get mushy or come apart. — Jackie

Watering pigs

How do you water your pigs? I have rubber tubs for ours but they are always climbing in them, getting them full of mud and knocking them over. Not to mention having to clean the buckets out three times a day is creating a huge mud hole in the already muddy pen. We bought a “dog lick” and that worked great all summer but now that winter is here it freezes. Winter watering is a chore and I need to figure out a way to keep clean water in front of the pigs without making such a mess!

Mia Sodaro
Frazier Park, California

You don’t have to keep water in front of the pigs all the time. If you provide all the fresh water they will drink, plus a little left over to use before it freezes, twice a day, they will do great. We do this, as well as mixing water or milk with their dry grain. Our pigs are big, happy, and healthy; yours will be too. — Jackie

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Yesterday, we went to pick up our beef from the processing plant. Our oldest son, Bill, and his wife are getting a hindquarter, we are keeping a hindquarter and we pre-sold the front two quarters. The cash from the front two quarters paid back a whole lot of the feed that steer ate ($720 buys a lot of feed). Bill pays for the cutting and wrapping of the hindquarters in exchange for plenty of cheap meat. The total cost was only $240 for butchering, cutting, wrapping, and freezing and our share is $120 after Bill pays for his part. So we feel that it was a good deal, all in all! I’m thawing out two T-bone steaks right now. Can’t wait for supper!

Check out the picture of Mittens and Spencer playing. They roughhouse every day. Mittens even stands in Spencer’s mouth and bites his cheeks! You can’t believe how funny they are. Both of them just had their distemper vaccinations, but it sure didn’t slow them down any. (Distemper is an awful killer of both dogs and cats…as are the other diseases the vaccine protects against. The cost is minimal and the peace of mind is huge!)

We may butcher some of our animals for food, but we love them all and do everything in our power to keep them happy and healthy. — Jackie

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